Polonium cannot kill you unless you injest it. It cannot go through skin.

[applegrove]

You could hold it in your hands and you would be fine as long as you took a shower after. According to CBC News.

[MADem]

1. Don't eat the glowing sushi. NT

[jpak]

2. Same thing with plutonium

but some will argue that babies thrive on it...

:evilgrin:

[5X]

3. It does emit mostly alpha particles which will only

travel a short distance. To see an interesting discussion on the
subject, go to this link and listen to the 11/28 broadcast.

<http://webcast.berkeley.edu/courses/archive.php?seriesid=1906978373>

[Beetwasher]

4. Yes, But Apparently Hamlet Can Kill Polonium

"Neither a borrower nor a lender be!"

[TheMadMonk]

5. Pretty much true. Polonium 210 is an Alpha-emitter.

Alpha radiation is ionized helium and it can be stopped by a sheet of paper. It has to cozy up real close to DNA for it to have a chance to do any real radiological damage.

The bullshit about an autopsy being too dangerous is just that. Bullshit!!! A hazmat/biohazard suit for the ME's would be overkill.

Two stories about the early days of a-bombs. The plutonium core for the Trinity Device was carried out to the site in a box in Philip Morison's lap. And Queen Elizabeth stroked a gold plated lump of the stuff and commented on how warm it was. The gold plating was more than sufficient protection.

[wtmusic]

6. "Warm like a baby rabbit"

from The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes (although there's a lot more free neutrons coming out of an a-bomb core than alpha radiation).

[musiclawyer]

7. Remember Luis Polonia

The diminutive outfielder who played for the A's and later on the Yankees I think. First thing I thought of when Polonium became the trendy element.

[bluerum]

8. Wikipedia page on the toxicity of polonium.

This is a wikipedia entry on the toxicity of polonium.

Polonium is a highly radioactive and toxic element and is very difficult to handle. Even in milligram or microgram amounts, handling 210Po is extremely dangerous, requiring specialized equipment and strict handling procedures. Alpha particles emitted by polonium will damage organic tissue easily if polonium is ingested, inhaled, or absorbed (though they do not penetrate the epidermis and hence are not hazardous if the polonium is outside the body).

The committed effective dose equivalent (CEDE) of 5.14×10−7 sieverts per becquerel (1.9×103 mrem/microcurie) for ingested 210Po, this value is vital for working out the cancer risk associated with 210Po. For an assessment of acute effects (radiation sickness) the dose rate (Gy day-1) is more important than the committed dose which is a dose inflicted over many years.<17> If the polonium is inhaled, the CEDE is even higher, 2.54×10-6 Sv/Bq or 9.43×103 mrem/microcurie.

In rats a dose of 1.45 MBq/kg of 210Po tends to cause death in about 30 days.<18>

The maximum allowable body burden for ingested polonium is only 1,100 becquerels (0.03 microcurie), which is equivalent to a particle weighing only 6.8 × 10-12 gram. Weight for weight, polonium is approximately 2.5 × 1011 (250 billion) times as toxic as hydrogen cyanide. The maximum permissible concentration for airborne soluble polonium compounds is about 7,500 Bq/m3 (2 × 10-11 µCi/cm3). The biological half-life of polonium in humans is 30 to 50 days.<19>

Notably the death in 2006 of Alexander Litvinenko has been announced as probably due to Polonium-210 poisoning.

[Pugee]

9. So, what are all the people that they are testing and sending to specialists?

Do they think that they injested it too? Wouldn't it have made them sick by now?

[applegrove]

10. Fear is a terrible thing to live with. They probably need to take action or "do something".