Now it turns up on two British airplanes. A tiny partical ingested into your body can kill you.
2006-11-30 11:17:37 · 8 answers · asked by Mr. PDQ 4 in Politics & Government ➔ Military
There are thousands of toxic items used in industry, agriculture, water treatment, etc that can be used as terrorist weapons. However Po-210 is very toxic. It is readily soluble in dilute acids and disperses throughout the body. It is 5000 times as radioactive as radium. It emits alpha particles, which means that inside a sealed container or capsule it's virtually harmless, but in proximity to bone marrow, hair follicles, lung, liver, and kidney tissue (plus other tissues) it can deliver a high dose of radiation. It is made in nuclear reactors by bismuth-209 absorbing a neutron to become bismuth-210, which emits a beta particle (same charge and size as an electron) to become polonium-210. Which leads one to speculate that, if Mr. Litvinenko was indeed intentionally poisoned with this substance, the perps must have had access to a nuclear reactor and/or waste products from one.
An interesting medical trivia point: smoking 2 packs per day gives one on the average 1300 millirems of radiation a year because of adherence of polonium (and other radioactive substances) to tobacco leaves. This is roughly four times the average annual US radiation dose from natural background, including radon, that all of us receive. Of course, there are areas of the world, e.g. some spots in Iran, where the dose from radon from hot springs is ten times higher than the dose from smoking!
2006-11-30 11:33:57 · answer #1 · answered by Roderick F 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
There are thousands of substances more deadly than Polonium-210. The reason why Polonium-210 was used is because it's exclusively an alpha emitter... that's not going to cause any collateral damage unless the person ingests it. It's a targeted poison - most likely used to inspire fear, because it's readily detectable. Cyanide is more deadly. So is Ricin (Spelling?) - more than a thousand times more deadly. Whoever killed Alexander Litvinenko was most likely trying to make an example of him. I don't see the use of Polonium-210 much in the future, unless it's going to be a signature of some assassin / serial killer eliminating Russian dissidents (The mysterious poisoning of a second Russian dissident in Moscow the day after he [Litvinenko] died - the poison hasn't been identified and he hasn't died.
2006-11-30 19:33:34 · answer #2 · answered by Jason 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
no its very hard to get hold of, you can pretty sure terrorists don't have any. and if they did it has to be ingested to be lethal, there are many more, more effective piosions (it took ten days for the russan to die), that are more available to terrorists.
2006-12-01 05:06:41 · answer #3 · answered by supremecritic 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Looks like it.
I hope it's a rare substance!
2006-11-30 19:18:36 · answer #4 · answered by American citizen and taxpayer 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Well that gives us all another reason not to be able to sleep at night.
2006-11-30 19:19:07 · answer #5 · answered by Jadis 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
No, but it could be now that the Russians have used it.
Thank you very much, while you're up!!!!!
2006-11-30 19:19:24 · answer #6 · answered by producer_vortex 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Nope. The user of it.
2006-11-30 19:19:53 · answer #7 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
KGB
2006-11-30 19:19:07 · answer #8 · answered by Bawney 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋