Why is U-238 dangerous?
As mentioned in the CSM article, the primary concern is U-238’s chemical toxicity, the primary result of which is kidney damage, as outlined in a report by the Royal Society. Also, a scientist at the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute in Maryland published a study that showed that U-238 is genotoxic, emphasizing that radioactivity is not as much a concern as chemical toxicity. The abstract for her paper is here, but the New Scientist has a translation for non-nerds: Uranium is “genotoxic”. It chemically alters DNA, switching on genes that would otherwise not be expressed. The fear is that the resulting abnormally high activity in cells could be a precursor to tumour growth… …Miller has found one way this may happen. She has discovered the first direct evidence that radiation from DU damages chromosomes within cultured cells. The chromosomes break, and the fragments reform in a way that results in abnormal joins (Military Medicine, vol 167, p 120). Both the breaks and the
