Well, I think any heavy metal aerosolized in a massive quantity will always be toxic in some form, such as lung damage. But thats occupationally speaking, and applies to any metal thats aerosolized or super heated and inhaled, period.
Even vape pens can be very dangerous if certain ingredients are too hot
But it isnt dangerous in the sense like asbestos or lead, for example
Just a couple things to note:
Tungsten is very inert so there’s no chemical hazard to your body. Breathing in the dust would irritate the lungs for sure but would be unlikely to cause any chronic health issues. Whereas, depleted uranium is toxic even in small quantities and persists in the body and the environment
Iron is an important nutrient and you consume it every day, all of your cookware contains iron, it’s perfectly safe (in fact you would die without it)
Cobalt is nontoxic in low doses and you’d have to consume a lot of it to experience any health effects. Also, your body can remove it over time so it doesn’t bio accumulate like uranium
Nickel is fairly toxic as the compound nickel carbonyl but not so much in it’s metal form as it would be found in an APFSDS round. Again, your body can excrete it and it would take a lot to harm you
whereas according to the CDC the amount of Uranium that would be toxic in an enclosed space like a tank would only be 0.25mg, or 1/100,000,000th of a single M829 projectile. It’s very likely that firing even one round would generate enough uranium dust to exceed that
Am I saying DU ammunition is guaranteed to harm tankers? No. But it is substantially more likely to do harm than tungsten alloy, and I don’t think it’s fair to mock Germany for having some higher safety standards for their tankers. Everything is a tradeoff and they opted to sacrifice some combat potential for crew safety in peacetime. And I believe the export sales of the Abrams where clients explicitly purchased versions without DU are demonstrative of how many other countries agree in that philosophy.
Fair enough
When the military hires someone to come in and do an interview or “official interview” of some sort I can see that happening. They would have had signed an NDA and a bunch of paperwork saying they’d be giving up their film cards and data, etc.
There’s pictures of Donald Trump at the plants as well, they are very common.
Everyone else discussing the toxicity of heavy metals I think y’all have driven us a bit far from the topic at hand.
I was still discussing the topic at hand. My point was that googling a picture of a tank is a poor way to make a point on armor composition. Pictures of destroyed tanks with exposed interiors are much better, but still can not be 100% reliable because of fire and concussion can misplace components.
Obviously, but that is only the case when pictures are hard to find. Right now we have more than plentiful amount to prove the point.
move on, there is no point in talking to a brick wall
I’m pretty sure the problem is DU still emits too much radiation than the legally allowed standard in the U.S. and many other countries. Its not necessarily that it would cause noticeable health effects by standing near it; the danger is entirely based on the potential of it entering the body through firing the material or it breaking.
Agreed
DU doesn’t not emit any amount of radiation that would be considered harmful. The problem is it is highly toxic if ingested. Hence if the armor is pierced it is a concern or when DU rounds are fired. It leaves small particles that can be harmful if ingested.
Infantry units can also ingest these particles if they get close to a target that was destroyed by a DU round.
Hi. Would you care to include the fact that I said Kevlar is a catchall term for any sort of spall protection? K thanks.
Thats just not true. There were sources in the DU report I helped complie that specified it was in a safe quantity, like 0.02 whatevers. I dont remember off my head but it isnt hazardess, DU as a whole is mostly inert, hence Depleted
True. DU is less(40%) radioactive compared to normal Uranium
Agreed. To add, its also the term for Marine combat helmets and Flak is for the (absolutely not flak jacket) plate carrier. Which uses ceramic plates and sometimes Dyneema or kevlar soft plate backers.
So yeah. People who arent from the US military need to stop pretending to be professional linguists on US Military lingo. Trust the guys who know what theyre talking about, are native english speakers, and quit running with hyperbolic sematics
We should make a suggestion on crew body armor
Do it for all tank crews that use it like the Challenger 2
I just did conversion rates on the amount of millirems/hr they had in the friendly fire incident in Desert Storm.
I’ll need to revisit, but I believe these estimates show 140 microsieverts per hour, same as 3 kilometers off Fukushima. That’s in beta radiation, though, gamma is absolutely nil, and the radiation wears off exponentially fast in the records.
Who is this referring to? It doesn’t matter what type of spall liner you’re referring to… the Abrams has no internal spall liner of any kind. The only protection you’ll get is from the spall vests and kevlar helmets.
I’ll repeat myself since you don’t pay attention.
If the interior metal is softer than the external ceramic and depleted uranium sandwhich, it helps act to stop a shell shattering when entering the crew compartment. See also the turret bustle and the effects of spalling through the internal armor of Bravo 22 in OIF 05.
I.e., spaghetti code of Gaijin would read
M1 series
secondary_shatter: false