Column: Idaho

Army Shipping Contaminated Kuwait Sand to Idaho Landfill

Comment By Serephin, 4-30-08

Why dump the six thousand seven hundred tons of contaminated sand in -- of all possible places -- Idaho? Who has the contract in Kuwait to dig up the sand and ship it to the states? Are there other corporations involved with American Ecology Corporation, such as Halliburton or KBR? How difficult is it to dig a large hole in the Middle East, dump in the contaminated sand and cover the hole back up? Who, specifically, came up with this brilliant plan?

Questions as far as the eye can see...

Comment By Bubblehead, 5-01-08

The original fire was in July 1991, so this problem has been brewing for 17 years, through both Republican and Democratic Administrations. Jill, I'm not sure why you feel the need to quote someone with no apparent scientific credentials (a B.A. in English, according to her biography) regarding the hazards of depleted uranium; the SRA's claims about DU (which means, basically, "uranium that is much less radioactive than naturally-occuring Uranium") are humorous at best, and anti-science at worst. And here I thought "progressives" were supposed to support actual science? Remember -- a 4.5 billion year half-life for DU means it's barely radioactive, and isn't just a case of a big number being bad.

Comment By Clancy, 5-01-08

I can see more common sense decisions by our government.

Comment By Sisyphus, 5-01-08

Fer cryin out loud bubbles, you don't think its relevant to quote a watchdog entity on their opinion on this? If you gotta problem with Andrea's number then let her have it but bitchin Jill out for being partisan is rather a stretch don't ya think? If this sand is so innocuous then why did it get shipped half way round the world in the first place?

I'm with Serephin, this smells to high heaven. How this became Idaho's problem is beyond me. Here's a link to an 06 annual meeting of shareholders for the <a ><font+color="#cc0000">&EndHTML;=</font></b>&SearchText;=<NEAR/4>("JOHN+M","COOPER")" target="_blank" >corporation.</a>

Comment By Sisyphus, 5-01-08

oops, that didn't work.

Comment By Bubblehead, 5-01-08

When the watchdog entity and their ilk ( http://bubbleheads.blogspot.com/2006/07/depleted-uranium-worthy-of.html ) continually make ridiculous claims, then yes I think Jill could search for people who have a clue. She might just as well quote me that people making claims not supported by science can also "cause health risks including increased flatulence among area ungulates and pulchritude among the general population".

Comment By Sisyphus, 5-01-08

Well I certainly disagree Bubbles. I don't mind you pointing out the error but you've supplied nothing to refute it but an unsubstantiated partisan attack. And Jill did the right thing by posting on both sides of the issue. If either side has faulty numbers point it out, but don't blame Jill for it. And what about the info from the CDC Bubbles? And answer my other question if you have any info on it.

Comment By Bubblehead, 5-01-08

Actually, if you go to the link I provided, you'll find a lot of facts and links pointing out the fallacy of the "DU is horribly radioactive" argument. As far as why it got shipped here -- it's because lots of people are scared to death of anything that says "radioactive" and become irrational, to the point where they think they have to ship sand halfway around the world. (Otherwise, you'd see stories about "Americans are poisoning Kuwaitis by not removing the sand" when we eventually leave Kuwait.) Radiation can be bad, but this mindset the general public has makes us end up doing stupid things whenever anything involves radiation, and the SRA contributes to that.
As far as the CDC information, that has to do with lead. Lead is an element that is different from uranium, and the most common isotopes of lead aren't radioactive. Of course I recognize lead is a bad thing, and I'm not arguing about that. I'm arguing that people getting freaked out about low levels of U-238 is ridiculous.

Comment By Jill Kuraitis, 5-01-08

I've added a link to, and a short portion of the entry in Wikipedia about depleted uranium, and will continue to update this story as calls come back from sources and experts.

Comment By Dr. Peter Rickards DPM, 5-01-08

Hi Bubblehead,
I don't speak for SRA, nor they for me, but no doubt DU is toxic. Not as nasty as the plutonium dumped at INL, but for more nuclear info that is science based, please visit our website at http://www.MyIdahoEnergy.com
Here is one of the NIH website medical papers I used in my news release on Kuwait dumping DU here, that I also used on deaf ears to the legislative tax break for French Areva to enrich uranium in Idaho (DU is the waste product they will dump here).

1: Environmental Health Perspectives 2006 Jan;114(1):85-91.
In vitro immune toxicity of depleted uranium: effects on murine macrophages, CD4+ T cells, and gene expression profiles.
Wan B, Fleming JT, Schultz TW, Sayler GS.

Center for Environmental Biotechnology and Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee 37996-1605, USA.

Depleted uranium (DU) is a by-product of the uranium enrichment process and shares chemical properties with natural and enriched uranium. To investigate the toxic effects of environmental DU exposure on the immune system, we examined the influences of DU (in the form of uranyl nitrate) on viability and immune function as well as cytokine gene expression in murine peritoneal macrophages and splenic CD4+ T cells. Macrophages and CD4+ T cells were exposed to various concentrations of DU, and cell death via apoptosis and necrosis was analyzed using annexin-V/propidium iodide assay. DU cytotoxicity in both cell types was concentration dependent, with macrophage apoptosis and necrosis occurring within 24 hr at 100 microM DU exposure, whereas CD4+ T cells underwent cell death at 500 microM DU exposure. Noncytotoxic concentrations for macrophages and CD4+ T cells were determined as 50 and 100 microM, respectively. Lymphoproliferation analysis indicated that macrophage accessory cell function was altered with 200 microM DU after exposure times as short as 2 hr. Microarray and real-time reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction analyses revealed that DU alters gene expression patterns in both cell types. The most differentially expressed genes were related to signal transduction, such as c-jun, NF- kappa Bp65, neurotrophic factors (e.g., Mdk), chemokine and chemokine receptors (e.g., TECK/CCL25), and interleukins such as IL-10 and IL-5, indicating a possible involvement of DU in cancer development, autoimmune diseases, and T helper 2 polarization of T cells. The results are a first step in identifying molecular targets for the toxicity of DU and the elucidation of the molecular mechanisms for the immune modulation ability of DU.

PMID: 16393663 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

PMCID: PMC1332661
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16393663?ordinalpos=9&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum
________________________________________________________________________

Comment By Sisyphus, 5-01-08

Thanks Jill that was helpful. Apparently there is insufficient data on the health effects, but there is apparently enough concern to remove contaminated sand from Kuwait, ship it to Washington and overland to Idaho. Looks like a study is finding that male Gulf War vets have twice the rate of having children with genetic abnormalities, three times for females.

Bubbles you remind of the site workers I grew up around in Idaho Falls adamantly insisting that there's nothing unsafe about nuclear but couldn't tell me the basis upon which they justified such an assertion because what they were doing was secret. The same thing they said about the secret iodine releases when I was a child. My thyroid is failing requiring me to take medication for the remainder of my life but there is "insufficient data" to establish a causal connection between my thyroid failing and those releases. How frickin' convenient.

The cult of arrogance and secrecy surrounding nuclear energy is part of the problem. I also have troubles with internal government reports coming to conclusions that finds the government did nothing wrong. I'm sure you garnered some of these attitudes when you did your time there with the navy so you'll forgive me if I take what your assertions with a grain of salt. I too am after the truth but I'll dismiss strident assertions from both sides if you don't mind. Certainly there is sufficient information that justifies the gross expenditure for a bunch of innocuous sand to raise some eyebrows.

Comment By 6degrees, 5-01-08

Just to clarify Jill's statement from me...the primary concern from DU appears to be heavy-metal toxicity. It acts in the soft tissues of our bodies (brain/heart/lungs/liver/kidneys etc.) much as lead or arsenic. It needs to be ingested for these effects to take place. Also, the radiological effects of DU are trivial to casual exposure, but again could be an issue if ingested. The primary decay path involves the emission of alpha particles which are unable to penetrate the skin, but can cause damage if emitted from within the body.

That being said, as long as the sand is stored in solid containers and does not seep out or escape into the environment at the waste site, it should result in no measurable effects to harm the general public. But, I wouldn't encourage playing around in it :-).

Comment By Jay Kanta, 5-01-08

Hey everyone, look! Larry Craig is still viable!

How much would anyone want to bet that ol' Widestance is behind this? What does he have to lose? How much does his Swiss Bank account stand to gain?

Comment By J. Doe, 5-01-08

Larry Craig? That seems a bit of a reach. I would bet you 10-billion pounds (since the dollar is like toilet paper right now) that Larry Craig has nothing in it. In fact I KNOW he doesn't. And I hate him as much as anybody. But I have an idea, how about we all jump to conclusions about how bad this is without offering any solutions? For one, when did it become Kuwait's problem? The US caused the mess, we need to clean it up. It seems like dumping it in Kuwait is dumping the problem on them as this stuff has to be monitored and will take up a sizable area. The US needs to clean it up and they need to use a US based company to do it. Oh wait, they are. People should be happy that the money is coming to an Idaho based company. Where do you think the paychecks of American Ecology employees get spent? I am lost about "how did this become Idaho's problem?" It didn't, it became Idaho's blessing. This sand is not going to affect a single one of us in a negative way. Get over it.

Comment By Jay Kanta, 5-01-08

There we go, ladies and gentlemen, the expert has spoken. DU is not harmful. 3x lead contamination isn't harmful, being placed next to a major northwest river couldn't possibly be harmful to anyone or anything!

So we should all just apologize and move along and accept our bonus checks like good little people. J. Doe has it all in hand, spin and everything.

Comment By the dirty democrat, 5-01-08

Gee. How about the bottom line. How much is Idaho being paid to accept this lethal sand? Follow the money and you will find the real criminal and crime against my Idaho.
Repugnants always go for the money. No matter who has it or what it is for.

Comment By Sisyphus, 5-01-08

He does too, doesn't he? Nothing about the fact that the sand is going to be dumped into empty Titan missile silos, not a contained storage facility with monitoring. And seems we spent many billiions of dollars to rid Kuwait of those pesky Iraqi tanks they had festering in the sand. And now the citizens of Idaho got to pay for that experience and we get to bring home the mess we left.

Irwin, isn't another issue with DU the fact that it becomes aerosol upon impact? Is that material in the sand and can it become airborn again making it easier to migrate and ingest?

Comment By 6degrees, 5-01-08

Sis,

In talking to Jill earlier, I mentioned that one possible concern would be if the storage facility wasn't airtight and somehow some of the sand could become airborne (from a stiff wind, for example). Again, ingesting the material (even airborne particles) could cause some deleterious physiological effects, but I'm not fully conversant with the biological issues involved.

Comment By vagabond, 5-01-08

toxic or not, why on earth would we ever ship any kind of sand from Kuwait to be disposed of here? Who's brain child is this anyway? And who is making money off this deal. no one in their right mind would think this makes any sense at all unless they were profiting directly from it. Follow the money. Since when did the Western states become an international dumping ground...?

Comment By Dr Peter Rickards DPM, 5-01-08

Hi all,
RE: "Since when did the Western states become an international dumping ground...? "
That happened in 1951. That's when the first plutonium from Rocky Flats, Colorado was dumped over our aquifer at INL. That's the same plutonium the final CERCLA plan leaves buried, in this flood zone. The 50's started the Atoms for Peace international proliferation of nuclear power plants for US nuke businesses. That foreign spent fuel waste is still being imported into Idaho, while no high level waste dump, like Yucca Mt Nevada is anywhere close to being forced open. We are also stuck with the melted Three Miles Island core.
The main question is are the silo dumps at Grandview going to contain this radioactive and toxic waste for the thousands of years it will be toxic? Since it is labeled as low level waste, they are only required to show it will be isolated for 100 years.
I have not studied Grandview geology, but at INL they have large historic 100 year floods, and even larger 500 year floods. The plutonium there is already leaking from the tineir floods they had in the 60's. When the plutonium ladden water is pumped to the surface for irrigation, the next brownout wind storm will be resuspending plutonium for inhalation, the worst pathway of exposure for kids and adults.
If Grandview is flood proof forever, they would probably suggest it instead of Yucca Mt...Peter

Comment By mike, 5-01-08

If you study how Idaho votes and what she votes for, then does it not make sense that Idaho should take a substantial share of the consequences of those votes and those beliefs? Idaho vehemently and consistently supports rightwing politicians, some of them horrifically extreme (remember tattooed Helen?) and those politicians support pernicious things like excessive military spending/adventurism that includes stuff like DU weaponry in faraway places. Idaho, as a whole, also refuses to acknowledge global warming and the need to move away from oil and gas (remember Helen the adultress?), which is why all that DU weaponry is in those faraway places. Contrast Idaho's history of support for these things with other places, like Portland or San Francisco or other such places that have been casting votes to try to negate the "Idaho effect," and ask yourselves whether it would it be right for Idaho to vote for elected officials who take us down these paths and then not take any role in the resulting mess? Idaho, as a whole, keeps telling other people, in the east and out in California, that, if they want wolves, then the wolves ought to be in their backyards, not in Idaho. Well, isn't it the same logic that, if Idaho wants rightwing stuff like military adventures to secure oil from corrupt polygamous (yes, them too) hereditary tyrants in Kuwait, then Idaho has to take the result?

To some extent, I'm joking; but, to some extent, I'm not. Idaho gets two senators and some other nationally influential politicians and the votes cast for those Idaho politicians sure cause a lot of other people, across the country, a lot of trouble on a regular basis. Should Idaho then get to evade the results of that trouble?

Comment By Dr Peter Rickards DPM, 5-01-08

Mike,
No doubt the symbolic karma has truthful irony. Iduho politicians have volunteered Idaho for front line nuclear duty, and the flag waving has distracted the voters well. But we are closer than anytime, in my 20 years of duty, to the hopeful time when well intended Idaho families realize we are the butt of our politicians joke.
To 6 degrees, and all other detail lovers...
RE: Is the radiation from depleted uranium negligible?
It is not as hot as plutonium-239, and way less than the plutonium-238 that will leak from the pu-238 production cluster that Idaho was selected for in 2004. Please see the Jackson Hole law team and citizens fighting this at http://www.yellowstonenuclearfree.com
But here are 2 NIH website official articles on that subject. Keep in mind, while they slowly watch SOME soldiers with DU, the VA generally refuses to test the urine of ALL vets for DU. It helps them blur the stats, because many soldiers are not downwind of DU, depending on where they serve, and doses vary.
But anyway, bless our soldiers, and here are some quotes and references...Peter

The radiological hazard of DU has usually been downplayed by claiming “Since DU has a low specific activity in comparison to natural uranium, it is not considered to be a significant radiological hazard,” [#1 below]. The Armed Forces Radiobiology Research
Institute, however, exploring that issue in the same report, stated, “The potential contribution of radiation to DU-induced biological effects is unknown and the involvement of radiation in DU-induced biological effects could have significant implications for current risk estimates for internalized DU exposure.”
In measuring radiation damage of DU, compared to simpler heavy metals, by measuring increased dicentric frequency and neoplastic transformation frequency, on human osteoblast cells, they indeed discovered “Taken together these data suggest that
radiation can play a role in DU-induced biological effects in vitro.”
Leukemia is accepted as a radiation inducible cancer. A 2005 study did detect DU’s ability to induce leukemia as well, [2]. The Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute found, “The growth properties of leukemic cells from bone marrow, spleen, and lymph node were assessed and indicate that the FDC-P1 cells had become transformed in vivo. The kidney, spleen, bone marrow, muscle, and urine showed significant elevations in tissue uranium levels prior to induction of leukemia. These results demonstrated that a DU altered in vivo environment may be involved in the pathogenesis of DU induced leukemia in an animal model.”

[1] Radiat Prot Dosimetry. 2002;99(1-4):275-8
Observation of radiation-specific damage in human cells exposed to depleted
uranium: dicentric frequency and neoplastic transformation as endpoints.

Miller AC, Xu J, Stewart M, Brooks K, Hodge S, Shi L, Page N, McClain D.

Applied Cellular Radiobiology Department, Armed Forces Radiobiology Research

Institute, Bethesda, MD 20889-5603, USA.

[2] Mol Cell Biochem. 2005 Nov;279(1-2):97-104
Leukemic transformation of hematopoietic cells in mice internally exposed to
depleted uranium.

Miller AC, Bonait-Pellie C, Merlot RF, Michel J, Stewart M, Lison PD.
Applied Cellular Radiobiology Department, Armed Forces

Comment By Bubblehead, 5-02-08

The Idaho Statesman article on this shipment indicates that the radioactivity level of the shipment is 10 pCi/g, which means that the entire shipment contains only 0.061 Curies of radioactivity; This is equivalent to the amount of radioactivity in 68,000 smoke detectors -- the same type of radiation too (alpha). There are probably more smoke detectors than that in Canyon County. Jill, did you know the level of radiation in the shipment when you wrote your article, and just choose not to include it?

Sisyphus, I'm sorry about your thyroid, but just because you have thyroid problems doesn't mean that they were caused by the iodine release. Did people have similar thyroid issues before nuclear power came about? What those of us who work (or worked, in my case) in nuclear power know is that the risk of low-level exposure is fairly small. ( http://www.umich.edu/~radinfo/introduction/risk.htm ) Normally, about 2000 people of a random 10000 person sample will die from cancer. If those 10000 people were each to receive an additional 1 Rem of whole body radiation (an amount way more than I got from nuclear power in my 21+ years in the submarine force), an additional 8 persons from that group would die of cancer. Obviously, it sucks to be one of those 8 persons. The question is how much of an economic hit do we want to take to reduce the potential death rates for a given risk.

Comment By Jay Kanta, 5-02-08

Hmmm, who is hiding the facts now, Bubblehead?

Radioactive dust from depleted DU has been linked to surges in regions where DU rounds were used. This is completely different than anything you mentioned. The dust is what is important.

But you ignored that. I wonder why?......

But you know, play with people's lives when there is money at stake, that just seems like such the conservative thing to do.

Comment By Sharon Fisher, 5-02-08

I see the Statesman 'discovered' this story today -- and didn't give New West any credit that I saw.

Comment By Bubblehead, 5-02-08

How has it been linked to surges? Other than by anecdote, that is. Anyway, the "dust" comes about when the rounds penetrate armor after being fired; these ones just fell to the ground in an ammo dump fire, and therefore doesn't apply in this case. I could have an anecdote that people reading posts by people with a screen name like "Jay Kanta" suffer from nosebleeds, but that also doesn't pertain to this particular story. Please provide an actual scientific study that shows a "surge" of something -- preferably one where they just don't ask people "hey, do you have more birth defects after the Americans invaded?". The fact is that U-238 is among the least radioactive substances on earth that is radioactive. As my link above already pointed out, even if a DU dust particle gets embedded in your lungs, the odds of any given U-238 atom disintegrating in the next 50 years are something to the negative 7th power. So, I had in fact already addressed it. And why this insistence that because I call people out for scientifically inaccurate statements that I must be a conservative? I call Bryan Fischer out too when he says dumb things. My point here is not that this shipment shouldn't be questioned. My point is that the people questioning it should be relying on the scientifically-laughable proposition that "DU is a huge danger because of its radioactivity". It's an alpha emitter with a decay half-life vanishingly smaller than its biological half-life! People are much more likely to get hit by the train carrying the stuff that ever come down with cancer because of the radioactivity associated with DU.

Comment By Jay Kanta, 5-02-08

Military spin. Thanks Bubbles.

[url="http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?c>Global Research</a>

<a href=" More]http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/95178_du12.shtml"]More here[/url]

Why do so many doctors disagree with you, Bubbles? Where is your medical degree? Where are your papers published?

Comment By Bubblehead, 5-02-08

Most doctors, in fact, recognize that DU is not an appreciable radiation hazard. Just because there are some loud ones who work for organizations with a vested interest in making mountains out of this particular molehill who get journalists to write about their theories doesn't make them correct. (Only 34 cancer deaths in all of Southern Iraq in 1988? Since 20% of all deaths are from cancer normally, do you believe there were only 175 total deaths in the whole region that year?)
I'm not a doctor; I'm just a man of science who's trained in the effects of radiation who wants to keep people from overreacting when it's not required. And since I have no idea who you are, I'll appreciate it if you not to use the term "Bubbles"... that's only for my friends like Sisyphus.

Comment By Tom von Alten, 5-02-08

The numbers suggest negligible risk, which suggests we would all be better off if the stuff was left where it was. It's a failure of intelligence, or trust, or both.

Is AE going to leave the stuff in those 306 containers? What a waste of steel. The externalities of this project are fairly astounding, as is the precedent that "any contamination on foreign lands must be shipped back to the United States for disposal" (as per the AE project manager, in the Apr. 15 TDN story) when you start thinking about the Iraq war.

Comment By IdahoRocks, 5-02-08

First, thanks PR for stepping in here, and to Irwin as well. I followed DU and its relation to birth defects for a long time and I am convinced that a cause and effect connection exists. Articles on this topic abound on the web, and as Bubblehead so clearly demonstrates, one can find all sorts of dubious writing appearing as science, as well as "science" that is dependent on a corporate paycheck, an all-too-familiar scenario these days at universities and think tanks, but that's another story....

To me, the baseline problem with DU is that govenments and scientists have had to try, over the years, to find something to do with it, because it is essentially a waste product. Besides being used in dental porcelain in false teeth, as well as being put in dyes and pigments (and I believe that at one time France tried to put it in drinking bottles, but found that it leached), and used as a stabilizer in aircraqft, the really only effective use of DU is to put it in weapons. So instead of looking towards a sustainable future in which, for example, we try to cut down on waste, we just think we can eventually contain or burn or use our waste, including using it on innocent civilians. It boggles my mind.

We are just so good at fouling our own nest....

Comment By Sisyphus, 5-02-08

Thanks Tom. You seem to have nailed it. From the debate between Jay and Bubbles, I'm reminded of this quote, "Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know."

I noticed that too Sharon. Jill, excellent job on breaking this.

Comment By Sisyphus, 5-02-08

Oh and Bubbles, interesting that the Statesman quoted the same source of "misleading information" that Jill did. Go lay into them for a while.

Comment By Sisyphus, 5-02-08

Holy moly Bubbles did you really just say this: "The question is how much of an economic hit do we want to take to reduce the potential death rates for a given risk." Thats the same cost benefit analysis that got Ford motor company nailed for the exploding Pinto. One death is too many. The fact remains that substances are used with little thought to their consequences. Is this going to be yet another grand experiment on the human population until they determine that the death rates are just too high, like with ddt and the current controversy surrounding plastic containing bisphenol A? Those iodine releases were completely unnecessary and done in spite of the fact that it was known that radioactive iodine specifically targets people's thyroids. Oh and hypothyroidism is quite rare in men.

Comment By Bubblehead, 5-02-08

Sisyphus said: "One death is too many". Do you really believe this? There are about 43,000 deaths each year in the U.S. due to traffic accidents. Were we to enforce -- with mandatory engine governors, emergency vehicles excluded -- a national 15 MPH speed limit, the vast majority of those 43,000 lives would be spared. Let's see you post over at 43SB a demand that Dem candidates support the National 15MPH speed limit. If you don't believe this would be good policy, then I accuse you of also weighing the economic benefits of being able to get to work in a reasonable amount of time vs. the lives of helpless drivers everywhere.

And I did make a snarky comment over at Kevin Richert's place on this topic. I don't normally wade into the cesspool of the general commenting over at the Statesman.

Comment By Jim Hyder, 5-02-08

Bubbles, you seem to be one of those that probably think that the 4063 deaths in Iraq are no big deal too. Hell, that's less than the traffic deaths each year or deaths from lymphoma, or throat cancer, or liver cancer, or oh hell you name it.
You Repugnants anger hell out of me.

Comment By Bubblehead, 5-02-08

Jim,
Actually, I'm a Democrat here in Idaho. I'm also a realist. I'm sorry if someone who looks at the science dispassionately angers you.

Comment By legal observer, 5-02-08

I've got two questions....
First, why entertain anyone who makes an argument that DU is not extremely toxic ( that's an obvious attempt at disinformation, and that person is most likely a hack, plant or whatever the preferred description is for someone who willfully spreads disinformation to minimize damning evidence.)

Second, and the big question....
What is the purpose behind shipping the sand from Kuwait to Idaho?
(if that was addressed in commentary I missed it due to the argument with the hack.)

Comment By legal observer, 5-02-08

'Environmentally sound treatment and disposal of radioactive and hazardous wastes is an essential service provided by only a few companies in the United States. US Ecology, a subsidiary of American Ecology Corporation (Nasdaq: ECOL) has provided radioactive waste services since 1952, and hazardous waste services since 1968'
http://www.americanecology.com/about_us.htm

Comment By legal observer, 5-02-08

"When asked if the sand is dangerous, Chad Hyslop, the project manager with American Ecology said, 'It's not something you want laying around in Kuwait'”

http://www.2news.tv/news/18476139.html

Comment By Jay Kanta, 5-02-08

Nothing like a back scratching.

Oh, and Chad Hyslop appears to have been Helen Chenowith's mouthpiece for years.

At least the slime sticks together well.

Comment By peter webster, 5-02-08

We obviously owe Kuwait big time; resources, I suspect, liquid and financial. It's not like the sand is going to be "treated." We're simply providing the Kuwaitis with a storage facility. I guess they can't find a place to put it—nor can their Saudi friends. Hell, they don't _want_ it anywhere around them. Wonder why?

Comment By legal observer, 5-02-08

Neither do the corporate sharks who have set up shop in Kuwait, I suppose. Another speculation might also be that we've been using Kuwait (and most of the rest of the region) as a testing ground, the least we could do is carry some of the burden of clean up (with Kuwaiti's in mind of course). I mean, what are the health problems of a few Iowans anyway? They have about as much value to the military industrial complex as say, a couple hundred thousand Iraqis. No biggie.
However, speculations are just that... I'd like to know the "official" reasoning behind shipping tons of contaminated sand, overseas, with a war going on, back to the states. I wouldn't mind also knowing the cost, how long it's been taking place (before the watchdog group found out). Was it the result of a deal? What deal....etc.

Comment By Morialekafa, 5-02-08

What the hell is anyone doing shipping 700 tons of sand halfway around the world whether its contaminated or not? What an absurd idea. Aren't there any deserts in Africa? Follow the money!

Comment By bear bait, 5-03-08

The unclaimed public domain. The lands not disposed of by the General Land Office. That is what makes Idaho a repository for unwanted goo from elsewhere. The ying to the yang of the Frank Church Wlderness. The great empty. It is public land, and government does own it. People in all those states without the grand benefit of public lands would just as soon it be in Idaho as say New Hampshire or North Carolina. If it were of benefit, the dump would be in West Virginia, and be the Byrd Memorial Spent Uranium Repository.

Comment By John Rusche, 5-03-08

How expensive would it be to build a big concrete lined hole in Kuwait? Don't they have a little extra cash since the price of oil is $120 per barrel? This is strange....

Comment By Marjorie Kidman, 6-18-08

It is my understanding that Cheney/Haliburton have a no-bid contract on this Kuwait contaminated sand and its final destination in the Idaho landfill.

I just can't understand him shipping it half-way across the world unless he was making a very good profit from it.

I believe (contrary to what they claim) there are very hazardous contaminants in this sand as I live fairly close to the Grand View Idaho landfill (downwind), and I have suddenly noticed something very obnoxious in the air. I have great allergies to chemicals such as chemical weapons and biological weapons (like I experienced in Salt Lake with the nerve gas incinerator and air spraying). I also believe that depleted uranium is very dangerous (check out how sick the contaminated and sick Iraqi babies are--it just breaks your heart!).

Surely many of us will become very sick if this
kind of irresponsible and breach of our constitutional rights is allowed to continue! We must stop it now before it becomes permanent, and they even bring in uranium and plutonium like Idaho's governor, Butch Otter, wants to do.

Comment By Marjorie Kidman, 6-18-08

As per the article titled "Contaminated Kuwait sand lands in Idaho" in the May 2008 issue of "The Idaho Observer" a.k.a. proliberty.com, this is where I found some information on the Kuwait/Idaho landfill, I'll quote some as follows: "According to retired Major ..., Camp Doha blew up during summer and we had conventional munitions, DU chemicals, biological weapons, tanks, artillery, fuel, all stored in preparation of gulf war II. A fire started and it all blew up leaving a real toxic mess. We [this team] wrote the clean up plan during winter 1992-1993 as no bid contract for Halliburton. We figure that with all of the medical problems, the Kuwaiti government told DOD to finally get it out of Kuwait....The Otter administration WITHOUT CONSENT OF THE PEOPLE OF IDAHO is going ahead with plans to expand uranium mining operations in Idaho and is courting a French company that wants to process rawuranium into plutonium at plants to be built in Idaho."

The article also states: "If the radiation levels from the sand were not greater than background levels in Idaho, which are probably less than anywhere in the Gulf at this time, then there would be no reason to ship the sand out of Kuwait. If the retired Major if right, then the sand is contaminated with toxic levels of other substances such as CHEMICAL WEAPONS AND BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS (in addition to conventional munitions, DU, chemicals, tanks, artillery, fuel, all stored in preparation for gulf war II, and who knows what levels of radiation)."

Additionally, I do believe it's a real possibility that this "real toxic mess" was originally destined for Snowville, Utah. A phenomenon recently happened there: Without notification or permission of the people in Snowville and the surrounding areas, government entities decided to build a 4-county dump/landfill there. When the people found out, they were able to get 5,000 signatures (or more) petitioning and protesting this proposed dump. When the government entities (I know not who) found this out, they sent out letters to each one of the petitioners stating they were NOT allowed to protest and would probably be sued as a result. The phenomena is there were apparently some complaints made to Box Elder County regarding the planned illegal Snowville dump, etal, and the Constitution's 1st Amendment which gives the citizens the right to redress and petition grievances (among other things). All of a sudden this whole issue was "pushed under the table," and is not to be found on the county "dockets."

It appears that (especially) Utah and Idaho are presently under attack by several government entities. I.E., Their water and personal property rights are being encroached upon, their Constitional rights are being tread upon, and there are nefarious health breaches being perpetrated upon them, also by various governmental agencies.

To name a few: Dangerous high-power lines from Idaho through Utah (a public meeting was held June 6, 2008 stating, "A group of citizens is working hard to negotiate routing either out of Box Elder County to a location more acceptable to our residents and affected landowners, and a route that causes the least private injury as required by the State of Utah statues"...sponsored by U & I concerned citizens.)

Another area of attack is North of Logan, Utah, where they are trying to put in a decontamination/storage (and something else) area of plutonium from France.) Logan has the best water in the world and one of the highest longevity rates, but it won't be if this plutonium thing is allowed to go forward. The same goes for Idaho.

And then there are other things which are coming to the forefront concerning unconstitutional partnerships for profit between state and government entities and probably citizens who are joined as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), also for profit and power.

There are other "unconstittionals" coming up, which are in the planning stages. We need to keep our eyes open, that's for sure.

Comment By legalobserver, 6-18-08

I posted these in the comment section of the other article on this subject http://www.newwest.net/city/article/larocco_to_otter_risch_no_contaminated_sand_to_idaho/C108/L108/
but no responses as of posting date. Has this story died?????? I'm sure by now the sand has reached its destination.... I'd like to follow this if anyone has any links to new articles or new info on the subject

By sumone, 5-24-08
Contaminated sand from Kuwait heads to US

KUWAIT/US: Nearly 80 rail cars loaded with contaminated sand from Kuwait are headed toward a dump in southwestern Idaho, in the United States. The American Ecology Corp. is shipping about 6,700 tons of sand containing traces of depleted uranium and lead to a hazardous waste disposal site 70 miles southeast of Boise. The sand arrived by ship at Longview, Washington, this week and company officials say loads are scheduled to begin arriving in Idaho by rail in two weeks.....

http://www.kuwaittimes.net/read_news.php?newsid=MzgwNTU1MTUz
By sumone, 5-24-08
Kuwait gets rid of radioactive goods
Published Date: February 17, 2007
http://www.kuwaittimes.net/read_news.php?newsid=MTU1MTE=

Comment By Marjorie Kidman, 6-19-08

Jill: I really liked your article titled, "LaRocco to Otter, Risch: No Contaminated Sand in Idaho." It's right on!! I only wish that Otter had listened.

I got up at 6:30 this morning, and as usual, my nose was itching and clogged up. This is new for me. I have never suffered allergies like this before. My scabs all over my nose are finally starting to heal (they occurred a couple of weeks ago due to an allergic reaction brought on by fierce winds from the northwest blowing in all kinds of gunk.) And if this as a result of the Kuwaiti/Grand View toxic sand dump (which I think it is), then I am pretty peo'd. The thought of going on for the rest of my life in this miserable condition due to the long-term effects of contaminants like depleted uranium dust being blown up into the air and into my home is more than I can contemplate.

As I read through all the "spin" articles on the internet promoting American Ecology Corporation and their specialized "hype" about how expert they are of handling the Kuwaiti contaminated sand (and so on), I get sort of gagged out. I have been all through this before in Salt Lake when they were "hyping" us about how the smoke from the nerve gas incinerator would "only" be equivalent to everyone (including children) smoking a cigarette a day.

It was evident then and it is evident now that they hire "spin doctors" to write these articles to calm the populous down and convince them that "everything will be all right" when it will not be all right!

One particularly distressing article is dated May 1, 2008 at URL: http://www.2news.tv/news/18476139.html. It is entitled "Contaminated Sand Headed for Owyhee County. It shows a large dump truck (with the dump part covered with what looks like a flimsy canvas cover, and dust (probably DU) is flying all over the place as the truck goes speeding along its way. Are they using dump trucks? If so, that would be the reason for all this toxic contamination in the air. What happened to the rail cars and "sealed containers" and plastic bags they are supposed to be using? Is anyone watching them? Do we even have any control over this thing that will in all probability affect us for the rest of our lives? If not, we need to "take control" (back) before it is too late.

I don't trust them. I've had too much experience to place any trust in them. They lie a lot. They don't care about our health! In fact, if they can find a way to contaminate you without your knowledge, they'll do it.

Now to change the subject a little: I just love these articles by Tom DeWeese. The one I am looking at now is titled, "National Heritage Areas: Assault on Private Property." (at URL http://www.newswithviews.com/DeWeese/tom102.htm). It's about how H.R.1483 legislation will create six Heritage Areas in a 175 mile corridor from Virginia to the battlefield in Gettysburg, Pa. The article warns that the bill would send over $135 million of federal pork to special interests to be used to influence local zoning laws and help LOCK AWAY OUT PRIVATE LANDS in the name of historic preservation.

It's my opinion that if this type of legislation (to take control of us and our private properties) is allowed to continue unabated, everybody will soon be forced off their rural properties and will be "herded" into the cities where they will live in small communal apartments and ride the "light rail" to work everyday. They will do all their shopping at the various light rail station exits, and then carry or pull their groceries home as they walk to their abodes. There won't even be many cars anymore (except for the government officials and those who are "on the take" and can afford the gas). And it gives me the "shudders." I saw all of this in the planning stages back in the late 90's when they were mapping out their plans. Lately, it appears to be all coming about on the "fast track!" Let's hope we all rebel and not let this happen! Cause you know what will happen...we will all be confined to the city and will have to get special permits in order to take a little trip out of town.

Comment By Marjorie Kidman, 6-19-08

While searching the internet, I have seen several pictures of them unloading the huge containers of contaminated sand from Kuwait and examining the containers the Longbeach, Washington port. So, yes, I do believe they have been unloaded (the first half of the contaminants anyways) for more than two weeks. And I do believe the rail train has reached Grand View. I would like to know just how they are unloading it from there. Are they using dump trucks and letting it blow all over? Have they broken the seals and inspected the contents? Who authorized the shipment to be loaded onto the rail cars, and who inspected the rail cars, and who is assuming responsibility for the entire operation?

These are questions I (and many others) would like to have answered.

Comment By Marjorie Kidman, 6-19-08

I couldn't sleep tonight. I keep thinking about the possible contamination issuing from that dump sight in Grand View and the "protocols" being used to contain and maintain it so that it doesn't spread all over the northwest. Tonight I have noticed a wonderful southeast wind that has permeated our home, and it smells wonderful. I don't detect any more "irritants" blowing in from the northwest that have been making me sick (like I've been throwng up, having bloody noses and plugged up sinuses, plus having heavy-duty scabs all over my nose and upper lip.) That's how allergic I am to chemicals such as nerve gas and biologicals; and now I believe what I am experiencing is dupleted uranium (DU). According to what I have read, DU is easily airborne and has an indefinite radiation life. So extreme care should be implemented that it doesn't get into our air.

I don't think that's being done at Grand View. I think the "contamination crew" has been using dump trucks to empty the contaminants from the rail cars and then transfer and empty them into the land fills. If I am right, this is a very poor method of disposal as it would tend to put a lot of radiated particulants into the air. Is this by accident or on purpose? Or is it just plain being stupid?

After reading many articles on just when the longshoremen finished unloading the 6,700 tons of "sand contaminated with depleted uranium and lead" onto U.S. terra firma at the Port of Longview was around April 29, 2008. According to one article, "Half of the containers will be loaded onto 76 rail cars and transported to an American Ecology disposal site in Idaho. The other half will remain at the port until the trains return to haul them to Idaho. These containers all will be at the disposal site in Idaho within 15 to 30 days, Hyslop said." So...according to this and other articles, all containers were scheduled to be at the disposal site by the end of May at the latest. They have been continually unloading and emptying the containers at the dump beginning approximately in the middle of April and continuing possibly on into June. This would coincide to the time when I had (as listed above) those allergic reactions due to "something that was in the air."

And I took another look on the web at those poor little Iraqi babies and children that have been contaminated with depleted uranium, and it horrifies me. I fear for our little children that live anywhere near this Idaho dump site. First it was thimerosol in the vaccines, and now it will be depleted uranium at the dump sites. Our babies were given vaccines with thimerosol beginning in the early 1980's and it has been causing an autism epidemic; and then our soldiers were contaminated with DU (plus their vaccines) and are now even committing suicide in droves because they can't take being terminally sick anymore.

Now we'll have the additional worry with the possibility of some of our little ones becoming horribly deformed from being contaminated by DU.

Woe unto us all!

Comment By Marjorie Kidman, 6-20-08

Have you heard of the pig cells at meat packing plants causing paralysis to workers? Yes, it's true. Several workers have come down with this malady. When they are using air pressure and blowing stuff out of the hole of the skull where the spinal chord comes through, matter gets airborne and then the workers breathe it, and it sometimes causes nerve damage and paralysis, especially in the legs and feet. And some have to take off work for several months and are treated with various medicines. Check it out on the internet...it's very interesting.

I think it is a very real possibility that they have found a way to aerosol us in our skies with this brain cell stuff. Aren't "blood cells" one of the contaminants in the chemtrails? (P.S. I know more than I am telling you.)


Now, I perceive a time in the near future when we will be pushed just about as far as we are willing to go by these subversives (or secret combinations) who are taking us over.

The Bible is very clear on what we are to do about it. It's in Ezekiel 3 v.17-21 and also Ezekiel 33 v.7-11 (plus elsewhere in the Old and New Testaments).

It says in essence: We are to be diligent watchmen and women, and we are to give the heathen warning from Jesus that (when he comes) they shall surely die if they don't repent and turn from their evil ways.

And if we give them warning and they don't turn from their wicked ways, then they shall die in their iniquity, but "thou has delivered thy soul."

But if we don't warn them, "his blood will I require at thine hand (and we will die right along with them)." We are not to bear the shame of the heathen and we are not to depend on our guns to save us (for as per Revelations, "He who lives by the sword will die by the sword.") And we are not to join them (as many of the House of Israel have already done.) And woe to the House of Israel (as a whole) if they do not repent! "For why will ye die, O house of Israel?"

So, we need to warn them before it's too late!

"Let us not be asleep as others are; let us be awake and watching them."

Comment By Marjorie Kidman, 6-21-08

I like to listen to Patriot Radio over the internet. GCNLive.com has a great "patriot" lineup such as Alex Jones, Bill Diegel, Derry Brownfield, Jack Blood, Jack McLamb, Joyce Riley & Dave VonKliest, Erskine, and too many more to mention. They are very informed and know what is going on. It is good to have that kind of company of like-minded people when you are feeling overwhelmed with the atrocities that are going on in our world today (such as the Grand View dump and DU). It comes "on demand" or "live" all day long and into the night," and has very good quality sound. It comes out of Austin, Texas. I love to listen to people "with guts" who tell it like it is!

Also, Brother R.J. Stair (in his 70's) has a radio web site that I like to listen to at http://www.overcomerministry.com. I can also get it during the night out of Roswell, New Mexico on the a.m. 1200 dial. Brother Stair considers himself to be "the" modern-day prophet. He is a character and never at a loss for words and knows world happenings and the Bible quite well. (He advises us to get out of the cities; don't go to doctors or hospitals, but heal yourself; grow a garden and become as independent and self-sufficient as possible, among other things.) He has great "down home" music. This morning there was a "whistler" on, and I really enjoyed that. He boasts that he can now be heard all over the world including Russia. He believes that we will incur "martial law" around the end of February 2009. He says he knows he will be killed, and believes Jesus will come within six months of his death. You gotta admire someone with that kind of hootspah!

Comment By Roger, 7-11-08

This is a pretty lively discussion. My original comment got eaten by your spam filter, so I hope it clears that hurdle. Bubblehead, please, write to me at DUStorydashowneratyahoogroupdotcom - Marjorie, you have nothing to worry about because what you seem to be feeding your mind with on this subject is pure propaganda and Dave Von Kleist has another side which you can see very clearly at this link wwwdotchairmanofnordwavedotblogspotdotcom . Finally, just because one posts as Doctor does not mean that they know beans about radiation or depleted uranium. Douglas Lind Rokke is a perfect example of that.

Roger

Comment By Marjorie Kidman, 7-14-08

Sorry, I had a comment, but it didn't take.

Comment By Marjorie Kidman, 7-16-08

As I stated, I live in a very rural area of Northwestern Utah, and this area seems to be hit pretty hard by the DU and other contaminants from the Grand View landfill.

As a result, for the last couple of weeks my family has chosen to stay indoors as much as we can. And so, we don't have any more symptoms of being contaminated, except for minor sinus problems. And I get up during the night and close the windows if I can detect "stuff in the air."

I still remember how people in Southern Utah (during the 1950's when the radio-active fallout from the above-ground atomic bombs in Nevada would come over their area in a pink cloud) told about how some of the people didn't pay any attention and stayed outdoors. As a result, within about ten years, they got really sick and died of various kinds of cancer. Others who went indoors (when they saw the pink clouds coming) managed to escape becoming terminally sick from it. So, I learned a lesson from that.

However, two of my neighbors who stayed outdoors during this time are now experiencing adverse health symptoms. One has a seriously infected nose with red sores all over the outside of her nose, and the other neighbor (I warned her but she chose not to pay much attention) is not feeling good at all. She has extreme sinus problems and pain in her joints, and problems and pain with her bowels and lower back bones that she says won't go away. I told her to put some steam on her stove (to keep the contaminated floaties down) and stay indoors and take plenty of liquids, plus Vitamin C, which she is doing.

Comment By Marjorie Kidman, 7-19-08

I just pulled an article off the internet titled, "Depleted Uranium Shells Used by the U.S. Military Worse Than Nuclear Weapons."

It's at http://www.naturalnews.com/z023274.html

It has some interesting things to say. For instance, "Inhaled or ingested DU particles are highly toxic, and DU has been classified as an illegal weapon of mass destruction by the United Nations."

and "More than ten times the amount of radiation released during atmospheric testing [of nuclear bombs] has been released from DU weaponry since 1991," said Leuren Moret, a U.S. nuclear scientist. "The genetic future of the Iraqi people, for the most part, is destroyed. The environment now is completely radioactive...people, particularly children, are condemned to die of malignancy and congenital disease essentially for eternity," said anti-nuclear activist Helen Caldicott.....

And now because of the dumping of the Kuwaiti DU+at Grand View, Idaho, my life outdoors is greatly curtailed (woe is me!). I'm not blaming the very high amount of pollution that is in the air totally on the landfill. I do think our government and related entitiies have found they can step up incineration production and get away with it by using the California forest fire smoke as a "smoke screen."

Comment By Roger Helbig, 7-27-08

Marjorie,

There is a lot of misinformation on the internet. Leuren K Moret is one of those who pretends to be an expert but is not. You said that Moret was a "nuclear scientist". In reality, Moret had a connection with two nuclear laboratories, Lawrence Berkeley and Lawrence Livermore. At Berkeley, she was a graduate student in Geology under a distinguished UC Berkeley professor and worked with another doctoral student Johathan Stebbins who now is a distinguished professor in his own right at Stanford. They did not study uranium or radiation; they just used the laboratory facilites above the University of California campus. At Livermore, Moret was a Senior Scientific Technologist in the Center for Applied Scientific Computing. I tried to put links in my original post so that you could learn direct from the source documents, but the spam filter does not like too many links. Go to to the Yahoo Group DUStory and follow the directions to use the guest user name and password to go to the Files Section - there you will find documents that I got about Moret, Douglas Lind Rokke, a fellow con artist in the anti-DU crusade, Asaf Durakovic and other documents that will teach you rather than propagandize you. Message 76 at DUStory also has a number of publicly accessible links that will show you what real international scientific research has found out about DU versus what the anti-DU crusade that was started by Saddam Hussein's government when it wanted out from under the UN Sanctions that ended the Gulf War and found it easy to con the sincere peace activists who visited Iraq in the 1990's and before 2003. I do urge you to learn, not just take everything that you find on the internet to be the gospel truth because it often is not.

Comment By Roger Helbig, 7-27-08

I also see where the article has some errors - Camp Doha was not a "warehouse complex"; it was a forward staging area for the armored forces that were standing by if Saddam Hussein decided to reinvade Kuwait. It had tanks and armored vehicles that were fully combat loaded, ready to go to war at a moment's notice. The fire and explosions at Camp Doha occured on July 11, 1991; the Gulf War had ended months before. First Lieutenant Douglas Lind Rokke (who as retired Army Reserve Major Doug Rokke has made comments about the sand being moved to Idaho as if he were intimately familiar with the fire and the clean up attempts) was released from active duty in the Army on July 1, 1991 and thus had nothing to do with the fire or clean up efforts, which cost the lives of 3 soldiers. Dick Cheney was Secretary of Defense in 1991 and had never worked for Haliburton yet, so no, there was no Haliburton connection. The Dept of Defense at Tab I of its very extensive Depleted Uranium pages at the Gulf Links site provides considerable detail about the fires and explosions, which were not of "spent ammunition", but of live ammunition loaded on tanks and other armored vehicles that were hit by exploding bomblets from the ammunition carrier that was the first item to accidentally catch fire. No one was killed or seriously wounded in the intitial fire and explosions, which spread explosive residue and live bomblets over a very wide area; they also spread depleted uranium over a much smaller area, but the amount of DU was quite high because over 600 DU 120mm tank rounds cooked off in the fire.

TAB I -- The Camp Doha Explosion and Fires (July 1991) -
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/du_ii/du_ii_tabi.htm#TABI_TheCampDohaExplosionandFires(July1991)

Comment By Roger Helbig, 7-27-08

PS -- Doctor Rickards -- in your study of Podiatric Medicine, did you ever study uranium or radiation, geology or geochemistry, physics or environmental science? Just wondering since you blandish the "doctor" about quite prominently but never tell the reader that your DPM really has no bearing on the subject and thus that it is just plain "Peter Rickards" concerned citizen and not someone with any particular unique academic knowledge of the subject. In a way, you are like Doctor Doug Rokke, except he sometimes leads the audience to believe that he treats patients and that the doctorate in Vocational Education is really a medical degree. I hope to see that you acknowledge that the DPM gives you no special knowledge, no more than either Leuren Moret or me since both of us have Baccalaureate degrees in Geological Sciences. I got interested in the anti-DU crusade and their many lies and liars when I encountered them claiming that DU was a form of nuclear war and that DU dust was circling the world like fallout and I knew about fallout and that it had nothing in common with DU. When veterans listened to me, Rokke had his mouthpiece Bob Nichols, a pretend journalist, (now referred to by Rokke as an "investigative reporter", but somehow, I always thought that you had to be a real reporter working for a real news desk under a real news editor before you could call yourself an investigative reporter) slander me around the world. That led me to learn everything that I could about Rokke and I FOIAed his military records, got a copy of his exciting doctoral thesis "Perceived physics concepts needed to teach secondary technology education as general education" and then went after his University of Illinois personnel records that showed 17 years as a Physical Sciences Assistant, not as a "staff Physicist" as claimed and his Jacksonville State University records that showed that he was a Visiting Assistant Professor teaching undergraduate classes for two academic years. This differs widely from the biography that Rokke has posted with his article about the "DU Sand in Idaho" and shows that he has no real concept of the truth even as it applies to who he is, let alone what he knows.

Roger
DUStorydashowneratyahoogroupsdotcom

Comment By Roger Helbig, 7-27-08

Jay Kanta -- you have been spewing out a lot of false and misleading information - suggest that you look at the UN Environmental Programme and International Atomic Energy Agency reports of indepth field and laboratory examination of areas where DU was used in wartime. You are concerned with aerosol - that exists for a brief moment in very close proximity to the armored target. It is generated by the intense heat and pyrophoric capability of uranium when it impacts armor plate at high velocity. The DU from Camp Doha was never fired at high velocity, it just cooked off, some of it inside tanks loaded for battle, the rest inside MILVAN Conex storage containers. Substantial amounts of DU were picked up by the explosive ordnance disposal teams that did the initial site clean up and even more by the contractor Environmental Chemical Corporation -- From previously cited Tab I, they --

"The ECC team surveyed the North Compound with its own radiation detection and measurement equipment. On entering the 2nd Squadron motor pool, they found large quantities of DU scattered around the MILVAN ammo storage containers that had detonated in the fire. Many of these DU penetrators were intact, but others had fragmented or burned down to varying degrees, with some almost completely reduced to ashes. Individual rounds exploding among the stacked ammunition ejected some rounds and penetrators into the open. Other rounds, burned or unexploded, remained within the shells of the conexes. Using an AN/PDR-56 radiation detector fitted with a small alpha probe, the EOD sergeant measured the DU cores, and after they were removed, monitored the surface beneath them. Most DU penetrators inside and outside of the conexes gave off very low radiation readings. The ECC team then double-wrapped the DU penetrators in plastic, bubble-wrapped them, and put them in 55-gallon drums. Personnel packing the drums with DU penetrators wore surgeon's caps, safety glasses, half-face protective masks, coveralls, butyl rubber aprons, rubber surgeon's gloves with cotton inserts, and rubber "booties" over their normal work boots. The team filled eight drums with about 250 DU penetrators"

Prior to this, the Army had filled five 55-gallon drums with DU penetrators - so at least 400 of the DU penetrators appear to have been recovered back in 1991.

Suggest any of you with serious interest in what happened in July 1991 read both Tab I and all of the footnotes - many of the footnotes are from investigators who interviewed people who had been there in order to learn more a few years later.

Comment By Marjorie Kidman, 7-27-08

Roger:

There may be a lot of disinformation on the internet, but there is also a lot of truth. I am not really interested in what happened in 1991 (maybe somebody else out there is). Sorry. I just know that contaminated soil was brought more than half way around the world and haphazardly and carelessly (with a dump truck) deposited 140 miles upwind (northwest) from where I live when there was a fierce wind (around June 5, 2008) and that it came into our home and that during that time I experienced a toxic effect that I have never experienced before (that is, during the summer and all at one time). This included throwing up in the middle of the night, a couple of bloody noses, and huge scabs (the worst I have ever had) on top of and all around my nose which took quite a while to heal.

Then, we wised up and stayed indoors for a couple of weeks, but a couple of neighbors didn't and one also got huge scabs on her nose, and another became really sick and had to go to bed, plus she had other symptoms of being contaminated. We finally got a little rain and some thunder and lightning, around the 22nd of July, and it cleared the air a lot and made breathing a lot easier (thank God!).

And I do believe Doug Rokke is "on the mark." There is just too much proof that DU is dangerous, by studying our contaminated soldiers and those Iraqi babies and children who are extremely affected from their encounter with DU. It's a tragedy!

Comment By Dr Peter Rickards DPM, 7-27-08

Hi Roger Helbig,
You get on a rant about my credentials as a podiatrist above. In my May 1 post you will see my view and 2 medical articles I refer to. In no way do I state I am an expert in anything. I quote the experts, you decide. But I do have an open challenge to debate INL scientists anytime, anywhere. They have even backed out of radio shows when they found out I would be present correctly quoting documents that contradict their claims of safety.
But to answer your questions a podiatrist is a surgeon of the foot. I do use x-rays and radioactive bone scans when needed, but never on pregnant women, as my medical education taught me. I am trained to understand the biological effects of ionizing radiation on pregnant women. Yes, we take the same sciences of physics and chemistry as Medical Doctors (MD) and Osteopathic Physicians (DO). We use the same medical texts, and usually the same medical professors taught at both schools.
But that don't make me right. If a carpenter said the same things, they would be right too.
Dr Rokke was the doctor that the Penatagon thought had the right credentials to head the investigation of DU. When he blew the whistle, they started slandering him just like you do.
The VA fired 2 MD's that demanded DU urine testing, but the medical studies I quoted were peer reviewed from the official Nat'l Institute of Health's pubmed website. Are you in the "Agent Orange is good for you" club?

Comment By Marjorie Kidman, 7-28-08

We still can't go outdoors for any length of time. I had my son go for a walk (the first time since June 5) and he was gone a couple of hours and then came back coughing (he had no cough before he went out.)

Also, some nights are okay to leave the west window open but last night wasn't good. I woke up sick during the night (and immediately closed the window) and haven't felt good all day and am experiencing pains in my legs. Who knows what the source is. It could be any combination of things.

Comment By Roger Helbig, 7-28-08

I see where Dr Rickards is invoking Douglas Lind Rokke. Rokke is a fraud. He never headed the Army's DU Program; Army Reserve Captains on one-year voluntary active duty programs do not head up Army-wide major programs. He was the liaison officer with the contractor who was developing DU training materials. He did not head up the Army's DU clean up program after the Gulf War - he was the lowest ranking of three officers, two Captain Health Physicists and Rokke, First Lieutenant, Army Reserve, with First Aid Training from his Illinois Army National Guard service and a BS in Physics from 16 years earlier. Rokke has misrepresented that he was a "staff physicist" at the University of Illinois; in reality, his actual job, and I have the records to prove it, was Physical Sciences Assistant and the minimum requirements for that job were ability in mathematics and a high school diploma, which is further indicative that the job was not to perform scientific experiments or to teach students, but to maintain laboratory equipment, set up laboratory equipment for experiments, make routine measurements and make computations and graphs. Prior to the Gulf War, Lieutenant Rokke (he did not become Major Rokke until after 1998 because his 1998 records review continued to show Rokke as a Captain in the Army Reserve) had just become a Physical Science Technical Assistant in the Physics Department after having worked over 10 years in the same capacity in the Food Sciences Department. Neither of these jobs gave Lieutenant Rokke any academic knowledge of depleted uranium, uranium or radiation measurement. He had graduated from and later taught the Army Reserve enlisted NBC (Nuclear Biological and Chemical) Course and this is where he probably learned and possibly taught the fundamentals of radiation protection and radiation measurement. Rokke, thus had no experience with depleted uranium before the Gulf War. Colonel CE Day, III sent a letter to Captains Brannan and Armstrong, the two officers senior to Rokke and told them to expect a relatively inexperienced Reserve Lieutenant Rokke. Since allying himself with the anti-Iraq Sanctions movements that paid his way to Cambridge, England in 1999 and other places, Doug Rokke has not only lied about how much of an expert that he is, but what his basic education and military experience has been and more fundamentally about the nature of depleted uranium, its hazard to people and the environment, military casualties, his being in the Pentagon when he never was assigned there (in order to have credentials for the 9/11 Truthers since they have more conventions and seem to pay better) and many other things. He is such a prolific speaker and writer, it is hard for one poor counter biographer like me to keep up, but I do my best thanks to Google Alerts. He can thank his slandering my good name through his mouthpiece Bob Nichols for my being so hard on his trail ever since. I don't like liars and I especially do not like people who lie about me and that is why I used my FOIA skills (gained when I was a Dept of Defense whistleblower myself) to get his military records, his University of Illinois records and the nice road map he provided me of people I should contact because he falsely claimed that I worked for them. At the time he slandered me, I had retired from the Air Force Reserve 10 years earlier and had pretty much no contact with the military since they generally forget about retired reservists until they turn age 60 and begin drawing retired pay; that's when you become a "retiree" and not just a "gray area retiree". Rokke, by the way, is still a "gray area retiree" since I am two years his senior. I have been his senior in rank since I entered the Air Force in 1969 when Rokke was an Airman who had enlisted in 1967. Thanks, Peter, for giving me this opportunity to further enlighten readers about my favorite person, Douglas Lind Rokke. I guess the next one you want me to describe is Asaf Durakovic, Radiologist, and not by any stretch of the imagination an expert in depleted uranium, but he has written in the Croatian Medical Journal and elsewhere that he is. I have a very fragmentary part of his records, but I do have quotes of his that are flat out false information such as his one on CNN that said that one atom of depleted uranium could be fatal. He neglected to note that every single human being on the face of this earth has over 500,000 atoms of uranium inside them at all times. None of those was fatal and all of them were either ingested, breathed in or drank.

Comment By Roger Helbig, 7-28-08

Marjorie,

You mention Doug Rokke, as did Dr Rickards - Rokke is a professional liar; he found that he could not get enough work as a substitute teacher and did not seem to make it as a professor, so he goes around the country on the anti-DU and 9/11 Truth rubber chicken circuits with his hand out. My reply to Dr Rickards got hung up in New West's spam filter; I guess it can not handle a half hour to write carefully researched reply.

If you are 140 miles from the disposal site; you most certainly are not being affected by anything that was dumped there. The furthest that DU went from the site were the IAEA deliberately blew it up into the air with explosive charges as an experiment was a few meters. It is extremely dense and does not travel far.

Most of the stuff on the net regarding DU endlessly repeats the same false information. Go see a Certified Health Physicist. I am sure that there are some in Idaho or just go to your local college or community college and learn something about the physics and chemistry and set your mind at rest. There is no sense worrying about something that will never harm you, but first you have to learn why it really doesn't present a harm to you.

Roger

Comment By Marjorie Kidman, 7-29-08

Roger,
Why do you keep trying to find holes in my story? Rokke stepped up to the plate and that's what is important. You need to step up to the plate, too, and quit trying to find holes in his story. And, please state the truth!

On and around that day (June 5), the weather was fierce. I've heard that sand can blow 300 miles in a fierce wind, and the jet stream was moving all around. I do believe radiation (DU) can permeate the sand.

Since I am no expert, I cannot prove it was the depleted uranium. But my intuition tells me I am correct. (You've heard about women's intuition haven't you?) I have experienced the incineration of chemical weapons up close and knew what that was and where it was coming from (25 miles as the wind blows from the west over the Oquirrh mountains in Salt Lake ). Before that incinerator was even finished, I kept looking into that corner and knew there was something "evil" out there. I even tried to go up Butterfield Canyon to see what it was, but the state had it all blockaded off.

Then, on the first day of incineration of GB/Sarin Gas (on August 22, 1996), I drove out there (to Rush Valley) and stood downwind. The incinerator smoke gave me great pain in my head and stomach, and I had to get out of there before I passed out. I had sores inside my nose for weeks. And for two years I went through hell until I could move out of Salt Lake. The only way I made it was by keeping steam on the stove. (It was very interesting to see the particulants collect and float on top.)

This is what I had to do with the contamination of June 5 and and for some days thereafter. It was like the "chemical weapon contamination" all over again.

And I do belive the "army" was involved in both the incineration of nerve gas and the Grand View uranium dump fiasco.

The part which causes me to still shake my head is that they could have neutralized the GB/sarin and not put it into our air, but Congress would not have paid for that, or it would have required additional legislation. I'm sure there is a much better way to dispose of the DU, but trust them not to use it!

Comment By Roger Helbig, 7-29-08

Marjorie,

Rokke did not step up to the plate; he started peddling lies after he got fired by the Army from the Army Chemical Corps School; if he had truly stepped up to the plate as you call it, he would have actually had some knowledge to share that the Army wanted to keep hidden. Have you ever looked at the vast amount of knowledge that the Army has released at the Gulf Links site. Rokke was fired during his initial civilian probation because he really was unsuitable for the job. The Army will not officially tell you that; all of Rokke's blemishes are protected by the Privacy Act, but I have corresponded with people who were there when it happened.

Your story is full of holes because you have made no effort to verify it with anyone who does not have a political axe to grind. I have no political axe to grind; I never supported George Bush and I have been a Democrat since I first voted in 1968. I was really heartbroken that my first vote for President could not go for Bobby Kennedy, but I voted for McCarthy and McGovern, etc. through Gore and Kerry. I fought hard against the Swift Boaters during the Kerry campaign and my research on what actually happened when Lieutenant Kerry was discharged from the Naval Reserve has been widely praised and posted.

Sorry woman's intuition does not pass muster when what you are claiming is impossible. Read the literature; the scientific literature that is; look at what the IAEA did in Kuwait; look at what UNEP found in Boznia-Herzegovina, even in Southern Iraq and look at the Uranium measurement made during the UNEP clean up of a former Soviet SCUD missile site in Afghanistan. Science is not an "I believe" issue; it is "show me", "verify it", "let me try to duplicate the finding" type issue. Nothing in the anti-DU literature that abounds on the internet passes even these simple tests.

Comment By Marjorie Kidman, 7-29-08

Roger,
You are really hard to talk to. You seem to know nothing about intuition and you pooh, pooh all that I have to say. No one out here has an axe to grind. We're all just suffering. The air is being contaminated by all kinds of things besides the DU. The last five years were wonderful because the air was so pure. Now all of a sudden, we can't even leave our windows open very much. The birds have gone and I even found a large beautiful dead one out behind our house a few of weeks ago (I think the DU got to it.)

Having had a little more experience in life than you have, what you have said about Rokke makes me like him even more...that he was and is a nonconformist. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "He who wouldst be a man must be a nonconformist. And the Bible backs this up (see Romans 13v.8). A nonconformist gets in a lot of trouble throughout his life because he doesn't go along with the "status quo." He thinks for himself. Being a "Democrat" all these years says to me that you have been "conformed" for quite a while. I could tell from Clinton's voice (from the beginning)...what he would do. And I certainly was "on the mark" with our current president. I never vote by party, I always vote according to my intuition and vote for the integrity of the man or woman (which makes for slim pickins). This year it looks like I'll be voting for Chuck Baldwin...not that I think he'll win, I just can't stand to vote for anyone who will take this country down any further, such as will be the case with our current Democratic presidential candidate (or Republican for that matter).

You appear to me to be quite erudite. That is, you are very "book learned," and you take what you read as being "gospel." Don't you know people lie all over the place in order to "conform."

Comment By Dr Peter Rickards DPM, 7-29-08

Hi Marjorie and Roger,
Interesting dialogue!
Roger, can you please provide the reference for your statement that DU travels "only a few meters" when it was exploded in a test? That seems so wrong compared to my collection of DOE studies of nanometer size particles that easily resuspend in the wind.
I have to agree with Marjorie, that DU dust and many small particles of pollution can travel very far in the wind. It is documented polution from Japan crosses the ocean to pollute us. However, I am not sure if the DU at Grandview has been dumped loosely, or if it was buried in barrels, still sealed tight. Perhaps they dumped it raw and saved the barrels for future use. Then it might be effecting Marjorie. Perhaps they buried it sealed, and it has nothing to do with Marjorie's serious symptoms.
Marjorie, your MD needs consulted for sure, but from my "perspective", your previous exposure in Utah probably has harmed your immune system. Just as a citizen, I was on the citizen advisory comittee for the CDC Historical Dose study of all the accidental and intentional releases of radioactivity at INL, Marjorie's new neighbors. So the her recent wind storms may have resuspended many tiny radioactive particles to inhale. You all have seen a high wind "brown out" the view as it lifts dust from the earth. The recent 3,000 acre wildfire at INL no doubt resuspended millions of radioactive particles from the plants burning, that had absorbed them in the soil. This may relate highly to Marjorie's symptoms.
I post below the proclamation on hypersensitive to toxins growing list of people from Gov Otter. He doesn't mean it, but it is true. Butch let's huge industrial dairies choke their neighbors on ammonia and sulphers, and invites leaky plutonium-238 production to Idaho. But the proclamation sure is correct, no matter how hypocritical.
And Roger, are you aware that Gulf War vets, officially by medical journals, have an elevated brain tumor rate, and a high ALS (Lou Gerhig's Disease) rate? While no sole source like DU can be pinpointed, umm, sumptin's going WRONG in at least 2 of the many complained of diseases. These med journals are not written by Dr Rokke either! I find many articles that refer to him as heading the Pentagon DU task force, but when I tried the Pentagon website they have no search engine to check. I LOVE to double check people, so I will keep an open mind. But so far I love Dr Rokke's efforts, but I get my info from our official NIH science website, pubmed...Peter

Gov. Otter proclaimed May 2007 and 2008 to be Toxic Injury Awareness and Education Months. They included the following statements:

“Whereas, people of all ages and throughout the world have developed illnesses from toxic injury, also referred to as chemically induced Illness; and in the past some of those who developed intolerance to low-level exposure were diagnosed with chemical sensitivity and/or multiple chemical sensitivity; toxic injury often is characterized by heightened sensitivity to very small amounts of air pollution, petrochemicals and other toxins found in our everyday products and environment; it can start at any age and can be caused by short-term or chronic exposure to one or more chemicals, frequently pesticides and solvents; toxic injury can be life threatening and may include multiple, often disabling illnesses, affecting the respiratory, central nervous (brain), immune, musculoskeletal, porphyrin, energy metabolism and endocrine systems; toxic injury is a chronic debilitating condition for which there is no known cure, causing serious financial, employment, learning, housing, health, social and other consequences; and it is crucial for those with toxic injury to have the support and understanding of their government, families, friends and society in general as they struggle with the restrictions and isolation now placed on them; there are diagnostic codes readily available for toxic effects of many chemicals found in our everyday environment and surroundings; those suffering with toxic injury deserve the same rights, acknowledgment, respect, support and help allotted to other illnesses and disabilities.”
This website pushes the proclamation and which states endorsed it.
http://www.mcs-america.org/index_files/proclamations.htm

Comment By Roger Helbig, 7-30-08

Peter, now, that I know that you are running for office, I am not about to give you anymore free publicity. All future replies will go to the e-mail address on your campaign website.

The rest of you, if there is anyone actually reading this, here is the link to the IAEA Report on its extensive field and laboratory research in Kuwait after the Gulf War -

Radiological Conditions in Areas of Kuwait With Residues of Depleted Uranium - Appendix III - Experiments to Examine Resuspension
http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/Pub1164_web.pdf

I started posting a number of links, but this website's spam catcher doesn't let them through. There is a message at the Yahoo Group DUStory which has a couple of dozen or more links to various reports about radiation, depleted uranium, an actual case where people died after being exposed to radiation but yet young men who had been contaminated fathered normal children after they had been completely decontaminated (Goiana, Brazil), areas of the world where there is natural high background radiation, what the UN Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission considers to be WMD and many other factual links -- one that might surprise you is the amount of uranium, including all of the daughter decay products that is emitted from coal burning power plants -- Marjorie, you really don't want to live downwind of one of these. The Message number is 76.

Comment By Dr Peter Rickards DPM, 7-30-08

Hi Roger,
Your reference actually contradicts your claim that DU particles "can only travel a few meters"! And they didn't even burn the DU, they just exploded it into mainly chunks. Page 9 of 81 says "although smaller particles may be carried a distance of several hundred metres by the wind [10]." It aso admits that the wind can resuspend those particles again, umm, just like I said.
And even though your "reference" agrees with me, it is only telling half the truth by it's myopic testing. I have reems of DOE documents on the testing filters being unable to detect the nanometer sized particles that are easiest to inhale, and most biologically destructive.
Here is the latest from DOE's Dr Soderholm on nanoclusters of plutonium breaking the expectations of our limited science knowledge of their biological destinies. And yes, the way the DOE usually unfairly analizes dose makes plutonium seem as safe to inhale as eating a banana, which is what they claimed when trying to shove the plutonium incinerator into Idaho.
Here is Dr Soderholm on nanocluster, also know as "little mother f**kers."
"For almost half a century, scientists have struggled with plutonium contamination spreading further in groundwater than expected, increasing the risk of sickness in humans and animals." & "The nanoclusters are made up of exactly 38 plutonium atoms and have almost no charge." & "Our current understanding has been based on the free-plutonium ion, creating discrepancies between what is expected and what is reality. Soderholm said that with knowledge of the structure, scientists can now create better models to account for not only free-roaming plutonium ions, but also the nanoclusters. The clusters also are a problem for plutonium remediation."

Comment By Marjorie Kidman, 7-30-08

Roger: I checked out your link, but when I saw that it was 81 pages, that was enough of that. Please answer the question that Peter asked you to, which was, "Roger, please provide the reference for your statement that DU travels "only a few meters" when it was exploded in a test."

And please don't duck the question, and don't be too proud to admit you are wrong. I can see all the hard work that you do, and all the "stuff" that you read, but I do think you need to consider the other side to this Kuwaiti dupleted uranium story. And that is the "human side." What our "gut feelings" tell us. That's where the truth really lies. You know, develop and use the "right brain side" a little more.

Over the years, government has grown a lot, and has a lot of time on its hands ("idle hands are the devil's workshop"), and so it tends to "create the problem and then create the solution which will undoubtedly create another problem which will require another solution, and so on... " (and you can get lost in all the details). And, much to our chigrin, it often has deleterious effects on our environment and our health, and even our longevity. So we have to keep a close eye on all departments of our government or they will give our children autism, send our soldiers to fight unjust wars where DU abounds, create new diseases which will kill millions, and a lot more.

I think Peter's remarks are great, and I'm going back and read some more of what he and others had to say. And Peter, I'll respond to some of your comments later.

Comment By Marjorie Kidman, 7-30-08

Peter: I am not positive on how the DU got dumped at Grand View, but I do believe at least one dump truck was used. I refer you to 2news.tv/news/ article titled "Contaminated sand headed for Owyhee County." It shows a large dump truck with a canvass-type cover leaking a lot of dust as it goes speeding along what looks like a dirt road. My guess is that this is how they transferred the contamination from the rail cars to the dump site.

As per Rokke's article titled, "Depleted Uranium Situation Worsens" @www.republicbroadcasting.org, when "Doug Rokke and Bob Nichols (an investigative journalist) contacted American Ecology (AE), they found that AE had absolutely no knowledge of U.S. Army Regulation 700-48, U.S. Army PAM 700-48, U.S. Army Technical Bulletin 9-1300-278, and all of the medical orders dealing with depleted uranium contamination, environmental remediation procedures, safety, and medical care. They had never heard of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency guidelines for dealing with mixed - hazardous waste such as radioactive materials and conventional explosives byproducts, (Reference "Approaches for the Remediation of Federal Facility Sites Contaminated with Explosives or radioactive Wastes", EPA/625/R-93/013m /September 1993). Rokke further states that, "The shipment across the ocean, unloading at Longview, Washington State Port, transport by rail, and burial in Idaho endangers not only the residents of these areas but poses a significant agricultural threat through introduction of pests, microbes, etc., foreign to our nation."

Comment By Marjorie Kidman, 7-30-08

Another great article by Doug Rokke, Ph.D, dated July 12, 2004 in essence states: "While U.S. and British military personnel continue using uranium munitions - America's and England's own "dirty bombs" U.S. Army, U.S. Department of Energy, and U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) officials continue their unrelenting personal attacks against me...They want to disrupt our efforts our efforts to ensure compiance with mandated medical care and environmental remediation requirements because they want to be always able to use effective depleted uranium munitions during combat. The same officials still continue to deny that there are any adverse effects to avoid liability for the willful and illegal dispersal of a radioactive toxic material - depleted uranium. They arrogantly refuse to comply with their own regulations and directives. They willfully ignore existing U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) directives that require prompt and effective medical care be provided to all exposed individuals....They also refuse to clean up dispersed radioactive Contamination as required by Army Regulation - AR 700-48...Radioactive material and waste will not be locally disposed of through burial, submersion, incineration, destruction in place, or abandonment"...The past and current use of uranium weapons, the release of radioactive components in destroyed U.S. and foreign military equipment, and releases of industrial medical, research facility radioactive materials have resulted in unacceptable exposes. Therefore, decontamination must be completed as required by U.S. Army Regulation 700-48 and should include releases of all radioactive materials resulting from military operations. The extent of adverse health and environment effects of uranium weapons contamination is not limited to combat zones but includes facilities and sites where uranium weapons were manufactured or tested..."

So, clearly there was great negligence perpetrated upon us by many of our government officials in the transfer of this DU contamination from Kuwait to the Grand View dump in Idaho...

Surely there should be an investigation of this negligence and what it has done and will continue to do to our health and environment. And the wind may very well continue to blow this DU radiation into our communities (who are downwind) from now on - jeopardizing "We the People's" health and welfare.

Comment By Marjorie Kidman, 7-30-08

Peter.
You state that "Gov. Otter proclaimed May 2007 and 2008 to be Toxic Injury Awareness and Education Months...that statements included were, "Whereas people of all ages and throughout the world have developed ilnesses from toxic injury, also referred to as chemically induced illness; and in the past some of those who developed intolerance to low-level exposure were diagnosed with chemical sensitivity and/or multiple chemical sensitivity; toxic injury often is characterized by heightened sensitivity to very small amounts of air pollution, petrochemicals and other toxins found in our everyday products and environment...it can start at any age and can be caused by short-term or chronic pesticides and solvents; toxic injury can be life threatening, and may include multiple, often disabling illnesses affecting the respiratory, central nervous (brain), immune, musculoskeletal, porphyrin, energy metabolism and endocrine systems; TOXIC INJURY IS A CHRONIC DEBILITATING CONDITION FOR WHICH THERE IS NO KNOWN CURE, CAUSING SERIOUS FINANCIAL, EMPLOYMENT, LEARNING, HOUSING, HEALTH, SOCIAL AND OTHER CONSEQUENCES; AND IT IS CRUCIAL FOR THOSE WITH TOXIC INJURY TO HAVE THE SUPPORT AND UNDERSTANDING OF THEIR GOVERNMENT, FAMILIES, FRIENDS, AND SOCIETY IN GENERAL AS THEY STRUGGLE WITH THE RESTRICTIONS AND ISOLATION NOW PLACED ON THEM; THERE ARE DIAGNOSTIC CODES READILY AVAILABLE FOR TOXIC EFFECTS OF MANY CHEMICALS FOUND IN OUR EVERYDAY ENVIRONMENT AND SURROUNDINGS; THOSE SUFFERING WITH TOXIC INJURY DESERVE THE SAME RIGHTS, ACKNOWLEDGEMENT, RESPECT, SUPPORT AND HELP ALLOTTED TO OTHER ILLNESSES AND DISABILITIES." "THIS WEBSITE PUSHES THE PROCLAMATION AND WHICH STATES ENDORSED IT. http://www.mcs-america.org/index_files/proclamations.htm."

It this Gov. Otter the same man who sent a letter to the "Idaho Observer" (IO) (it is in their article dated May 2008, and titled "Contaminated Kuwait sand lands in Idaho)...in which Otter stated: "it appears that the material in question is well within the contaminant limitations of the U.S. (sic) Ecology permit...the shipment of sand was transported from Kuwait in special containers that were sealed with customs procedures (sure, sure!). (The IO states, "The main point of the (Otter) letter was to assure us that we can trust the government.") Then Otter continues, "Let me assure you that the best science and most assiduous regulation is being used in safeguarding idaho citizens from this and all other hazardous materials"..."Dose rate measurements were taken on the surface of the container. Those measurements were between 12 and 14 microrem per hour (uRem/hr). Background from naturally-occurring sources in Idaho is 10 to 15 uRem/hr." (Whatever that means!)
And finally the IO states, "The Otter administration, without consent of the people of Idaho, is going ahead with plans to expand uranium mining operations in Idaho and is courting a French company that wants to process raw uranium into plutonium at plants to be built in Idaho..."The point of the previous paragraph is to illustrate that Otter's Idaho is not really concerned about people and the environment; saying so just sounds good in a letter."

So, it appears this Otter administration speaks out of both sides of its mouth with its hand in the cookie jar--all at the same time.

PS...To my knowledge, the INS has not contaminated this area in which I live.

Comment By Dr Peter Rickards DPM, 7-30-08

Hi Marjorie,
Oh yes, that's the same Guv Butch! "Paint it green" is the succesful slogan driver these days...
But here is a few quotes and the reference at the official NRC website, from the owner of the Grandview dump, Steve Romano. He admits the plastic liners may not last. HMMM, the new plutonium dump at INL, the ICDF, uses these same liners, and they ignored my scoping questions on the liners at the official impact hearings...Peter
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/acnw/tr/2008/186-2-14.pdf
p 64 of 258 where USEI's Romano admits no one really knows if the plastic liner will work in the future.
We took
17 credit for the three foot thick clay liner meeting the
18 EPA specs, which is underneath the site. We did not
19 take any credit for the plastic liner. We did not
20 feel it would be appropriate to do so, given the
21 limited amount of knowledge of how plastic liners will
22 actually perform over the long term. We don't know
23 yet.
p30 of 258
"At the state government and commercial
13 disposal level, the Idaho and Texas facilities, U.S.
14 Ecology, Waste Control specialist Steve and Bill will
15 talk about that, have been very successful in working
16 with their state regulators to identify areas where
17 they can accept certain types of radioactive waste,
18 and make a viable market, as well as demonstrate
19 protectiveness. And Steve (PR: ie Steve Romano of Grandview's USEI) has warned me a number of
20 times that they don't want us to do anything that's
21 going to upset the delicate balance that they walk
22 with their state regulators. And we don't want to be
23 in that position either.
p 51/258 NRC on the pesky public
16 The moment you target some place, some particular
17 point, then people come out of the woodwork that
18 haven't been at your meetings, they haven't heard any
19 of the background material, they don't know any of the
20 issues. They just come out of the woodwork. Makes it
21 very tough.
P 72/258
MR. ROMANO: I think it would. I
4 referenced a little earlier, Mike, that we've tried to
5 use models and codes that are in the public domain.
6 CHAIR RYAN: Right.
7 MR. ROMANO: I think that's one of the
8 ways you get around the public concern. This has been
9 some black box that's not understood or available.

Comment By Roger Helbig, 7-30-08

Marjorie,

Maybe reading all 81 pages would be a pretty worthwhile exercise; you would certainly know far more about DU than you do now. However, if you read the information that I provided, it mentions one specific Appendix. (Appendix III, Experiments to Examine Resuspension) That is where they discuss the experiment where they deliberately blew DU laden sand high into the air to see how far it scattered in the wind and where you will see the few meters answer.

By now, you should understand that any article or video that quotes, is written by or stars Douglas Lind Rokke, aka Doug Rokke, aka Doctor Rokke, aka Major Rokke is not worth reading, viewing or listening to. I do use the term aka (also known as) in the same sense as the police departments do when they are talking about criminals because I view Rokke as a criminal for knowingly deliberately lying about who he is and what he knows and more importantly about the relatively hazardous nature of depleted uranium. If I were Chief of Staff of the Army, I would recall Major Rokke, USAR (retired) to active duty and court martial him for giving aid and comfort to the enemy. I have already recommended that the Assistant US Attorney for the Southern District of NY file perjury charges or false statement charges against Rokke for the declaration he filed under penalty of perjury with that court in support of the case of Matthew et al v. US by the National Guardsmen who were tested by Asaf Durakovic and told that they were contaminated with DU. Rokke lied in that declaration and he should be held accountable for doing so. I am not, however, even in the Army, let alone Chief of Staff and I am not the US Attorney for the Southern District of NY (they really seemed relatively uninterested in my mail even though I am the only person who has begun to thoroughly background Rokke by obtaining actual records of what he did and contrasting that with his claimed accomplishments). What I have found is publicly available in the Files Section of the Yahoo Group DUStory that was created in order to have a place to publicly post the military records that I got under the Freedom of Information Act a couple of years ago. I have since got other records on Rokke, Leuren K Moret and Asaf Durakovic that are also posted, and those were all obtained under the Freedom of Information Act or equivalent state public records act laws. I have absolutely nothing to hide and that's why I use my name. I have always been open and above board since I was a whistleblower who uncovered $10 million in contract fraud when I worked for the Navy in the 1990's. Ironically, yesterday, the man who chose not to hold a Senate Subcommittee hearing with me as star witness in 1995 was himself indicted, Senator Ted Stevens. His predecessor, Senator David Pryor intended to hold hearings and was preparing for them. Had those hearings been held, a couple of admirals may have ended up in Leavenworth. I do not shy away from tough jobs - and I pick and choose what battles to fight on my own. No one tells me what to do. You may read otherwise because Rokke, Moret, Cathy Garger, Wes Rehberg and others have been gunning for me for years, but not a single one has had the guts to file suit against me and face me in court because they know that I have the goods on them.

Roger W Helbig
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/DUStory/message/77

Comment By Roger Helbig, 7-30-08

One would actually expect that a "doctor" running for public office would have the ability to read, but apparently not - Peter claims that he read my reference - "Appendix III, Experiments to Evaluate the Resuspension of Residues of DU" on pages 47-49 of the referenced document Radiological Conditions in Areas of Kuwait with Residues of Depleted Uranium – Report by an International Group of Experts. Page 49 (Acrobat file page 59 of 81) says "“The exception was the filter located 25m from the explosion and collected 23 min after the explosion. The total quantity of uranium collected was 0.12micrograms. The isotopic mass ratio of U235 to U238 measured by ICP-MS was 0.0022, indicating that the uranium in the air collected was almost entirely (~96%) DU. The presence of almost only DU in the airborne dust collected indicates that it was associated with material lighter than natural uranium. This can be explained by the difference in speciation between natural uranium, which is associated with the soil itself, and DU, which would be present mainly as oxide particles formed by the corrosion of the DU penetrators. The absence of any measurable quantity of DU in the airborne dust collected by the samplers positioned at distances of 50m and beyond from the explosion indicates that the transport of resuspended DU over such distances is unlikely." A couple of paragraphs later it says "On the assumption that all DU present in the air consists of inhalable particles (<10micrometers), an individual standing 25 m from the explosion would inhale less than .. 1 ng of DU, corresponding to .0012 mBq. This is 2000 times lower than the activity of natural uranium inhaled annually by a typical adult living in Kuwait City (see Appendix II)"

Now perhaps 25 meters is considered further than a few, but you will note that someone 25 meters from the point of the explosion that lifted the DU laden sand into the air would have breathed in less DU than the normal adult in that area would breathe in in a year.

If you go to these three pages, you will not only read about what this international team did, but also see pictures of what they did. You will find that the good doctors claim about particle size in this experiment is totally false. Apparently, his eyesight is worse than mine and I am nearing having cataract surgery.

Roger W Helbig

I appreciate New West's having this open forum - most anti-DU sites tightly control posting and you will note hundreds of blogs etc. that spout the Rokke-Moret-Busby line and no one ever gets to disagree - that's because someone like me who actually likes to research and dig out facts to refute fiction (yes, I have even submitted a couple that Snopes has posted and those were about widely circulated far right lies) - I was even kicked off the ultra right Free Republic list the minute I defended John Kerry against Swift Boat lies - my post never appeared and I never got back in -so Peter - I actually might support you except for your totally blind and unenlightened attitude towards this subject

Comment By Dr Peter Rickards DPM, 7-31-08

Hi Roger,
Geez, you seem upset that your claim DU only moves "a few meters" in an explosion was contradicted by your reference, but that is no reason to claim I can't read. But guess that is your best argument, so I defend your right to grasp at straws and try to divert attention from the details.
My quote from page 9 is from reference 10 of your report, on the actual weaponry exploding. And yes, on pages 47-9 they describe the myopic experiment they did, exploding sand with chunky 200 um DU scattered in it, and yes, even some of that traveled 25 meters, contradicting you again. These 200 um chunks of DU are to heavy to travel far, and as reported, 10 um and smaller are the usual sizes to inhale. Brilliant intentional tunnel vision!
If the sand is so safe, why didn't they leave it where it was, or dump it somewhere in Kuwait with the not-so trusty plastic liners that Grandview uses?
The second larger explosion in this "experiment" was done when the wind changed direction, away from the filters, registering nothing! Fantastic non-evidence! Typical of my experience with the CDC dose reconstruction, ie, making sure the government is not held liable for damages done.
Here are the quotes from your report...Peter
P 9 However, alpha particles are very energetic, and if emitted inside the body can damage nearby cells. - Processes such as migration through the soil, deposition of
resuspended material onto crops and transfer to groundwater might be of greater interest in the longer term.
In a combat situation the main radiological hazard associated with DU munitions is the inhalation of the aerosols created when DU munitions hit an armoured target. Studies carried out at test ranges show that most of the DU aerosols created by the impact of penetrators against an armoured target settle within a short time of the impact and in close proximity to the site, although smaller particles may be carried a distance of several hundred metres by the wind [10]. However, the IAEA’s investigation was concerned with the possible effects of DU on the population of Kuwait. Exposure of military personnel to DU in the immediate aftermath of an
attack was not considered in this study.

P 47 The images were taken in the backscattering mode and the presence of uranium is visible in the two pictures taken at higher magnification as small white dots
covering sand grains having an approximate diameter of 200 μm.

P 49 In the second experiment, no soil or dust could be collected on any of the air filters following the explosion, probably because of a change in wind direction.

Comment By Roger Helbig, 8-01-08

Do we really care about people who have far more to worry about than being exposed to aerosols in the immediate vicinity of the target tank? Most of them are called the enemy and they would prefer to kill us, as three Iraqi T-72 tanks tried to do when the encountered an Abrams tank stuck in the mud and left behind by to wait for a tank retriever. Each of the Iraqi tanks fired first at point blank range and none of their first and only shots damaged the Abrams which then fired one shot of DU at each of the enemy tanks, destroying all three, with the last of the three having hidden behind a sand berm, but the DU round penetrated the sand berm and destroyed that Iraqi tank as well. The big question is do these aerosols either exist any significant time after impact or do they coalesce as they cool and secondly do they actually travel any distance. The anti-DU crusade wrongly portrays anywhere in Iraq as being subject to floating clouds of DU dust; Moret even claims that India is at risk; Rokke claimed that the non-existent clouds of DU dust from the non-existent DU tipped bunker buster bombs reached across the Mediterannean to Cypress. Moret claims that DU dust clouds have caused a worldwide epidemic of diabetes. Now, Peter, how many of your fellow members of the AMA believe that depleted uranium causes diabetes. Moret makes that claim in articles on the net as well as in her performance at the Vancouver BC 9/11 Truth convention; she also claims in a recent article published in the magazine Namaste to be an expert in atmospheric dusts. It is time for you and members of the AMA to step up and challenge these nutty claims that you know violate all known medical science. You could start by identifying the actual genetic diseases that are often shown in grotesque photos claiming to be DU caused birth defects. I know that some of the photos are of an extremely rare genetic skink condition that is generally fatal at a fairly young age if not infancy, Harlequin Fetal Syndrom and another photo claimed to be of a DU victim was identified when published in the British Medical Journal -

BMJ. 1999 August 28; 319(7209): 535. PMCID: PMC56826
Copyright © 1999, British Medical Journal
Gulf war leaves legacy of cancer
This corrects the article "Gulf war leaves legacy of cancer" on page 401b.

In this news story (14 August, p 401) we published a picture of a “boy with unknown skin disease thought to be linked with use of depleted uranium.” This caption was incorrect. We received several electronic responses (http://www.bmj.com/cgi/eletters/319/7207/401/a) pointing out that this disease is dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa.

Comment By Marjorie Kidman, 8-01-08

Roger:
My experience with DU says it is very dangerous. Nothing you can say will change my mind. I have never had anything get into my nose (through my open windows while I was in my own home) and bounce around with tiny stings all over the inside of my nose, then come through my skin to the outside of my nose and create thick red scabs. And then there was all the other symptoms and reactions that I previously stated. Maybe you need to experience first hand what I experienced, and then you'ld see the world from my point of view for once. But then I've been told many times that I am very sensitive to the environment and what's going on in general that I'm anaphylactic and like a "canary in the mine."

I am reading some of the material that you and Peter have referenced. It is the most "dry drivel" I have ever read.

I have pressing matters to attend to, so it'll be a while before I can get back and make a few comments.

Comment By Dr Peter Rickards DPM, 8-01-08

Sorry if this is a re-post, but my first send came up blank...
Roger,
You seem to be missing the point of your references.
I tracked down the British Medical Journal article, and tiny correction that "identified" the previously stated "unknown skin disease related to DU." These published peer reviewed articles support my perspective, and stand as the official medical status of the health damage in Iraq from DU. They support Dr Rokke and Marjorie's perspective. I am thinking you must have assumed that any correction meant the whole article was wrong, but that is not the case at all. The correction simply identified the "unknown" disease.
Please re-read the original article, which remains correct, and tells the true legacy we have left in Iraq and "probably" other countries downwind.
And to be clear, I am not in the AMA. Peace be with you...Peter
BMJ 1999;319:401 ( 14 August )

News
Gulf war leaves legacy of cancer
Malcolm Aitken , London

The incidence of cancer and congenital defects has increased significantly in Iraq after the Allied use of depleted uranium bullets during the Gulf war, a recent conference in London was told. Declassified US documents suggest that the American military used about 944000 rounds of depleted uranium bullets in Iraq and Kuwait during the war in 1991.

The conference (about the cancer epidemic in Iraq and its possible link to the Allied use of depleted uranium weapons), was chaired by Labour backbench MP, George Galloway. The UK Ministry of Defence has declined to comment to the BMJ on the health implications of exposure to depleted uranium during the Gulf war. At least 250 tonnes of these tiny bullets still lie undetected in Iraq and in surrounding countries, according to one speaker, Dr Seigwart-Horst Gunther, president of the International Yellow Cross, a humanitarian organisation founded to help children in crisis. Several speakers noted how depleted uranium weaponry had been used against civilians.

An Iraqi oncology specialist, Dr Mona Kammas, presented a report compiled by Iraq's Committee for Pollution Impact by Aggressive Bombing. Rates of cancer and congenital anomalies had almost doubled since the war, the report said. In areas that were particularly badly hit in southern Iraq, notably Misan and Thi-Qar, cancer incidence was as much as five times higher than in 1989. The report notes that the increase in cases of cancer and their geographical distribution in the provinces of Iraq coincides with bombardment and military operations and the intensity of these. Of the 667 cases of cancer in the sample group, the report notes, the increasing prevalence was most striking in cases of leukaemia, lung cancer, bronchial cancer, cancer of the bladder, skin cancer, stomach cancer for males, and breast cancer in females.

Dr Gunther showed slides of Iraqi children born with ears, eyes, fingers, and limbs missing and similar abnormalities among the children of Western Gulf war veterans. There was also a consensus that the lack of nutritionally healthy food and minimal medical provision under United Nations sanctions, combined with exposure to depleted uranium, contributed to widespread immunodeficiency and sizeable increases in the prevalence of polio, tuberculosis, hepatitis, whooping cough, and diphtheria.
Found at http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/319/7207/401/a?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT;=&fulltext=Gulf+war+leaves+legacy+of+cancer&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&resourcetype=HWCIT

Comment By Roger Helbig, 8-01-08

Marjorie,

You say "my experience with DU" - you have no experience with DU, so how can you say "my experience with DU"? Far as "peer reviewed references" - who were the peers, are they being scientifically objective, do they have relevant qualifications and most importantly do they have a political axe to grind? I and those I correspond with who actually have a lot of expertise on the matter have seen no scientifically objective apolitical peer reviewed reports. There are publications that claim to be peer reviewed but the process is not objective and the peers don't have any relevant experience.

You are working yourself up about something that really can not cause you or your neighbors any harm. You say you have no time for this discussion, but you continue to look hard for anti-DU crusader information and continue to be obviously worried. Widen your horizons; go to the Boznia-Herzegovina UNEP report - it's 300 pages, but it does have pictures.

Dr Gunther is not an objective source. He went to a tightly controlled country with the objective of learning how the UN Sanctions and DU were harming it - he did not have the opportunity to do his own research, it was fed to him by Saddam's government. Do you know that the penalty for slandering Saddam was, having your tongue cut out in public in front of your house - that is if they did not just hang you from the lamp post - they even billed the executed prisoners' families for the bullet used to shoot them in the head. Do you really think that this report from 1993 has any objective information in it at all? I would like to see the medical community look at this report objectively and identify the type of birth defects, diseases, etc. and what has been the causative factor. That would make people like you much more at ease. Why worry about a bunch of lies?

Peter, as long as you even mention Dr Rokke, you are shooting your arguement in the foot. He is not knowledgeable. His doctorate is in Vocational Education. He has never even worked as a "Vocational Educator". He never was the Director of the Army's DU Program and he knows nothing about the health effects of DU. The other people you cite worked for Saddam Hussein's government and were doing their job, making a black mark on the US/UK reputation. Look at the titles - "Iraq's Committee for Pollution Impact by Aggressive Bombing" - now there is a dispassionate, scientifically objective source if I ever saw one. Did you leave your brain behind when you left medical school or just think that to be a Democrat in Idaho that you need to be to the left of Cindy Sheehan?

Comment By Marjorie Kidman, 8-03-08

I feel as if I am living in a "beseiged community."
I start feeling awful, and become extremely tired, and have aches in my legs along with weakness and limited motion (even paralysis). I do believe that the pollution is collecting in my leg muscles (rather than affecting my upper body and my organs.) I have patches of very tender skin, especially in my legs. Lots of Vitamin C, plus rubbing alcohol and vaseline seem to relieve it along with some "aching body" aspirin.

I go into town and start feeling better. Then I come back home and notice a "ton of pollution" (when a couple of years ago there was none) in my valley, and then the same toxic process starts all over again.

A couple of days ago, my neighbor came over to our home and talked with me regarding this DU penetration into our air and our homes. When I first told him about the air being contaminated with DU and other radiated stuff, he didn't believe me (I even showed him my nose with all the scabs). But, after a few weeks of being outdoors and coughing and experiencing it in his joints along with extreme fatigue (which his wife especially experienced), they now believe me. (I think they wished that they had listened to me when I first told them to stay indoors for a while, as it would have saved them some misery and some money (he even went to the doctor about it, but the doctor had no answers.)

I do think this "skin disease" is related. In late May or early June, my son slipped outside and bumped his wrist on some rebar (there are no animals around). Within a short while there was extreme infection all over his wrist and arms and it spread unbelievably fast (kind of like a flesh-eating disease) up his arm and down into his hand and created huge scabs. I continually treated this infection with extreme diligence. Finally, it all went away. In hindsight, I do believe his infection was somehow related to the DU contamination and the biologicals that were also in that Kuwaiti sand.

My neighbor is concerned about continual DU radiation coming our way whenever the west wind blows (as am I). We are also concerned about contamination of our gardens and our ground and well water.

I'm still studying material related to this DU, so I'll get back with you'all in a couple of days. I think your posts are very interesting!

Comment By DrPeterRickardsDPM, 8-03-08

Roger,
Dude, I was using YOUR reference in the British Medical Journal, that you misunderstood as having to be "corrected". The article is peer-reviewed, on our USA NIH official website. It totally contradicts what you say, and you are not smart enough to see it contradicts you, so you quote it as proof you are right. The British Medical Hournal is one of the top journals in the world, but I respect you and your blog buddies right to both quote it and denigrate it's worthiness in the same paragraph.
I will look further to see if Rokke really was head of the Pentagon's DU team, but so far, you don't "read and 'comprehend'" very well.
Here is my NIH pubmed reference on the GW vet's elevated ALS rate (Lou Gerhig's Disease). To be clear, the study can NOT pinpoint a cause at this time. But more than likely, there IS a problem in GW vets. Elevated brain cancer rates was the second GW disease acknowledged as elevated. Maybe it's all a big coincidence or "stress related" eh? So please keep claiming you are the expert and this study was also peer-reviewed incorrectly, if that's what you "feel" ...Peter
Neurology. 2003 Sep 23;61(6):742-9.
Occurrence of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis among Gulf War veterans.
Horner RD, Kamins KG, Feussner JR, Grambow SC, Hoff-Lindquist J, Harati Y,

Mitsumoto H, Pascuzzi R, Spencer PS, Tim R, Howard D, Smith TC, Ryan MA,

Coffman CJ, Kasarskis EJ.
National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, Bethesda, MD 20852, USA.

Comment By Roger Helbig, 8-04-08

The photo published in the British Medical Journal; the only photo to my knowledge from the group of photos claimed to be of Iraqi DU victims, was deliberately misidentified by the German Doctor who visited Iraq and that identification was corrected. That is an unmistakable fact. You may do all the political dance that you want to do, you have people of Idaho to impress, but by calling me, far senior to you in years, "dude", you lost it buddy.

I would love to know how you propose to verify that Doug Rokke was the "Director of the Army's DU Program". I presume you are going to ask him. I did you one far better, I requested his military records under the Freedom of Information Act. I have now even posted the original 2005 reply that was a partial records denial along with the Attorney General opinion from the State of Illinois and the reply from the University of Illinois about Rokke's employment there. I did not take anything at face value; I went for factual documented evidence. That evidence destroys the mythical persona that Rokke has created for himself. He has enjoyed a lot of travel based on that false persona; he has been to Cambridge and addressed the Student Sanctions organization, then to the House of Lords in London, many places in the US, Australia, anywhere where there are suckers who did not bother to actually verify that Rokke is who he says he is. Many of his disciples even paint Rokke as things that Rokke never even has claimed - a recent variant said Lieutenant Colonel Rokke - others have said Colonel Rokke, but the reality is that First Lieutenant Rokke, US Army Reserve went to Saudi Arabia in 1990 and Major Rokke, Army Reserve retired in 2003. Once retired, you no longer get promoted.

Roger W Helbig

Comment By Marjorie Kidman, 8-05-08

The Bible says, "By their fruits shall ye know them." So, it doesn't really matter what positions Rokke had or what he did or didn't do. What matters is what he is trying to do right now. Is he trying to get the truth out to warn us and protect us? I think so.

Whew! With all the investigation and information I am delving into, I'm beginning to feel like "Erin Brockovich." I've already have a few clues about what has been going on, but I'll save it for when I uncover more information.

I am very concerned about this "new precedent" of improper handling and illegal disposal of hazardous wastes right into our neighborhoods to our detriment and peril. I have no doubt it will go on and on (all over America) unless we "expose how dangerous it really is." Since I am "in peril" more than most because of my sensitivity to chemical contamination and being downwind (and having already encountered a month and a half or more of DU+ contamination) , I have no choice but to study like crazy and try to get "the truth" out. Plus, I am very concerned about the detrimental effects this DU+ contamination will have on our children. So, wish me luck!

Comment By Roger Helbig, 8-06-08

Marjorie,

By their fruits ye shall know them - a liar thus begats lies -- a liar is not a truth teller. What Rokke claims that he was is fundamental to his arguement. He falsely claims to be sick from DU, yet is known to have taken and passed a physical examination in 1994 - he was required to take one 5 days after reporting to Fort McClellan. I am sure he took others, but his medical records are not filed with his military records and they are exempt from disclosure because of the Privacy Act. As a result, Rokke can lie about his own health as much as he wants to because no one can find out he is a liar. He falsely claims that his team members have become sick and some have died from exposure to DU. The Army will not release the names of his team members, but they did interview 29 of them, and there are published reports of interviews in the footnotes at the Gulf Links site and none of them became sick due to DU exposure. Last night, I found an excellent site on the Atomic Bomb victims and the rigorous medical research that has been conducted to watch over their lives - this site has a very interesting Q&A;about the victims and survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - it is well worth everyone's reading - you will learn many things - one thing I learned was that because these two Atom bombs were made of Uranium and Plutonium and because only a very small fraction of the Uranium at Hiroshima and Plutonium at Nagasaki was actually consumed in the chain-reaction detonation, that the fall out, the black rain contained Uranium and Plutonium - that was because the fire ball did not really reach the earth and these were very small bombs - neither city is radioactive today -

The Radiation Effects Research Foundation WebsitePrivate, nonprofit Japanese foundation, supported by the US and Japan governments, that conducts research and studies on the effects of radiation exposure ...
http://www.rerf.or.jp/

The Frequently Asked Questions and Answers at
http://www.rerf.or.jp/general/qa_e/index.html

I particularly suggest that you view #6, 7, and 12, but all of them are informative

6. What health effects have been found among persons who were exposed before birth?

7. What health effects have been seen among the children born to atomic-bomb survivors?

12. Are Hiroshima and Nagasaki still radioactive?

Roger

Comment By Marjorie Kidman, 8-06-08

Roger:
"There you go again" quoting what you read as being "gospel." The way you talk, you could even sprinkle DU dust on your breakfast cereal and it wouldn't hurt you. I have experienced sickness as a result of the Grandview dump DU fiasco, and I have had just a couple of months' exposure (which certainly put a damper on my summer).

This is the reason I am spending so much time trying to get the truth out and expose wrongs being perpetrated upon us. I know DU+ with its radiation contamination is very harmful, especially to those of us who are especially vulnerable. We have a God-given right to breathe good air and not be subjected to that sort of thing. (That's why doctors limit our x-ray exposure.)

However, I will read your referrals when I get time. (How about you start reading the Bible?) Right now I am researching as much as I can on the Rokke side of the debate.

And let's not forget about US Code 1520a, Title 50 Chapter 32 which provided for testing on human subjects with chemical and biological agents. And the Freedom of Information Act which revealed that lots of these tests were performed on us without our knowledge or consent. And then there was those "foster children" who were (at the hands of the EPA) tested with pesticides until they died, and the the MK Ultra tragedy and so on.

Sorry, but I don't trust this present government one iota and neither will I put up with being tested chemically or biologically, either.

The Bible (in Ezekiel 3 v.17-21, and 33v.7-11; plus 34v.29) says that we are not to bear the shame of the wicked (or heathen). It also says we are to "warn the wicked to turn from their wicked ways before it is too late. That if we don't warn them, when it comes "their time" to be taken down, those who didn't warn them will also be taken out with them. And finally it says, "Nevertheless, if thou warn the wicked to turn from their ways and if he does not turn, he shall die in his iniquity; but thou hast delivered thy soul."

Comment By Marjorie Kidman, 8-08-08

People across the west are talking about the haze that is in the skies and wonder if it is coming from government's spraying. Also the drought going on concerns them, too.

I think part of the haze could be from the Grandview Dump as I believe a lot of the tiny, tiny particulants became airborne. I noticed that it tended to hug all the mountains. When a lightning and rain storm came through, it was still there afterwards.

Also, I don't really believe in this West Nile Virus (WNV). Supposedly three people contracted it in Logan, Utah. And another lady who was diagnosed with WNV in Salt Lake had paralysis of her legs and feet (like me), which is not really the symptoms of WNV. It's more like PIN (sort of a paralysis and nerve damage condition with red burning feet). This is same symptoms that some of the meat packers in Austin, Minnesota had who were blowing out pig brains came down with. It's called "PIN".

Comment By Marjorie Kidman, 8-10-08

Sometimes I just get overwhelmed when I see so much evil. We watched a movie the other night called, "The Inner Circle." It's a true story about life in Russia in the 40's and early 50's when Stalin was in power. Some of the people loved Stalin so much that when he died in 1953, they crowded around the building where his body lay and pushed and pushed just to get a glimpse of him, and at least 150 people were trampled to death. I see some people today who love their jobs/money, political parties, government, and church leaders with its heirarchy more than they even love their wives and families (or themselves), and they even seem to lose their "sanity" after a while.

When I was a teenager, I remember visiting an aunt who is very strong in the predominant church in Utah, and her daughter was fixing herself a tuna sandwich and asked us if we wanted one. We said, "okay," and she went downstairs to get a can out of the food storage but her mom (my aunt) said she couldn't take one out of the food storage (that can is now so old that they have probably thrown it out or given it to the poor). Her values were in the wrong place as she loved her food storage more than she loved making us feel welcome and feeding us (her extended family) a little with a can of tuna. And she is the same way about her "church."

There are so many leaders and members of churches today who have forgotten the true teachings of Jesus (hopefully it's not you).

Jeremiah 5 v.31: "The prophets prophesy falsely and the priests bear rule by their means; and my people love to have it so: and what will do in the end thereof?"

This DU+ from the Grandview Dump is the most evil thing I have seen or felt, or breathed, since the nerve gas incineration in Salt Lake. I would even say it is worse because it has a larger density of particulants of radiation, plus chemical weapons, and radiated lead is a by-product (and other awful stuff). The air has been so contaminated that it has kept us (mainly) inside for two months. And who knows what that stuff will do to you over the "long haul" (just like people didn't know about the dangers of nuclear bomb fall-out in Nevada until they started coming down with cancer a few years later.) And some will pooh, pooh, that the DU+ wasn't all that bad, but it was!

But the other day, there came a very welcome thunderstorm and a little rain, and the sun came out and two rainbows formed behind our home. It was so beautifull! It was as if to say, "Okay, it is safe to go outside now!" (And I've noticed the air is so much better.)

Comment By Marjorie Kidman, 8-22-08

I've been busy looking DU information up; plus I've been working on another project concerning questionable goings on with our county government.

An article came to my attention regarding the offical VA report of the Department of Veterans Affairs and the number of U.S. soldiers partaking in the Gulf I and Gulf II wars, consisting of 6,838,541 soldiers in all.

It also states the number of U.S. living soldiers is 4,525.865. So that would leave 2,312,676 who are dead, which is a little over a third of the 6,838,541 who were enlisted.

Plus, just below these numbers, the report indicates that 1,603,743 Gulf War soldiers filed for disability and 1,206,795 soldiers have been classified as disabled.

So, the 2,312,676 soldiers who are dead plus the 1,206,795 disabled makes 3,519,471 of our solders who are either dead or are disabled.

So more than half* of our vets who served in Gulf War I & II are either dead or disabled.

(6,838,541 - 3,519,471* = 3,319,070

So 3,519,471 (that's over three million) of our solders have either died or are classified as "disabled." That's alarming!!!

This information can be found at:
www1.va.gov/rac-gwvi/docs/GWVIS Aug2007.pdf

or http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/citizenstruth/2008-July/002458.html

here's another web which I haven't checked out:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_clive_bo_080325_according_to_the_dep.htm

Comment By Marjorie Kidman, 8-22-08

Yah, I checked that website out. Pretty interesting.

The above web site kinda got cut off. Here it is:

opednews.com/articles/genera_clive_bo_080325_according_to_the_dep.htm

also:
williambowles.info/iraq/2005/us_dead.html

Comment By Roger Helbig, 8-23-08

Marjorie,

You never cease to amaze. Too bad that you actually have not read the VA report that you cite because if you had and had not just taken someone else's word for what it says, you would know that what you said is categorically false. From the report, as of about a year ago, about 14000 service members who participated in the Gulf War have died from all causes. The exact number can not readily be obtained because it is not reported. What is reported is that over a 7 year period from August 1990 through August 1997, less than 5000 (I used to have the number memorized, it is given as male and female and I think that the female number is 194) service members who participated in the Gulf War had died from all causes. The number of claims filed is also not a meaningful number because it includes all claims, not claims of any particular level of disability. For example, I filed a claim for disability and was granted 10% when I left the Air Force in 1973; I also filed a claim to have my wisdom teeth removed (something that they used to tell all veterans that they could have done at VA expense). The 10% disability was withdrawn in 1978, but by then I had a real job with real medical coverage and it was not as necessary. Part of it should have been lifetime, my "malpractice" settlement for improper treatment of a dislocated collar bone which will cause me pain and strength problems until the day I die, but I had a job and I had rejoined the active reserve and now have retired from the reserve so I no longer needed the assurance that VA would provide medical treatment. I share this with you because I suspect that the huge numbers of claims filed relates very closely to my own experience. That would mean that very few of these claims are for 100% service connected disability. I also went to the records of the Veterans Board of Appeals and found about 300 out of 500,000 appeals that had been filed from 1991 through the present that even contained the word "uranium". In checking through the first 40 of these, I found that less than 5 had to do with depleted uranium and that one or two of these had been granted and those that were granted were not because the veteran proved a DU connection, but because the VA could not conclusively prove no DU connection and the Board followed a long standing practice of giving the veteran the "benefit of the doubt".

Roger

I have a copy of the VA report - it is also posted in the Files Section of DUStory - go read it - the one with the 4,000 number is a one page excerpt and is the only mortality study that has ever been undertaken of Gulf War veterans.

Comment By Roger Helbig, 8-23-08

I see that the doctor turned politician seems to have dropped out. Since he is a Podiatrist and not a Pediatrician, I wonder how much he knows about how the articles that claim to be "peer reviewed" actually have been rigorously peer reviewed to the standards of the American Journal of Medicine or the New England Journal of Medicine. He seems to be easily convinced by very flimsy evidence; guess we are lucky he is not running for judge!

Comment By Roger Helbig, 8-23-08

Marjorie,

I was going to go to bed, but decided to look at the VA reference that you provided. The response proved my earlier statement, you never read the report. The reason, the page has been moved and the URL no longer is valid.

Here is what you get when you put in the URL you provided

http://www1.va.gov/rac-gwvi/docs/GWVISAug2007.pdf

PAGE NOT FOUND: The page you are looking for is unavailable. The page name may have changed, or the page has been removed. Please use the VA Search to find what you are looking for.

I will be glad to send anyone who writes me a copy of the actual report or just the 1 page from it that discusses the 7 year mortality study.

Roger

Comment By Marjorie Kidman, 8-23-08

Roger:

The source that referenced this authentic VA report (on the statistics of the number of dead and disabled soldiers) said to hurry and get copies now because it would soon be removed. Too bad you didn't research it out before they removed it. You would have read the "other side of the story." Did you check out the other web sites I provided?

Whether it is accurate or not is unknown. But it sure is not what the VA wants published. That's for sure. If we got the truth (and nothing but the truth) with our armed services, the public would rise up and "throw the bums out."

The Bible says that when Jesus comes, we will learn war no more. Thank God for that.

Here's another site you'll probably get "amazed" about, too:
http://www.williambowles.info/iraq/2005/uss_dead.html

Titled, "Iraq: US Military Bulldozing Trenches and Tossing in Dead American Solders"

It probably has happened at least once or twice, and maybe more. After all, there are a lot of evil people in our government right now who are capable of anything. Sometimes they even show themselves to be who they really are.

Comment By Marjorie Kidman, 8-25-08

I have always thought that Hillary would be our next president. Now it looks like there's a real possibility that this will happen.

It appears both Obama and McCain cannot supply a birth certificate and have questionable birth documents and questionable places of birth, which to date cannot be proven.

Public awareness is beginning to come to the forefront on this subject, so we'll see what happens in the next couple of months. Maybe Hillary will make it after all (not that I would vote for her, because I wouldn't!).
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Plus, we apparently have an anomaly regarding the Nevada Republican Party leadership. The Nevada State Republican convention was improperly adjourned on April 26, 2008, after delegate balloting starting coming in at 7-1 in favor of Ron Paul. Knowing that the convention had to end in a McCain nomination no matter what, Convention Chairman State Senator Bob Beers announced that the convention was in recess. Nobody left, so he turned out the lights, turned off the PA system and left the building. There was no motion, no second and no discussion, so the adjournment was in violation of party convention rules.

When a lawsuit ensued, Washoe County District Judge Jerry Polaha ruled that the controversy is an internal Republican Party problem and that party delegate plaintiffs should appeal their objection to the Republican National Committee.

The Plaintiffs, represented by attorney Mark Goodman, contend that the Nevada State GOP executive Committee will be in violation of state law if it decides to pick delegates for the national convention in executive session..., "Most Republicans are getting fed up with party leadership because of the underhanded tactics instead of principled leadership...the announcement that national delegates will be appointed by a small group behind closed doors only reinforces this distrust."
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For the first time Colorado will have a "personhood" Amendment on the ballot this November which will state that a "person" shall include any human being from the moment of fertilization. Toni Panetta, Deputy Director of NARAL Pro-Choice, warned that "contraceptives will be banned and women will suffer."

Coming from a different perspective, I see this as a very dangerous precedent. Over the last few years, various factions and Religious Groups, have been trying to change our Constitution by calling for a U.S. Constitional convention under the guise of stopping the legality of gay marriage and whatever else they can think up.

The danger is, once they are able to get into and change our Constitution, they will in all probability strip us of all our Constitutional rights (which has been their goal from the get-go), and we will lose our private property rights, the right to bear arms, and the right to petititon and redress our grievances, the right to speak our minds, and all the rest of our "God-given rights" provided by the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence, etc.

Our rights even now are "hanging by a thread" and the Federal, State, and County governents have been caught trying to take our Constitutional Rights away from us every chance they get, and have only been stopped because
they were reminded of their oath that they swore on the Bible to uphold the Constitution.

If they are able to call for a "Constitutional Conventions" (I think they need 3/4's of the states' approval for that), then goodbye to our Constitutional rights. Our rights will be no more.

We will become like "chickens in a coop trying to outrun targeted pitchforks."

Comment By Marjorie Kidman, 8-26-08

I noticed on the afternoon news that the LDS church is again calling for California to call for a "Constitutional Amendment" against gay marriage. I could care less whether gays get married or not, and I certainly am against calling for a "constitutional amendment," no matter what the cause.

As stated previously, I think it is way too dangerous. Doesn't the LDS church realize this?

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