Polonium-210, the most lethal chemical element known to man!

Hello there!

To those unfamiliar with the bad boys of the periodic table, imagine Polonium as the worst bad guy. In fact he would most likely be the gang leader, considering it takes less than a microgram of this substance to constitute a fatal dose. To help you better image exactly how much a microgram is, it is about no larger than a spec of dust. But what exactly makes Polonium so deadly, that even a microgram could take out a healthy human being?

Let us back track a bit. Polonium 210 was first discovered as a radioactive chemical element (atomic number 84) in 1898 by Marie Curie. She found it in a source of Uranium and it takes the form of a solid metal with a silver color. Later winning a Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her discovery, she also a found another element, radium. They first saw the effects of how dangerous this element was after a lab accident exposed her own daughter to a fatal amount, evoking leukemia, which lead to her death 10 years later.

Another scandal brought attention to the perils of Polonium exposure with a Russian spy, Alexander Litvinenko, who was poisoned by a lethal amount, later dying of radiation sickness.

Medical News today sites, “Toxicologists estimate that one gram of polonium could be enough to kill 50 million people, on top of another 50 million who would become ill; in the case of Litvinenko, less than one millionth of that amount would have been enough to cause his death (less than a microgram).”

Polonium-210 is clearly very deadly to humans but strangely it does not itself have toxic chemical properties. The danger comes purely from the radiation the element emits. For someone to be infected with Polonium-210, they must absorb it internally. This can be through broken skin or through inhalation or ingestion, as in the Litvinenko case.

In the case of oral ingestion, polonium-210 is initially concentrated in red blood cells, and transferred to the liver, kidneys, bone marrow, gastrointestinal tract, and testicles or ovaries. Because it is a group 1 carcinogen, if inhaled it can cause lung cancer.

                                                                                                     M Navneeth Krishna

                                                                                                     @mnavneeth