AFTER years of controversy about the long-term health effects of depleted uranium weapons on soldiers and people living in areas where they have been used, the Pentagon is considering replacing the uranium with tungsten alloy. The snag is that tungsten could be even more dangerous.
In a study designed to simulate shrapnel injuries, pellets of weapons-grade tungsten alloy were implanted in 92 rats. Within five months all the animals developed a rare cancer called rhabdomyosarcoma, according to John Kalinich's team at the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute in Maryland. The study will appear in Environmental Health Perspectives.
The rats' tumours grew more quickly and spread more aggressively than tumours induced by implanting nickel pellets in other rats.
"The military needs to hold up on this conversion to tungsten alloy weapons until more is known," says University of Arizona toxicologist Mark Witten, who is studying the role pollution from tungsten mining might play in elevated rates of childhood cancers, including rhabdomyosarcoma, in several western US communities.
By Robert F. Marble
Fri Nov 23 01:00:06 GMT 2007
During WWII the Germans developed the Panzerbuchse PzB 41 anri tank gun. It fired a 28mm composite shot round comprising a tungsten core with soft metal skirts which swaged down as the round left the tapering barrel, reducing to a 20mm caliber projectile. It had a muzzle velocity of 1400 meters-per-second and an effective range of 500 meters, capable of penetrating 66mm of armor at 500 meters.All comments should respect the New Scientist House Rules. If you think a particular comment breaks these rules then please use the "Report" link in that comment to report it to us.
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