2006-12-10 10:28:03 · 6 answers · asked by Anonymous in Science & Mathematics ➔ Chemistry
It's the beauty of heavy metal toxicity AND radioactivity. Many heavy metals are toxic because they bind things in your body which are supposed to bind other things. Plutonium, for example, will very easily bind anything in your body which normally binds iron or calcium, and that's a lot of things. Uranium is chemically a little different, but will still mimic iron well enough. That's heavy metal toxicity, because all the things that are normally supposed to bind their regular metals and have a function to do will now stop working.
The bonus comes in the radioactivity. Most of the things that will bind plutonium or uranium will actually bind them much tigher than their normal metal (such as iron), and hold on to them very tightly, so that they cannot even be excreted from the body. So they will sit there as long as it takes them to radioactively decay and kill you with radiation poisoning on top of their general toxicity as heavy metals. Generally these metals go to the bones (calcium is a metal, and there's a lot of metal in your bones), fry your bone marrow, and get you very sick very fast.
2006-12-10 11:53:12 · answer #1 · answered by Some Body 4 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Incredibly.
2006-12-10 10:30:23 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Yes, it is radioactive and decays, releasing harmful radiation.
2006-12-10 10:30:41 · answer #3 · answered by Sunshine87 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Yes.
2006-12-10 10:29:58 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Definitely yes. It is also radioactive.
2006-12-10 10:30:33 · answer #5 · answered by Jack 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Yes, it's also radioactive and cancerogenic.
2006-12-10 10:47:54 · answer #6 · answered by Goca 2 · 1⤊ 0⤋