Professor Dudley Goodhead, head of the British Medical Research Council's radiation and genome stability unit, can be seen as the most senior radiation biologist in the UK. He is also a member of the Royal Society's panel.

He is quoted in current issue of New Scientist (extract copied below) making the identical point about local dose to lymph nodes that LLRC has been making for several years. Rosalie Bertell first brought this to LLRC's attention two or three years ago.

Even though it seems obvious that the chronic irradiation of local tissue by incorporated radionuclides must have the capacity to cause genetic mutations leading to disease, the radiation risk agencies insist on averaging the radiation dose across the entire lung or the whole body, thus making the lymph node burden appear trivial. The emergence of leukaemias and immune system disease after Desert Storm and the other uses of DU undermines the already non-existent scientific case for absorbed dose, relative biological effectiveness. see www.llrc.org/rat4211.htm for more on this. There are massive implications for all aspects of nuclear regulation.

regards to all anti-du campaigners

Richard Bramhall
Low Level Radiation Campaign

"The true extent of contamination with cancer-causing uranium in soldiers who served in Bosnia and Kosovo may never be known, because the test government officials are planning to use to screen veterans will not pick up metal lodged deep in the body.

... European governments are planning to test their veterans' urine for uranium. "Nothing else is practical for so many" says Alain Vilet of the Belgian Ministry of Defence. But the most dangerous contamination might not show up in urine, warns Dudley Goodhead, head of the British Medical Research Council's radiation and genome stability unit at Harwell. Burning uranium forms small particles of uranium oxides, between 0.1 and 10 microns wide, which can be inhaled. White blood cells scavenge the particles in the lungs and deposit them in the tracheobronchial lymph nodes. They are highly insoluble, and might not show up at all in urine, while still emitting intense local alpha and beta radiation, says Goodhead. That could damage blood stem cells, causing leukaemia. "If the urine tests show normal levels [of uranium] that does not mean there is no danger", he warns. What's needed is chemical analysis of lymph nodes from the servicemen who died, but there have been no reports of such autopsies.

from New Scientist report on DU by Deborah MacKenzie; 13 January 2001 page 5