Next, depending on the dose, various body organs will be affected, including the bone marrow, the gastrointestinal system, and the cardiovascular and central nervous system (CNS). The higher the dose, the faster the effect will be.Īfter these acute symptoms, the patient may appear to recover, but bone marrow damage will continue, resulting in lower white blood cell and platelet counts. lowered white blood cell count, or lymphopenia.Symptoms would depend on the strength of polonium used. can carry out urine tests to assess for it. The main difficulty with diagnosing polonium-210 poisoning is that it is so rare. Entry through skin abrasions or wounds.Ī person cannot be contaminated by another, contaminated person unless they swallow or inhale bodily fluids from that person.To poison someone, however, it must then be introduced to the body. However, this also makes it safe to transport and hard to detect, for a would-be poisoner. Polonium-210 cannot penetrate the skin, and the particles usually lose all their energy after traveling through a few centimeters of air. When used in commercial devices, this is done in such a way that the polonium could not be separated for use as a poison.Įven if someone did manage to acquire some polonium, it is not particularly dangerous to carry around, because its high-energy radiation can be blocked by a relatively thin barrier, such as a piece of paper. But it is also extremely difficult to obtain. Litvinenko could have died after consuming less than one millionth of that amount.Īs a weapon, it would be lethal. Toxicologists estimate that one gram of polonium-210 could be enough to: The danger comes when it emits radiation. Polonium does not have toxic chemical properties. However, in sufficient amounts, it can be lethal within days or weeks. These environmental levels are normally harmless to human health, except in smokers, who have higher levels. There are very low levels of polonium-210 in the environment, and it enters our bodies through the food chain, for example, when eating seafood. Polonium-210 is one of the most toxic substances known to man, yet it is all around us. As little as about 100 micrograms (0.0001 grams) of polonium occurs in one ton of uranium ore. It is also used to keep environments dust free, such as in the production of computer chips. This is useful for making tape, rolling paper, and spinning synthetic fibers, for example. Polonium-210 is used in industry to make devices that remove static. Tobacco smokers have more polonium-210 because smoking causes it to accumulates in the lungs. Polonium-210 is present in small amounts in the human body, due to low levels in the normal environment and the food chain, especially in seafood. Its biological half life is 40 days, so it takes 40 days for biological processes to eliminate half of the Polonium-210 in the body. This means that half its radioactivity dies away in this time. It decays into a new, stable metal: lead. As a result, it ceases to be dangerous relatively quickly. This material is highly dangerous, but it has a relatively short half-life. The most common and best-known polonium isotope is polonium-210. Purified polonium is very volatile, and polonium isotopes are radioactive. Polonium-210 is one of 25 known radioactive isotopes of polonium. In its natural state, at room temperature, polonium is a solid metal with a silver color. Polonium is a radioactive chemical element (atomic number 84) that was discovered in 1898 by Marie Curie, who named the element after her country, Poland. Share on Pinterest Polonium-210 is highly radioactive substance and a lethal poison.
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