Weapons factory workers and nearby residents exposed to depleted uranium

A TEST to detect depleted uranium in GulfWar veterans has unexpectedly uncovered high levels of the radioactive material in the urine of former workers and residents around a disused weapons factory in upstate New York. The factory closed in 1982 amid controversy over health and safety breaches. Head of the NERC Isotope Geosciences Laboratory (NIGL) Randy Parrish and colleagues discovered the high levels of depleted uranium when they tested people who had worked at the plant or lived nearby while it was operational. The NIGL team with colleagues from the University of Leicester, the British Geological Survey and the University at Albany, New York, publish their findings in a report in the New Year.