--- The Fool <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3050317.stm > Afghans' uranium levels spark alert > By Alex Kirby > > A small sample of Afghan civilians have shown > "astonishing" levels of uranium > in their urine, an independent scientist says. > > Critics suspect new weapons were used in Afghanistan > > He said they had the same symptoms as some veterans > of the 1991 Gulf war. > > But he found no trace of the depleted uranium (DU) > some scientists > believe is implicated in Gulf War syndrome. > > Other researchers suggest new types of radioactive > weapons may have been used in Afghanistan. > > The scientist is Dr Asaf Durakovic, of the Uranium > Medical Research Center (UMRC), based in Canada... <snipped rest of article>
I think I recall an article someone posted about cancer and proximity to a former USSR nuclear test site, but I couldn't find it; I did find articles in PubMed about it (although quite a few have "No Abstract Available"). Here's one; if you want more abstracts, just click on _Related Articles_ at the upper right, and many should link: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=7960215&dopt=Abstract "...Rates of childhood cancer between 1981 and 1990 in the 4 administrative zones of Kazakhstan were studied to assess the relationship, if any, with distance from nuclear testing sites...Risk of acute leukaemia rose significantly with increasing proximity of residence to the testing areas, although the absolute value of the risk gradient was relatively small...There was also some evidence of increased risk of brain tumours in association with proximity to the test sites. [Although that data is much less "hard;" thyroid cancer also seems to be increased in the population exposed at a young age. - DH] I was wondering if there might be groundwater contamination from these sites, but by this map Semey -as it is now called - in the north-east corner, seems pretty far from Afghanistan (about 1100 miles from the northern border by my guesstimate). I didn't see any big river connecting from Semey either. http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/commonwealth/kazakhstan_rel94.jpg As for closer tests, according to this site, 496 tests were conducted in Kazakhstan, with just 2 in Uzbekistan, and 1 in Turkmenistan (and 2 in Pakistan): http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/bomb/maps/ I wonder if the Soviets used some type of earth-penetrating nukes in Afghanistan...but wouldn't that have shown up on one of our monitoring sites? Or would these "new types," presumably of a much lower yield, trigger these monitors? <mind descends into crazy conspiracy theories...urp!> This is an article I found on earth-penetrating nuclear weapons, which are apparently in the defense budget (research): http://www.ucsusa.org/global_security/nuclear_weapons/page.cfm?pageID=777 "...The depth at which even a small nuclear weapon must be buried to ensure that it is "contained" —that is, that no radiation is released when it explodes—is much greater than the achievable penetration depth, so that it is impossible to prevent radioactive fallout from a nuclear EPW..." Debbi Jury's Still Out Maru __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Calendar - Free online calendar with sync to Outlook(TM). http://calendar.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
