Appearance and Characteristics
Harmful effects:
Lutetium is considered to be non toxic.
Characteristics:
Lutetium is a silvery-white rare earth metal. The metal tarnishes slowly in air and burns at 150 oC to the oxide. It is the densest and hardest of the lanthanides. It is also one of the least abundant lanthanides, however it is still more abundant on earth than silver or gold. When present in compounds, lutetium exists usually in the trivalent state ,Lu3+. Most of its salts are colorless.
Uses of Lutetium
Lutetium oxide is used to make catalysts for cracking hydrocarbons in the petrochemical industry.
177Lu is used in cancer therapy and because of its long half-life, 176Lu is used to date the age of meteorites.
Lutetium oxyorthosilicate (LSO) is currently used in detectors in positron emission tomography (PET). This is a noninvasive medical scan that creates a three-dimensional image of the body’s cellular activity.