I want to first start by talking a little bit about natural uranium, because I think we need to put it into that perspective. Natural uranium is in the soil around our world. It certainly is something that we eat and drink and breathe in every day, because it is in our environment. We all secrete natural uranium in our urine to a certain level. We know that in some areas of the world there's less and some areas there's more -- particularly say in Florida there's a lot of natural uranium in the soil. You get into Colorado, you'll find the same sort of thing. You get into other areas of the world there are variations. And yet we do not see natural uranium causing any recognized medical complication or health problem in people. We have had a lot of studies in uranium miners. We know an awful lot about what uranium does as a heavy metal in people, and we certainly have a lot of studies on depleted uranium in the environment, and I'll talk a little bit later about from the Gulf War some individuals who were involved in friendly fire.

Next slide, please. Our major concern, as I said, is the chemical nature, because uranium, depleted uranium are both heavy metals -- like lead and tungsten and nickel. The kidney, when the depleted uranium is internalized, becomes a target organ, and there are collecting tubules that essentially concentrate the urine that are most severely affected, the first to be affected if there is a dose of natural uranium or depleted uranium above a threshold in the body.

We looked at some 90 Gulf War veterans who were in or on an armored vehicle when it was struck by depleted uranium in friendly fire. And those individuals have been followed on an annual basis now we are talking 12 years post-incident. And we do not see any kidney damage in those individuals -- and this is using very sophisticated medical evaluation of kidneys. They were also followed for other medical problems, and they have had no -- and I'll talk about this a little bit later, but while I'm here, they've had no other medical consequences of that depleted uranium exposure. Now, some of these individuals had amputations, were burned, had deep wounds, so that these individuals, some of them of course do have medical problems. But as far as a consequence of the depleted uranium exposure, we are not seeing anything related to that either from a chemical or radiological effect.

Next slide, please. We've looked at them for cancers. There has been no cancer of bone or lungs, where you would expect them -- to see that. We have seen no leukemias. As I said, there's been about 90 individuals we've followed up, and about 20 of these individuals still have small fragments of depleted uranium in their body. To try to remove that totally from their body would mean amputation or removal of muscles. And our belief is it's better to follow them than to go through any further traumatic type of surgery for the individuals. And, as I've said, we have not seen any untoward medical consequence in these individuals.

As we take a look at transuranics, and that's been brought up -- you may have heard about that -- these are trace elements of like americium, plutonium, neptunium that has been found in depleted uranium in the process of making it. It goes through the same processing plant where nuclear fuel is reprocessed after it is spent. And there trace amounts of transuranics in the depleted uranium. It has been looked at, measured by several different countries and scientists outside of DOD (Department of Defense). The amount of radiation that contributes is less than one percent, and that is believed not to have any medical significance as far as adding to the radiation.

Depleted uranium is 40 percent less radioactive than natural uranium around us. And so when it's outside the body it's just not an issue. It's only when it's internalized -- either by inhaling the dust, the oxide, as Colonel Naughton said when there is penetration of armor, it does self-sharpen and it does create an oxide dust. And there are people who were in or on the vehicles that were struck in friendly fire, who did inhale that oxide, and we have not seen any medical consequence from that. They certainly had the highest dose exposure of anybody in the Gulf War.

Next slide, please. We talked about not seeing any cancers in the kidney or certainly in the lungs or the bone in these individuals. Leukemia became an issue a couple of years ago when the Italians were concerned about peacekeepers in the Kosovo area coming back and having leukemia. We took a look at what are the causes of leukemia. The rates in the United States are usually about two per 100,000 people per year. Cause of leukemia is often unknown. We took a look at data, medical data, from the exposures, atomic bomb blasts in Japan in World War II, people getting chemotherapy. We see an increased rate in leukemia in these individuals, some two to four to six years after that exposure. And we certainly know people exposed to toxic solvents like benzene can have an increased rate of leukemia. But the Italians did the epidemiological study and found basically the rate of leukemia in their military personnel was no greater than their civilian population. And so what was triggered as a cause-effect relationship being in Kosovo where depleted uranium in was fired was not a causal relationship. It was just the natural rate of leukemia in the people who had been peacekeepers in that area.

Next slide, please. There have been over 40 tests done on what happens to depleted uranium from an environmental standpoint, both with shooting munitions through armor, looking at burning of depleted uranium. We had some fires in tanks. We had some fires in depleted uranium. It was in storage capacities. And we have recently done a capstone study where we again have shot depleted uranium through uranium armored tanks to look at what is the amount of oxide created, how long does it stay suspended, what is the particle size. That study has just been completed, but it is not yet written to be published. When it is written it will be published. All of the environmental information about depleted uranium is in our Department of Defense environmental exposure report, and I'll have a website that will show you that at the end of the talk.