JULY 15, 2004
There is a Pestilence on the Land
by Elaine Hunter
There is a pestilence on the Land: "Our" Land and "Their" Land. "Their" Land includes: Bosnia, Afghanistan, and especially Iraq. The pestilence is the heavy metal, radioactive fallout from the use of depleted uranium munitions, vehicle armaments and ballasts [i.e., in crashed-and-burned helicopters]. Depleted uranium [DU], the living rock of death, a nuclear weapon of insidious, indiscriminate and never-ending-as-far-as-human-life-is-concerned mass destruction.
Those affected by this pestilence, this serial killer DU include citizens of the above lands upon whom the US Government has made war in your name, my name and the name of peace. If for some reason that doesn't bother you, US, allied soldiers and workers in the industries associated with DU have also suffered disturbing consequences of exposure to DU dust and radiation. There has been an increase in cancers, other illnesses and especially birth defects.
When the presence of a pestilence becomes so obvious, it is the job of the epidemiologist, even a just-a-seat-of-the-pants one to seek out the source, the headwaters of the pestilence. It turns out the source is the "Depleted Uranium Triangle" of Paducah, Kentucky, Portsmouth/Piketon, Ohio, and Oak Ridge, Tennessee. "Depleted uranium" as it is know for simplicity's sake, is what is left over from the uranium enrichment processes since the 1950ís. It is stored as DU hexafluoride [DUF6]. It is stored as mind-boggling amount of DUF6.
Go sit out along I-75 and I-64 and see if you can spot the DUF6 cylinders currently being transported from the K-25 facility at Oak Ridge that is being dismantled to the Portsmouth/Piketon DU conversion facility. We don't know for sure the actual route, though it's known they're passing through Oliver Springs, TN on the way to I-75 and they are exempt from HazMat identification. Seven hundred transported so far this year; only 5,200 more cylinders to go before the end of FY2005.
This is just the cylinders from Oak Ridge and the lion's share of those came from Paducah originally! The fate of cylinders still at Paducah? A conversion facility at Paducah? Or those cylinders will be transported to Ohio?
The photos of deformed infants and children from Iraq and some of our own soldiers are exceedingly sorrow-making. Soldiers receive more cover-up than follow-up if they've been known to be exposed to high levels of DU. There is no antidote, no antibiotic, no vaccine for the pestilence DU.
Though there are international rules/laws governing the conduct of war, the old saw "all's fair in love and war" is what is going on. Under international laws of war, DU is illegal due to its inherent nature to harm indiscriminately even long after the war is over.
Kentucky is an accomplice in crimes against humanity and Life itself. Can it find the political will to somehow opt-out of the vicious nuclear cycle, or will we sit idly by as silent partners in the comfort of soft green hills?
Rev. Elaine A. Hunter, D.SC., D.Ac
DUinKY Awareness Campaign, deep in the DU Triangle