[R-G] Depleted Uranium in the Strait of Georgia

[Anthony Fenton]

Depleted Uranium in the Strait of Georgia
Or how I was hooked by “du” — a personal journey
http://www.watershedsentinel.ca/CurrentArticle.htm
January/February 2008

If you lived in the northern Strait of Georgia – in the area of  
Texada, Lasqueti, Hornby, Denman, Comox, Quadra, and Cortes Islands –  
in the late 1980s and early 1990s, you or your family may have  
witnessed or been affected by this activity. The Merchant Legal  
Group, lawyers for the Agent Orange class action suit at Camp  
Gagetown, would like to hear from you.

by G. Turnbull

Saturday morning, April 15, 2006, I was listening to a favourite  
radio station, Malaspina College radio CHLY-FM, from Nanaimo. They  
were interviewing Leuren Moret, a geophysicist from Berkeley CA, who  
had worked at US nuclear labs.

She went on for 40 minutes about the horrors of depleted uranium (DU)  
in munitions, which releases radiation into the atmosphere and its  
medical effects on, for instance, the first Gulf War veterans, where  
it was first used in quantity. Over 500,000 out of 700,000 vets are  
now on disability for something called “Gulf War Syndrome,” a  
‘disease’ with many symptoms identical to radiation sickness. Or the  
test range off Vieques, Puerto Rica, where the residents are suing  
the US Navy for all the cancer, etc. That test range was finally  
moved to Rockhampton, Australia, where birth defects are starting to  
show up. Part way through the interview, she said, “The US navy used  
to test fire these munitions in Puget Sound until the local residents  
complained. They then moved north across the border to Nanoose Bay  
and now test in Canadian waters!”
Nanoose Bay means the Whiskey Gulf test range which is only 30 miles  
southeast of where I was sitting.

I had just been told I was 30 miles downwind of a nuclear test zone!

I went into a bit of an anxiety attack with all the attendant brain  
chemicals associated with “fight or flight,” where the risk is  
usually assessed fairly quickly. But the risk assessment of when and  
how much DU was only partially answered 11 days later, (and for that  
period some friends thought I was a bit off.) I was certainly running  
on adrenalin.

I started on the internet where googling ‘du Nanoose Bay’ brought up  
16 sites but nothing conclusive. (There are now more than ten times  
the sites!) Googling ‘du’ confirmed the horrors of its use, the  
quantities used in the first Gulf War, the Bosnian carpet bombing  
(where Rumanian and Bulgarian atmospheric testing detected dirty  
radioactive isotopes found only in spent nuclear fuel rods, what’s  
called RU), the Afghanistan and Tora Bora bombings, and the second  
Gulf War, where the US admits to using 2.5 million kg.

And its definition: when uranium is ‘enriched,’ what is left of the  
original uranium is ‘depleted’ to 70% of its original radioactivity.  
There is a lot more of the depleted stuff than the enriched stuff,  
and its storage had always been a problem.
It was first used by the Germans in l943 when their tungsten supply  
was blockaded, according to A. Speer. Tungsten is used in armour  
piercing munitions. Replacing it with DU was more effective, DU being  
more dense, and had the added ‘benefit’ of being a gas weapon!

Yes, it is an excellent armour piercing weapon, but what is rarely  
mentioned is DU’s pyrophoric qualities. As a metal, it ignites and  
burns like magnesium at an intense 2-to-3000OC. Water does not put it  
out. It ignites at only 170OC, meaning it’s on fire as it comes out  
of the barrel of the gun, or, if used as a bomb, it ignites on  
impact, burning, vapourizing almost entirely, and condensing to tiny,  
hollow spheres with a density less than water that then float on the  
wind and water, and are just the right size to lodge in lungs.  
Essentially that 70% radiation is released to the atmosphere just as  
an atomic bomb releases its radiation to the atmosphere but in  
smaller doses.

DU tips, coats, and is solid in munitions from handgun caliber to  
5000 pound bombs. Considering the quantities used (conservatively 3  
million kg.), those small doses apparently add up to the radiation  
released by 400,000 Nagasaki A-bombs (500,000 by another source). I  
don’t know how to judge those numbers. There are 67 million kg. DU  
munitions ‘prepositioned’ in South Korea on three US bases!

The DU storage problem was solved and in fact DU is given free to the  
munitions manufacturers.

All this information wasn’t helping my anxiety and I still had  
nothing solid about Whiskey Gulf. I phoned a UBC professor who has  
been working on nuclear issues, asking whether he knew anything about  
DU testing in Whiskey Gulf. For 20 minutes we had the strangest  
conversation where, in a loud voice, he would say that the range is  
only used for torpedo testing, loudly that DU is safe, while in  
between, in a quiet voice, he would say that DU is ‘highly chemically  
and biologically reactive’ and that the Navy were using an anti- 
cruise missile gun, the Phalanx, that shot bursts of 60-120 rounds of  
20 mm cannonfire at a time, up to 2000 per minute – an enormous  
quantity of DU vapourizing into the atmosphere. At the end he was  
saying, in the loud voice, that he believed that the 15 hijackers  
took out the World Trade Centre with nobody else aware. Loudly I  
agreed. Quietly he told me if I came on information to contact him by  
mail, not to phone, not to e-mail. The implication that I was talking  
on a monitored phone, and his anxiety, did not help me with my anxiety.

I started noticing clicking on my line.

I still didn’t know my risk from exposure and it seemed the only  
definitive way would be to scientifically measure the radiation in  
the environment around me. Not knowing how best to test for this I  
called the Provincial Public Health Officer on the morning of April  
25. She was not interested, couldn’t help me and put me on to the  
Ministry of the Environment where a bureaucrat was interested,  
suggesting looking at disease statistics, but couldn’t help me on how  
to measure radiation. He put me on to the Ministry of Health  
Radiation Protection Branch, adding, “though they might have shut it  
down.” (Slight rise in anxiety: “they?”)
Other phone calls to government offices, ending up at the Ministry of  
Health Radiation Protection Branch, were less informative or dramatic.

Wednesday April 26th, I was talking to an unnamed source who used to  
be in the Canadian military and who was on board a Canadian naval  
ship when not only was the US navy test firing DU munitions in  
Whiskey Gulf but so was the Canadian navy and at least three other  
NATO navies, not only the Phalanx but every gun! This was in the late  
l980s, early l990, prior to their use in the l99l Gulf War. This  
source could face military justice for divulging this and therefore  
insists on anonymity. This information has since been confirmed by  
another ex-military person.

Finally, some sense of time and quantity though I don’t know about  
prior to this period (the Phalanx was being installed at this time).  
 From then to now is also vague though the Phalanx has to be test  
fired twice a month to maintain correct calibration, 400-700 rounds  
each time. Presumably Canadian and US warships in these waters with  
this gun are test firing them still.
There is a concerned group in the Puget Sound that tries to keep  
track of this activity. There is no Canadian counterpart. In other  
test ranges it has taken years to get them to stop or move. The Brits  
tested in the Scottish Firth of Forth and it was the same procedure  
of secrecy, deny, deny and move finally. Here we have testing that  
has been secret for close to 20 years in which at least five  
countries are complicit.

Given this information my local MP did nothing more than open a file.

I am not a political animal and, feeling against a wall, I came back  
to my original concern about my health and started researching  
uranium detoxification. DU in the body acts as a toxin like other  
heavy metals such as mercury and lead, plus it is radioactive, doing  
DNA damage wherever it is. DU stays in the body much longer than  
other forms of uranium, according to H.D.Sharma.

Detox research consistently referred to the Japanese experience after  
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The people that were irradiated but lived had  
a particular diet – miso, shitake and kombu [kelp]. The miso and  
shitake boosted health while the kelp detoxed. After Chernobyl, the  
Russians did a lot of research using this knowledge to test various  
algae and seaweeds, finally fixing on the brown kelp laminaria  
japonica and making a 40:1 extract that is sold in the US under the  
trade name Modifilan and in Canada as brown seaweed extract. I’ve  
been through the six month detox and feel much better.

After following the news of the CFB Gagetown NB Agent Orange class  
action suit and noting the similarities to Whiskey Gulf, I contacted  
the law firm about a possible suit here. After some correspondence,  
the prinicpal of the firm, Tony Merchant, agreed to pursue the  
action, stating that he thinks the case “ought to move forward.” He  
will need more input than just mine.
I lost a father and a number of then-young friends to diseases  
associated with uranium exposure (thyroid, brain, stomach cancers,  
etc.) in the early l990s, only over three years after DU was tested  
heavily in Whiskey Gulf.
Does that sound familiar to anyone living in the area of Texada,  
Lasqueti, Hornby, Denman, Comox, Quadra and Cortes Islands, or have  
you witnessed this activity?

     If so you could write your concerns to:
     Re: File Number 402540, Merchant Law Group
     #100-2401 Saskatchewan Drive
     Regina SA Canada S4P 4H8

My interest in a litigious, rather than a political approach, is  
first to publicize this criminal activity and then possibly to seek  
justice. Feeling relatively fit for 60, I probably do not qualify for  
compensation, but some of you may.

G. Turnbull is an ordinary Canadian citizen concerned about some  
particular activities of his government.

More Information
Globalresearch.ca, wise-uranium.org, mindfully.org and stop-du.org  
all have good information and links about DU. Look for the 2001  
report to the World Health Organization, Radiological Toxicity of DU.  
The Moret interview is archived at radio4all.net. You may wish to use  
public access internet to avoid being on a list.

Air Force Environmental Assessment
“Target 63-10 is the only air-to-ground gunnery range in the United  
States cleared to employ 30mm depleted uranium rounds from A-10  
aircraft. The target area is restricted and is more than 10 miles  
from any community, facility, or home.
“A single depleted uranium penetrator, about the size of an adult’s  
little finger, is capable of penetrating the armor of a tank. As the  
round penetrates the armor, it burns at extremely high temperatures  
and sprays hot metal in the interior of the armored target.

“Depleted uranium is the by-product of converting natural uranium  
into enriched uranium. Depleted uranium is 40 percent less  
radioactive than natural uranium and is twice as dense as lead. The  
small depleted uranium penetrator weighs 1.7 pounds.

– Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, http://www.nellis.af.mil/news/ 
story.asp?storyID=123022433

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