Social video: Poison dust

'Don't wanna be a radiator'

Surfing through the internet and searching for a social video i got on the website of the organisation named 'peoples video'. They consider themselves as 'are a group of media activists with more than 50 public access shows across the country and hundreds of videos documenting the struggle.' There was this one movie that really caught my attention : 'Poison dust'. It is a social video about the consequences of weapons with depleted uranium on the people that are affected to it.

Poisson dust is ..

The video consists of different parts.  Three nationalguard and marine veterans are talking, alternating with experts who are giving the more scientific causes and consequences of this poisson dust. In the seventies there was an idea of combinating uranium and metals and use it to produce bicycles, cars,.. .They called it ‘depleted uranium’, it is not so strong as normal uranium. The plan was rejected, but because the material was very cheap they give it away for free to the production of armys. Tanks, guns and more are made from this material.  If this material explodes in something else there is a really heat fire, up to 2000-3000 °C.  The veterans are talkin gabout landscapes filled with abandoned tanks and trucks, standing in the sand. Helicopters swirl sand and dust and it goes everywhere: in their beds, clothes, in the body. But depleted uranium is also dangerous even when its in its Shell and you are near it.

Iraq is called a ‘hotspot’ for this radiation coming from depleted uranium. The background radiation in a normal situation is 100 millirems per year, but in Iraq, more specifically in Desert storm, the radiation  exposure consists 200 millirems per day! The radiation count is more than thousand times too big in comparison to the background radiation. A veteran of this place said that one time there came Dutch marines, they took samples before setting their basecamp but when they saw the results they didn’t want to live in this area.

Dr. Rosalie Bertell claims that the exposure time is at least equally important to the strength of the source. The little parts of uranium that come free with the high temperature find their way to our bodies. They centrate themselves with a lot in little surfaces and can affect the organs for many years. The victims complain about headache, dizzyness, pain in the neck, a weak feeling and pain in the longs. One time they did some tests on a Young soldier and the result was that his longs could be the longs of a 72year old.  Even if depleted uranium is less dangerous than pure uranium it is still radioactive.

Just recent the pentagon admited that ‘there could possible be’ damage for the longs, kidney and heart. But in reality radiation changes the regulatory gene, and if this gene is damaged it can cause cancer.

.. a social video?

Like we have studied in classes we can define social video under many  conditions. Most of the time the makers of social videos reject the principle of competency and replace it by the principle of cooperation. The message is very important, and it is an alternative form of communication in opposite of the big multimediagroups that only care about moneymaking.

 Social videos are always part of the social civility and are about social interest themes. The social video cares about a social changing, they are a stimulus for action and participation.

Poisson dust questions some actions that the government, or in this case the pentagon makes. In the video, filmed as a documentary we can see and hear a lot of experts talking, it’s a form of free education that is important in social video: we can hear the truth, and not the lies that powerfull people can tell us.