DU residue is very toxic - like other heavy metals - but it depends on the method of exposure.
Our guys aren't getting hammered by the DU I think - it's like others have said...reservists getting their immune systems creamed by too many shots in too short a time period, plus some experimental type shots where the alternative (no shot) would have been a guranteed fatality if the almost worst-case scenario wound up actually happening - and the military lives by planning for the worst case.
Then add in residue from demo'd chemical weapons stockpiles, eating and soaking in oil and sucking down 'fresh' combusted oil fumes (I always laugh my bellybutton off when someone who was not there uses the term 'exposed' when talking about exposure to the burning oil, non-burning oil, etc. - 'bathed in'/'saturated in' is a better term by far) and you are going to get sick.
I crawled all over some AFVs that had been killed with DU based rounds and I got the requisite warning about the toxicity. I was on a non-reserve 'shot schedule' and my sinuses were wrecked for a couple of months afterwards. That's the oil in one form or another.
So that's the deal with our guys I think. The kids in Iraq, I'd say DU residue, oil residue, poor drinking water outside of the major population centers (read: anywhere but Baghdad), etc. and subpar standards of medical care (S. Hussein chased all the British and U.S. trained Iraqi Doctors out of Iraq not too long after the Iran-Iraq war - I know because I've interviewed 5 or 6 directly and they are members of a close-knit group of ~300). And before we get the 'American Government likes to kill other people's kids' parade all cranked up keep in mind that during those sanctions the Doctors already over there were short of medical supplies, top line equipment, and outside specialists because Iraq 'didn't have the money' (the U.N. sanctions didn't apply to medical field expenditures for the most part). Compare that with the hundreds of millions in cash that was found tucked away in the homes and safe houses of senior Iraqi leadership.
DU residue is very very toxic if inhaled and fairly toxic if swallowed. It changes properties if exposed to human respiration which makes it deadly poisonous if inhaled as particles (in sort of the same way that mercury, if swallowed, will probably be passed out of the system of the person who swallowed it - but if absorbed thru the skin or inhaled is 100 times more dangerous - swallowing mercury from a thermometer is *not* the same as eating mercury tainted fish by the way - no experimentation please
).
I don't think (i.e., I really, really hope) that you won't see a 'GWS II'. They are looking for it, the oil and vaccination factors aren't there, and for the people and especially the kids (because radiation, toxins, etc. hit kids *far* harder than adults - you're damaging the building blocks not the end product in a constant state of repair - remember the Russians evacuating children from a radius 3 times the size of the adult evacuation radius after Chernobyl?) the medical care standards are going to be much improved (not because Iraqi doctors are 2nd rate, but because they'll actually have the tools they need to get the job done).
Mike/wulfie
