It’s called the “people’s radiation monitor.”

Snotweed (another name for spiderwort) is a Geiger counter that never needs a new battery.

“The use of the ammunition, a 30mm depleted-uranium bullet called PGU-14, was first reported by a joint Air Wars-Foreign Policy investigation on Tuesday. The roughly 5,265 rounds of the munition were fired from multiple A-10 ground attack aircraft on Nov 16, 2015, and Nov. 22, 2015, in airstrikes in Syria’s eastern desert that targeted the Islamic State’s oil supply during Operation Tidal Wave II, said Maj. Josh Jacques, a U.S. Central Command spokesman.

“When loaded with depleted-uranium bullets, the A-10s fired what is called a ‘combat-mix,’ meaning the aircraft’s cannon fires five depleted-uranium rounds to one high explosive incendiary bullet.”

“In her book, ‘The New Nuclear Danger: George W. Bush’s Military-Industrial Complex,’ [Helen] Caldicott claims that DU qualifies as a nuclear weapon because of its low-level radioactivity. She said that huge quantities of DU were created during the Cold War when the United States made thousands of nuclear weapons.”

According to the same source …

“She warned that DU maintains radioactivity for billions of years and can concentrate in the food chain, with children and babies more vulnerable to the carcinogenic effects of ingested radiation than adults.

“Medical reports from Iraq indicate that childhood malignancies are seven times more frequent than they were before the first Gulf War.”

“The normal amount of oxygen in healthy cells doubles or triples the effects of gamma rays, X-rays and other ionizing radiation compared with the effects seen after irradiation in poor oxygen conditions. In contrast, cancer cells do not contain as much oxygen, so radiation treatment is more likely to hurt healthy cells than cancerous ones.”

“With small amounts of radiation separated by long intervals, the intervention of the adrenals, as long as they function normally, can overcome the effects of the fatty acids. With higher doses applied more often, the fate of the irradiated individual depends on whatever antagonistic factor predominates. With high doses or with a relative adrenal insufficiency, the direct effect of the abnormal fatty acids can become prominent. In that case, the type D offbalance will be more pronounced. It is in such offbalance that subjects die from too intensive radiation. These factors can be of major significance in the intervention against accidental radiation as well as in guiding the therapeutic use of radiation.”