There's an interesting note in the November 13 Science News, which they abstract as:

"Animal experiments indicate that waterborne uranium can mimic the activity of estrogen, a female sex hormone."

Some researchers started thinking about uranium intake after considering the Navajo Reservation, where teenage girls have reproductive-cancer rates about 17 times greater than the U.S. norm. There is a lot of unanium mineralization and many old uranium mines on the Rez.

They did some studies with mice using uranium, DES and a placebo and found, in short, that uranium in drinking water mimics estrogen in mice at least and could well be a culprit in the cancer problem. The uranium doses were pretty low, about half the drinking water allowable standard and were given for only a month.

Now this is not good news for the Navajo girls but it makes me wonder about the U.S. military's fondness for using U235- depleted uranium in shells and bullets. As we scatter uranium about in this way, are we setting up a long-term female cancer epidemic in Iraq and Afghanistan?