The State Department, Depleted Uranium and Conspiracy Theory

Included in this page from the United States Department of State's website (motto: It's never the wrong time to shop for shoes. ) where they try gamely to debunk conspiracy theories:

Highly controversial issues

AIDS, organ transplantation, international adoption, and the September 11 attacks are all new, frightening or, in some ways, discomforting topics. Such highly controversial issues are natural candidates for the rise of false rumors, unwarranted fears and suspicions.

Another example of a highly controversial issue is depleted uranium, a relatively new armor-piercing substance that was used by the U.S. military for the first time during the 1991 Gulf War.

There are many exaggerated fears about depleted uranium because people associate it with weapons-grade uranium or fuel-grade uranium, which are much more dangerous substances. When most people hear the word uranium, a number of strongly held associations spring to mind, including the atomic bomb, Hiroshima, nuclear reactors, radiation illness, cancer, and birth defects.

Depleted uranium is what is left over when natural uranium is enriched to make weapons-grade or fuel-grade uranium. In the process, the uranium loses, or is depleted, of almost half its radioactivity, which is how depleted uranium gets its name. But facts like this are less important in peoples’ minds than the deeply ingrained associations they have with the world “uranium.” For this reason, most people believe that depleted uranium is much more dangerous than it actually is. (More details on depleted uranium in English and Arabic.)

If you click on the link (very nice of them to translate it to Arabic) you will find this:

U-235 and U-234 are the highly radioactive isotopes in natural uranium, extracted to make nuclear fuel or enriched weapons-grade uranium. Depleted uranium is what is left over after much of these highly radioactive isotopes have been removed. Depleted uranium is actually 40% less radioactive than the natural uranium in the environment around us, and much less radioactive than fuel-grade or weapons-grade uranium. Unfortunately, most people confuse depleted uranium with these dangerous substances.

Don't you feel better now? There is nothing to worry about. Depleted uranium has 60% of the radioactivity of natural uranium. I'd like to see Condoleezza Rice breath in a cloud of it. That would reassure me.