Ottawa Sun
February 11, 2001
Uranium tests offer costly peace of mind: Lab boss
http://www.canoe.ca/OttawaNews/04n3.html
By STEPHANIE RUBEC -- Parliamentary Bureau

    VANCOUVER -- The military is spending taxpayers' money to give soldiers "peace of mind," according to the head of a lab that is testing Canadian soldiers for exposure to radioactive-depleted uranium.

   Only soldiers who have shrapnel coated with depleted uranium in them or particles of the toxic element in their lungs will test positive, said Eric Hoffman, president of Activation Laboratories.

   Canadian soldiers were never fired on with depleted uranium shells during past conflicts.

   They were only in contact with the heavy metal if they handled the coated ammunition or boarded vehicles hit by U.S. artillery.

   Hoffman said that unless the soldier has shrapnel in him, depleted uranium will have disappeared from urine and hair within days.

   Some 107 soldiers tested so far have had normal levels of uranium in their urine, hair and in one case, bone.

   Hoffman downplayed the possible health effects of depleted uranium and said handling the radioactive metal isn't dangerous and even ingestion isn't all that bad.

   "Uranium has a connotation of nuclear meltdowns and when you mention uranium people get all excited," he said.

   "There's lots of people that work in uranium processing plants and they don't show any health deference than the normal population."

   Hoffman defended the $1,000-per-soldier tests and said they're worth the money because the military wants to give soldiers' peace of mind.

   Canada claims not to coat artillery and ammunition with armour-piercing depleted uranium, but the U.S. and other NATO countries have confessed to using it since the Gulf War a decade ago. -- Stephanie Rubec


Commento: il test che fanno in Canada, oltre a essere costoso (1.000 $), non distingue fra uranio "normale" e uranio impoverito. Il problema DU riguarda la chimica, la fisica, la biologia e la medicina (purtroppo anche la politica). Gli effetti sono visibili dove questa contaminazione è avvenuta, ad esempio Remscheid (D), Iraq, Kuwait, etc. Come durante il nazismo, dove proprio in questi giorni emerge il ruolo di IBM, vi sono interessi a nascondere le responsabilità. Quando la verità verrà fuori vi sarà una seconda Norimberga [cioè si prenderanno qualche decina di persone (escluso Herman Josef Abs della Deutsche Bank-IG Farben-Daimler Benz-Siemens, Hjalmar Schacht, Bormann, Mengele, Barbie, Muller, Gehlen, Von Braun, etc.), le si condanneranno, e dopo pochi anni saranno di nuovo liberi ed al lavoro, come prima più di prima].

Nota: This is the same Hermann Abs (1901-1994) who was chosen by Pope John Paul II to oversee the reorganization of the Vatican Bank when it was caught red-handed laundering counterfeit securities and heroin profits for the Gambino crime family. It is worth noting that in his youth J.P. II was, according to the official version, once a slave laborer for I.G. Solvay, a Farben subsidiary specializing primarily in pharmaceuticals. He is supposed to have labored in the Solvay quarries near Auschwitz. It's a rare slave indeed who becomes pope at all, let alone then hires his former master to keep track of his money. Wonders truly never cease.