Ive been reading and following the Sasha Litvinenko story....he was radioactively poisoned by polonium 210 in London last Nov....Apparently, Andrei Lugovoi an ex-KGB officer is the suspect...heres some facts on Po from my beloved WIKI....
By mass, polonium is around 250 billion times more toxic than hydrogen cyanide .The main hazard is its intense radioactivity (as an alpha emitter), which makes it very difficult to handle safely - one gram of Po will self-heat to a temperature of around 500°C. Even in 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).
One gram of 210Po could thus in theory poison 100 million people of whom 50 million would die. The actual toxicity of 210Po is lower than these estimates, because radiation exposure that is spread out over several weeks (the biological half-life of polonium in humans is 30 to 50 days[27]) is somewhat less damaging than an instantaneous dose. It has been estimated that a minimal lethal dose of 210Po for an 80 kg person is 4 millicuries, or 0.89 micrograms, still an extremely small amount (28).
well, Russia is not extraditing Andrei Lugovoi to London, where he will be tried. Apparently, it is non-existent in the Russian constituition to exrtradite a citizen!
Will update on Sasha.....
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