Whew! Uranium and Your Credit Card Junk Mail June 9, 2005March 2, 2017 DEPLETED URANIUM Mark Wilson: ‘Leuren Moret’s allegations in the article you linked to are pretty overblown. Depleted Uranium is, by definition, not very radioactive at all, with a half-life of 4.5 billion years. The shorter the half life, the faster an isotope decays and thus the more radiation it emits. While DU is chemically toxic, I don’t know how you can say it is significantly more so than, say, lead, which is what we would be using to make munitions instead of DU. Kids shouldn’t be playing with either. Here‘s a page with both sides of the issue from the Federation of American Scientists.’ Eric Batson: ‘Read the full article in WikiPedia (which she refers to by the way) … Seems like the consensus (military and government critics both) is nowhere near her position.’ Ken Myers: ‘This article is full of wrong information. There is no evidence that the atomic scientists ever considered using depleted U for the Japanese bombs. Depleted U does not come out of gun barrels on fire, etc. Depleted U is used solely because it is very dense (heavy per unit of volume) because of its high atomic weight. Depleted means non-radioactive for heaven’s sake. This sort of hysterical talk is a reason this country will be late in moving from coal powered electrical generation to nuclear power as France has done (50%). Partly because our Atomic Energy Commission did such a poor job of supervising and inspecting and partly because the average American has a poor scientific background. For all his faults, Admiral Rickover ran a good nuclear program and there has not been one ship-borne nuclear ‘incident.’ Coal and gas however pollute the atmosphere and sometimes blow up. See China’s air (literally). [Signed] – A Rockefeller Republican who voted Democratic for the first time in the last election. My party has been hijacked by wealthy religious zealots who think they have a mission to save the world. In truth, 9-11 is turning us into a more divided and religious extreme country.’ Brad Hurley: ‘I wouldn’t put too much stock in Leuren Moret’s claim that depleted uranium in dust is going to boost world cancer rates. She notes that ‘in April of 2003, the World Health Organization said they expect global cancer rates to increase 50 percent by the year 2020.’ That’s true, but the leading causes of cancer they cite are tobacco and diet. Here‘s the press release from WHO. Moret goes on to say: ‘Infant mortality is going up again all over the world. This is an indicator of the level of radioactive pollution. When the U.S. and Russia signed the partial test ban treaty in 1963, the infant mortality rate started dropping again, which is normal. Now they are going up again. It’s the global pollution with this radiation.’ Well, as any scientist knows correlation doesn’t necessarily indicate causation. When I was a kid, I noticed that all the summer people left our lakeside community at the same time that the geese started heading south. Should I have concluded that the sound of the geese caused the summer people to leave? Or that the noise of the moving vans caused the geese to fly south? There are many factors that contribute to trends in infant mortality. I doubt that Moret has evidence to indicate that uranium dust has anything to do with infant mortality; I think it’s more that she’s trying to scare people into caring about her issue.’ Jeffrey Davis: ‘SPENT uranium is called ‘spent’ for a reason. It’s virtually inert. Yes, there’s some radiation, but there’s some background radiation everywhere.’ Kristine Friend: ‘Unfortunately the article on why cancer rates are rising is true. While one X-Ray has never hurt anyone, the cumulative effects of radiation have caused severe damage and even death to untold people. There is a very good book called “Clear Body, Clear Mind” which has written a good remedy for ridding the body of accumulated radiation. I have done the treatment as advised in the book and I feel about 10 years younger. By the way, the book was written by a religious philosopher called Hubbard, but the treatment (consisting only of vitamins and sauna) can be done with a partner on a self-help basis, using the book as a self-help manual.’ ☞ Hmmm. WINNING YOUR INDEPENDENCE FROM CREDIT CARD OFFERS Kate: ‘There is now a website for the ‘Credit Reporting Industry Opt-Out Prescreen’ service. I got my free credit reports that just became available in my region, and was appalled by the number of ‘soft’ inquiries I had. No wonder my mailbox is always filled with junk I need to shred! The Big Three’s websites all tell you that the soft hits don’t hurt your credit score, and try to convince you that most people like receiving pre-screened offers because it ‘allows them access to a wider variety of credit’ – they definitely don’t want to tell you how to get off the list. But it turns out you can now just go to optoutprescreen.com. I removed myself, my sister, and my parents from the lists in about 10 minutes. Much better than having to write each of the bureaus individually. ‘By the way — Texas won its own independence from Mexico, much like the United States won independence from Britain. Some of the fighters in Texas were from the United States, but you’ll recall that many of the fighters for the colonies were British-born, and others were French and Germans who just wanted to give the British a hard time. Mexico wasn’t all too happy about Texas’ independence, but then there are some Brits who still call for the return of ‘their colonies’.’