Friend has a leg with all sorts of nastiness, which he said stemmed from magnesium leeching out from bullet fragments stuck there since Vietnam. (They were removed only recently.)
I originally called bullshit, but he said it was a real thing. Why isn’t it more common, or is it and just not well known? Is it true with modern ammunition? Is is different with mlitary grade vs civilian grade metallurgy–I’m just guessing if there even is such a distinction.
Which actually leads me to another point he brought up, which I have heard of, and don’t know what to believe, because of inherent hysteria of the name of the material: soldiers wounded with shrapnel from depleted uranium shells, or even “cut touching” them, get all sorts of ghostly/ghastly symptoms, according to various lawsuits I’ve seen reported.
So OP is primarily on magnesium, but can drift to uranium until/unless it gets unruly :).
Regular bullets don’t contain magnesium. It sounds like your friend got hit with a tracer round, which can have either magnesium or phosphorus in it. Both of those metals can cause poisoning from fragments, so your friend wasn’t spouting bullshit.
Depleted uranium also causes poisoning, and you don’t have to get shot with it to get poisoned. Depleted uranium rounds striking an armored vehicle will create small depleted uranium particles which float around like dust and can be inhaled or swallowed.
Note, incidentally, that while depleted uranium is less radioactive than the natural stuff, that’s not the same as not being radioactive at all. IIRC, it’s still got about half of its normal punch. And what radiation it produces is mostly alpha, which is mostly harmless if it’s outside of you, but the worst kind to get inside of you in any way (eaten, or under the skin, or inhaled).
It’s called “depleted” because it’s the opposite of “enriched.” Enriched uranium has more (fissile) U235 than natural uranium, depleted has less. I don’t know if that really affects its actual radioactivity.
Of course it does, because U235 is significantly more radioactive than U238. Take out a large share of the 235, then and you take out a large share of the radioactivity. But there’s still some 235, and some U234 which is less common but even more radioactive, plus the U238 is also somewhat radioactive itself.
Afaik how “radioactive” something is depends on its rate of decay. U235 is fissile because it readily “captures” stray neutrons, then breaks apart. U238 does not. Being more fissile/fissionable is not the same as being more radioactive. Actinium is so radioactive/decays so rapidly it appears to glow blue from the ionization of the air around it but to the best of my knowledge is not fissile.
Of course, if I’m wrong hopefully someone will correct me.
Everyone focuses on the radiation when you say “uranium”, but with depleted uranium the chemical nature of the element will kill you long before the radiation will. Uranium - of any sort - is highly toxic to the kidneys because of its chemical nature.
According to this source, the hazard from magnesium in a tracer round involves the formation of magnesium hydroxide in the body, which could cause a chemical burn. This sounds like a relatively acute effect, rather than something causing damage decades later.
There is debate about the extent to which chronic exposure to lead from bullet fragments lodged in the body can result in toxicity.
The risk is to the crew of said armoured vehicle, and they presumably will have more immediate and pressing concerns than cancer risks decades down the line
It’s not necessarily decades, though. Last I heard, depleted uranium was considered likely to be the cause of “Gulf War syndrome”, which started showing up in veterans within a year of deployment.