Depleted uranium can transmit harm sexually into partners and future generations

Evidence

Under such circumstances, the boundaries between the domestic and the foreign, home and away, are impossible to maintain. American and British troops are drawn disproportionately from communities that (by their own countries’ standards) are poor; their fates crisscross the fates of those poor from global South war zones who must inhabit, long term, the uranium-compromised aftermath. Many wives and girlfriends of returning Gulf War veterans complained repeatedly that when making love to their husbands and boyfriends, they experienced a ferocious burning in their genitals. For years these women were ridiculed, some for suggesting that Gulf War syndrome could be transmitted through semen. Recent research suggests these women were only partly wrong. The burning is a sign that a lover’s semen is polluted with uranium. Research also points to a connection between uranium-polluted semen and increased levels of endometriosis among veterans’ sexual partners. Thus depleted uranium munitions may launch a preemptive strike against both semen and the womb. This is the other ultimate sacrifice—sacrificing in perpetuity one’s procreative prospects and the integrity of one’s DNA. — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 661

Categorization

• XREF: The burning-sex claim is a devastating material counterpart to earlier claims that women were ridiculed as hysterical (ch44: feminist scholar dismissing Gulf War syndrome as hysteria). — connects to: The euphemism ‘depleted’ masks uranium’s radioactive and chemical threat in munitions — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 603; Depleted uranium’s harm concentrates in children and accumulates through breast milk — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 660; Urban warfare magnifies depleted-uranium exposure to dense civilian populations — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 651

Broader Connections

• Urban warfare magnifies depleted-uranium exposure to dense civilian populations #qualifies (0.72) — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 651