Longshoremen should finish unloading 6,700 tons of sand contaminated with depleted uranium and lead Tuesday afternoon, said Chad Hyslop, spokesman for the disposal company American Ecology.

The BBC Alabama arrived at the port Saturday afternoon with the 306 containers carrying the contaminated sand from Camp Doha, a U.S. Army base in Kuwait. The sand was packaged in bags designed to transport hazardous waste.

Longshoremen unloaded the containers in two shifts Sunday, then two more Monday, Hyslop said. They wore standard safety gear, and dust protection equipment and respirators were available, he said.

However, no one has opted to wear the respirators, he said.

“It’s gone real smooth,” Hyslop said.

Half of the containers will be loaded onto 76 rail cars and transported to an American Ecology disposal site in Idaho. The other half will remain at the port until the trains return to haul them to Idaho. The containers all will be at the disposal site in Idaho within 15 to 30 days, Hyslop said.

More at The Daily News

H/T The Other Buck! As always, informative articles at Global Research!

by Leuren Moret

The conduct of secret nuclear wars since 1991, through the use of depleted uranium weaponry by the United States and Great Britain with their allies, has taken place in the Middle East, the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan2 and Lebanon.3 It has been carried out for the express purpose of destroying the public health and mutilating the genetic future of vast populations in oil rich and/or pipeline regions.

Carpet and grid bombing with depleted uranium weaponry in Iraq, Yugoslavia and Afghanistan has guaranteed permanent radioactive terrain contamination. The recent discovery that U.S. depleted uranium bombs dropped by Israel on Lebanon in 2006 contained enriched uranium4,5 suggests covert testing of fourth generation nuclear weapons.

The United States and its allies are fully aware that this weaponry violates the Geneva and Hague Conventions and the 1925 Geneva Poison Gas Protocol.6 It meets the definition of WMD in the U.S. Code7 in two out of three categories. And its use violates U.S. military law.8 since the U.S. is a signatory to The Hague and Geneva Conventions.

The blueprint for depleted uranium radioactive poison gas weaponry - dirty bombs, dirty missiles and dirty bullets - was contained in a declassified memorandum9 dated Oct. 30, 1943. It was addressed to Gen. Leslie Groves, who was head of the Manhattan Project, the U.S. effort to build atomic bombs in World War II.

The recommendation for development of depleted uranium as kinetic energy penetrators was never mentioned in the Groves memo. It was specifically for depopulation.

The Groves memo makes it clear that in 1943, U.S. scientists recommended using radioactive poison gas weapons in order to contaminate the air, water, soil, food, environment and the blood of exposed populations. The long-term contamination is permanent, since uranium-238 has a half-life of 4.5 billion years, making contaminated areas uninhabitable for eternity.

For populations that must continue to live in contaminated areas, the long-term effects are lingering illnesses and mutilation of their DNA. Widespread depleted uranium contamination of DNA in populations results in the potential mutilation of future generations. Mutations induced in the DNA of a single egg or sperm which form a fertilized egg are expressed and repeated in every cell of the developing organism, and defects are passed on to all future generations11.

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