Quote Originally Posted by Xiahou's article
He calculated that a person would have to eat 100 micrograms of depleted uranium -- mixed with dirt, this would amount to about a half teaspoon -- every day for 50 years to get just one one-thousandth of the radiation dose experienced, on average, by nuclear industry workers. A recent study of 100,000 such workers from three countries found a slight increase in leukemia and no increase in other forms of cancer.
Hmmm, without the dirt, the pure uranium would be a cube with about 0,174 mm sides, hardly half a teaspoon is it?
Most Uranium is inhaled (about 98%).
And those 630.000 pounds mentioned in the article gives about 2,85 Trillion (US trillion) doses of that size and due to the long half-life of U-238 it will stay there until it's desipitated into the soil.

Not to mention that uranium is also toxic and that the main radiation problem with uranium isn't the substance itself, but the daughter nuclides. Radon-222 for example.

Quote Originally Posted by Vladimir
Wait, wait...you're saying that bullets should be banned because they're hazardous to your health? Essentially what we're talking about is lead and even standard lead is poisonous to life. One of the elements uranium decomposes to is lead so isn’t all lead depleted uranium? It's just absurd that anyone would think of banning DU. Why don't we just ban rocket propellant and gunpowder because it's toxic if eaten and bad for the environment?
A. We aren't even near talking about lead.
B. The issue with DU isn't when it's used for warfare, but that you contaminates the place for at least decades, probably centuries and possibly millenias.