Polonium-210
revere | March 17, 2007The UK's Health Protection Agency has a follow-up on their monitoring of people and places potentially contaminated with the extremely dangerous alpha-emitter, Polonium-210, the weapon used to kill Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko (see our posts here and here about Polonium-210, and here and here about the murder). Their spin is that tests "so far" show minimal risk to the general public. What surprised me is that their tests showed widespread exposure to the public. Here are the reported results:
Test result update
Category 1
*596 people had results 'below reporting level' - below 30…
revere | January 29, 2007Having spent several posts on the science behind Polonium-210 (here, here, here), we thought we'd bring you a follow up on the case to date. The murder weapon seems to be a pot of tea. How very English:
British officials say police have cracked the murder-by-poison case of former spy Alexander Litvinenko, including the discovery of a "hot" teapot at London's Millennium Hotel with an off-the-charts reading for Polonium-210, the radioactive material used in the killing.
A senior official tells ABC News the "hot" teapot remained in use at the hotel for several weeks after Litvinenko's death…
revere | December 1, 2006We mostly like being right, but we sometimes wish we weren't. A few days ago we concluded a post) on some scientific background about Polonium-210 by saying this assassination could also become a public health problem. That now seems to be the case, as a trail of radiation is being found in the victim's wake. UK authorities are scrambling to track down anyone who might be exposed and establish where the contamination is.
Several British Airways planes on the Moscow - London route have been impounded after it was reported traces of radiation had been found aboard. The UK authorities are…
revere | November 28, 2006[This is Part II of our explanation of some of the science behind the Polonium-210 poisoning case of Alexander Litvinenko. Part I. is here.]
In Part I. we sketched the physical background to understand radioisotopes like Polonium-210, the agent in the Litvinenko poisoning, but have yet to explain its connection to the biology. That's today's order of business.
Remember that the chemistry is located in the orbital electrons of each atom. Sharing electrons or pairing charges is how atoms bond with each other -- literally and figuratively. So if you mess up the electron structure you can mess up…
revere | November 27, 2006It's bigger news in the UK than elsewhere but it's still big news. Apparently Russian dissident and former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko was fatally poisoned with Polonium 210. Time for some science.
Polonium 210 is a radioisotope, meaning it is an isotope of the element Polonium that is radioactive. Three things here: element, isotope and radioactive.
Things in our world are made of chemicals and the chemicals are made of elementary building blocks, called, naturally enough, elements. Last time I checked there were 117 different flavors, ninety four of which occur naturally and the rest can…