[XR Martin]

The Depleted Uranium shells being radioactive is myth, people hear the word and suddenly everyone jumps to conclusions.

Depleted Uranium has the same radioactivity as granite.

http://www.fumento.com/military/depleteduranium.html

Thus the Daily News declared, "In January 2003, the European Parliament called for a moratorium on [using DU shells] after reports of an unusual number of leukemia [a blood cancer] deaths among Italian soldiers who served in Kosovo, where DU weapons were used." Actually, it was January 2001, less than two years after the Kosovo bombing began. Yet Japanese data going back to 1945 show it takes an average of 15 years for even massive radiation exposure to cause leukemia and 40 years to cause solid tumors, with "massive" meaning an A-bomb exploding over your head.

"Because of the latency period," noted a 2001 Australasian Radiation Protection Society report, "it is not credible that any cases of radiation-induced cancer could yet be attributed to the Kosovo conflict." Further, "There is no evidence to suggest that DU exposure could cause leukemias under any circumstances."

Britain's Royal Society found "a small number of soldiers might suffer kidney damage" if "substantial amounts of" DU are inhaled, "for instance inside an armored vehicle hit by a depleted uranium penetrator." But this applies to none of the Daily News's vets. Anyway, if your vehicle is hit by a DU penetrator then you should be so lucky as to worry about long-term illness.

Let's not stop at the kidneys and cancer, though. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry finds no radiological health hazard from long-term inhalation, dermal or oral exposure to even natural uranium, much less short-term exposure to the depleted variety. A 1999 Rand Corporation report concluded, "Negative effects from the exposure to the ionizing radiation from depleted or natural uranium have not been observed in humans."