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| ON THE OTHER HAND |
| Polonium 210
By Antonio C. Abaya Written Dec. 05, 2006 For The Standard Today, December 07 issue Recent events, both here and abroad, have unwittingly conspired to remind us what a dangerous world our planet is turning out to be, where a misstep here or there, deliberate or otherwise, has unintended consequences. In the San Isidro National High School in Makati City , classes were suspended for more than a week after a cabinet in its science laboratory fell to the floor, spilling its contents of reagents and other chemicals. The resulting fumes, as the concentrated acids (nitric, sulfuric and hydrochloric) reacted with other, undetermined substances, sickened about a dozen people. What is most disturbing is the report that mercury was present in the cabinet that collapsed. If true, then the authorities concerned should consult with mining firms which use mercury in their operations (such as in extracting gold from its ores) and would have sensitive equipment to detect even minute traces of it and would know what steps to take to remove or neutralize it from the immediate vicinity in cases of accidental spills. Mercury is a poisonous carcinogen which degrades animal tissues over time, not immediately. Putting live rats and birds in the lab overnight, and expressing relief that they are still alive the next day, which is what the investigators did, is not a scientific way of determining the level of toxicity in the lab. We have to learn how to live and work and react in the Age of Science, in which, ideally, phenomena are observed and measured and categorized, and reactions to those phenomena, if necessary, are logically determined and scientifically calibrated. Even before the San Isidro incident could be satisfactorily resolved, another chemical incident took place in Marilao, Bulacan. This time it was not accidental, but incontrovertibly deliberate. A truck laden with apparently toxic waste from a plastics manufacturing plant dumped the chemicals into an irrigation canal which connects with the Marilao River . And it did so at 4:00 am , under cover of darkness, which indicates that the owner of the truck and the source of its toxic chemicals knew that what they were doing was illegal and harmful to the environment and to the people living in the immediate neighborhood. The stench of the chemicals woke up 1,200 residents from their sleep and forced them to flee their homes. Some 60 of them were hospitalized, complaining of dizziness, nausea and chest pains. But, as usually happens in this country, only the driver of the truck and his two helpers were arrested. The owner of the truck and the owners of the factory, who certainly knew what they were doing, have remained unaccountable for what must be a standard operating procedure in their respective businesses. What is also disturbing is that more than a week after the deliberate dumping, no one seems to know exactly what chemicals had been dumped into the irrigation canal, other than some vague references to �used petroleum waste.� If you don�t know exactly what you�re up against, how can you come up with counter-measures against it? Merely cleaning up part or most of the physical mess does not solve the problem. Since the toxins were dumped into an irrigation canal, their deleterious effects on the crops irrigated by that canal cannot be overlooked. By this time, the toxins have already leached into the soil of the dump site and have been carried downstream to leach into the soil there. Is it still safe to eat food crops raised in the area? Of more universal interest is the apparent poisoning of a former Russian spy in London last Nov. 1. Alexander Litvinenko was an agent of the Soviet KGB who defected to the British in 2000 and became a British citizen in 2005. Litvinenko became ill and was hospitalized after meeting with an Italian, Mario Scaramella, in a London sushi bar, and with two former (and conceivably still current) Russian agents of the FSB (the organization that replaced the KGB in the post-Soviet era) in a London hotel. Litvinenko died three weeks later. While he was still alive, British medical authorities diagnosed that he had been poisoned with thallium, but they later changed their minds and admitted that they did not know what had done him in. They have since come to the conclusion that he was poisoned with radioactive Polonium 210. An autopsy on his body confirmed this. British forensic police have also detected non-lethal traces of Polonium 210 in Litvinenko�s Russian wife Marina, and in the Italian Scaremella, as well as in 12 places in London , including the sushi bar, the hotel where he met the two FSB agents, his house, his hospital room, and other places which he had visited just before he was hospitalized. Scaramella had met with Litvinenko to warn him that the two of them, and several others, were on a hit list of the FSB for assassination. Who is Alexander Litvinenko and why did anyone want to kill him? Apparently, he was privy to high-level corruption in the KGB (now FSB). He was also critical of President Putin�s policy towards break-away Chechnya , claiming that the series of explosions that destroyed apartment blocks and killed hundreds of residents in Moscow in the 1990s were the handiwork of the FSB, but blamed by Putin�s government on Chechens to incite Russian public anger against them and justify the subsequent invasion of Chechnya . Litvinenko was also in close contact with the Russian investigative journalist Anna Polikovskaya, who was shot dead in the elevator of her apartment block in Moscow last October. She was also pursuing stories about high-level government corruption and about Putin�s genocidal policy toward the Chechens. The suspicion is that Litvinenko was poisoned on orders of some people in Moscow , either the Russian Mafia, or some rogue elements in the FSB (nee KGB), or President Putin himself. This suspicion was reinforced when British forensic police, after examining dozens of British Airways jetliners, found traces of Polonium 210 in three BA aircraft that plied the Moscow-London route in the days immediately before Litvinenko fell ill and was hospitalized, airplanes which neither Litvinenko nor his Italian friend Scaramella took. The conclusion is hard to avoid that the two (ex) Russian FSB agents smuggled the Polonium 210 to London , used it to poison Litvinenko, then flew home to Moscow . But on whose orders, is still open to speculation. It does not bolster President Putin�s innocence to know that he was head of the KGB during the Soviet era. One of the FSB agents has been found positive for Polonium 210, as were the BA aircraft that he took from Moscow to London , then back to Moscow . The plot thickens. Poisoning opponents and critics is standard operational procedure with the KGB/FSB. Last year, the popular pro-Western presidential candidate in the Ukraine elections was poisoned. Fortunately, he survived to be elected president, but his face was markedly disfigured. About ten years ago, a prominent defector from Bulgaria was killed while standing on a London kerb waiting for the bus. He had been pricked in the leg with an umbrella tipped with a needle laced with ricin, a poison derived from the pod of the castor bean, for which there is no known antidote. . Polonium 210 is an unstable, radioactive isotope of Polonium 84 which occurs in nature in a kind of coal known as pitchblende. But the radioactive isotope is a by-product of nuclear reaction in the laboratory or in a nuclear reactor as, for example, when Uranium 235 splits or nuclear-decays into lighter elements, including Polonium 210. This means that whoever brought the Polonium 210 to London to poison Litvinenko had access to either a sophisticated physics lab or a functioning nuclear reactor, which could only mean that the assassin had official connections. This has all the makings of a thrilling high-tech spy novel by John le Carre or Tom Clancy. But it is all for real. Most ominously, it shows how easy it is to smuggle radioactive material even into a high-tech gateway like Heathrow Airport in London . British forensic police have determined that the Polonium 210 material was probably no bigger than a grain of salt, easy to smuggle in in a lead container, to protect its carrier from a lethal dose of radiation, but leaving traces of radiation in the aircraft nonetheless. And easy to drop into the food or drinks of the unsuspecting victim. I am personally surprised that the British apparently do not use Geiger counters to screen incoming passengers for radiation. About two years ago, some 20 mostly Arabs of North African descent were arrested in Italy and accused of plotting to explode a �dirty bomb� in the United Kingdom . A �dirty bomb� is an ordinary explosive device laced with radioactive material (such as Polonium 210), and packed with fluffy material such as borax or talcum powder, so that when it is detonated, it spreads radioactivity over a wide area. (See my articles Next: A Dirty Bomb? of Nov. 16, 2004 , and Are the British Next? of Oct 29, 2002 ). A �dirty bomb� will not kill many people � most of the deaths would be due to accidents, heart attacks and suicides caused by hysteria � but the ensuing panic will cripple a modern capitalist economy for several weeks, especially if it is detonated in its very heart, Wall Street or The City in London. ***** Reactions to [email protected]. Other articles since 2001 in www.tapatt.org OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO |
| Reactions to �Polonium 210�
Polonium 210 emits alpha particles which are easily stopped by a thin sheet of paper or clothing. Hence, they are not detectable by Geiger counters... Nash Toledo, [email protected], UK , Dec.05, 2006 MY REPLY. Please clue me in. Why would Polonium 210, with its surplus of neutrons in its nucleus, emit only alpha radiation? And if the alpha radiation can �easily be stopped by a thin sheet of paper or clothing,� how come it was able to contaminate other people as well an entire sushi bar, hotel rooms, a hospital room and aircraft cabins while it was inside the body of a fully clothed victim, or (presumably) inside a lead container while it was being transported by the assassin from Moscow to London? If not by a Geiger counter, how did the British police detect it in all the above places? I really want to know. wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Dear Tony: Going by Murphy's Law, it is not improbable that one of these days a terrorist or a group of terrorists will succeed in getting past inspection at Heathrow in London, Charles de Gaulle in Paris, JFK or LaGuardia in New York and explode those dreaded "dirty bombs" in several cities. Not many people may actually be killed, but I am sure there will be panic all around. Mariano Patalinjug, [email protected], Yonkers, New York, Dec. 05, 2006 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Dear Tony � Excellent article on the poisonings What a wealth of technical information. Regards. Poch Robles, [email protected], Dec. 05, 2006 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Hi, Tony Very informative article. Hope the authorities and the anti-terrorist agencies are able to come up with the right measures needed to prevent entry of this substance to our country and other countries as well. Best regards. Bobby Tordesillas, [email protected], Dec. 05, 2006 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Wow..John Le Carre, Tom Clancy...Toniski Abaya! You are now among thriller writers! Tony Joaquin, [email protected], Daly City, California, Dec. 05, 2006 MY REPLY. Except that the Litvinenko Affair is not fiction. It�s for real. wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Your knowledge of chemistry came in handy in your recent article on Polonium. Keep up the good work. From one chemist to another. Virgilio Gonzales, [email protected], Dec 05, 2006 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Re Polonium 210, it is also found in cigarettes. Smokers of one and a half packs a day inhale polonium to the tune of 300 X-rays a year, per Prof. Robert N. Proctor of Stanford University (p. 6, International Herald Tribune, Dec. 2-3/06). Aida Sevilla-Mendoza, [email protected], Dec.07, 2006 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww This was this reader�s original reaction to my article �Polonium 210� and my reply to his reaction Polonium 210 emits alpha particles which are easily stopped by a thin sheet of paper or clothing. Hence, they are not detectable by Geiger counters... Nash Toledo, [email protected], UK , Dec.05, 2006 MY REPLY. Please clue me in. Why would Polonium 210, with its surplus of neutrons in its nucleus, emit only alpha radiation, instead of the more common beta radiation? And if the alpha radiation can �easily be stopped by a thin sheet of paper or clothing,� how come it was able to contaminate other people as well an entire sushi bar, hotel rooms, a hospital room and aircraft cabins while it was inside the body of a fully clothed victim, or (presumably) inside a lead container while it was being transported by the assassin from Moscow to London? If not by a Geiger counter, how did the British police detect it in all the above places? I really want to know. And this is his response to my reply: . Nuclear particle physics is not my field of expertise so I can't elaborate on why polonium decays primarily by alpha radiation. I know that it does and I know a little about what alpha radiation can do. Alpha particles are highly energetic, hence the short half life of polonium-210 (138 days). These highly energetic particles can directly cut/nick DNA or produce free radicals which attach to DNA. This screws up protein expression in the cell and can either lead to cell suicide (apoptosis) or tumour growth. Yet, one, two, five, or ten faulty cells won't be enough to harm us because we have highly evolved repair and recovery mechanisms to correct for such ionising radiation damage. However, there will be a threshold radiation dose which if exceeded will definitely cause massive problems. Going back to Polonium-210, Litvinenko would have had to ingest or inhale it for it to do any real damage. Outside the body, it's practically harmless. Even inside the body, it would have to be above a threshold quantity such that the biological repair and recovery mechanisms are overwhelmed. As far as I can recall from articles regarding this real-life spy thriller, ~120nanograms of polonium-210 is fatal. It is suggested that Litvinenko ingested microgram quantities. The Italian contact Scaramella is reported to have been contaminated with 1/20th of the fatal dose that killed Litvinenko. In solution, as a salt (nitrate/citrate), polonium-210 is tasteless and can easily be poured in Litvinenko's drink/food. The assassins knew polonium-210, in whatever quantity, wasn't immediately toxic outside the body. The fact that the airplane cabin, flight attendants, sushi bar staff, hotel bar staff etc. tested positive for contamination meant the poison was casually hand carried. They were literally carrying the polonium-210 "salt-shaker" in their pockets ready to jump on the most opportune moment to spike Litvinenko's food. They would have spilled quantities of it in the process, hence the contamination. In fact, it cannot be established if Litvinenko got ONE massive dose of poison or quantities on several occasions. And no, they would not have carried this in a lead container as all hand carried luggage is x-rayed at the airport. Indeed, lead does not allow x-rays to pass but this will in fact emphasize its presence as weird blank object on the x-ray monitor. This would raise suspicion (assuming the x-ray checker was attentive.) No special container was needed. It could simply have been inside a bottle of vodka or in a make-up kit. (We all know the best assassins are female.) The British investigators are checking for polonium-210 AFTER the fact, hence they are using alpha particle detectors (presumably silicon surface-barrier detectors/passivated implanted silicon alpha detectors. Practically it's similar to how a solar panel works.) to retrace the journey of polonium-210 from Moscow to London . Isn't this such an interesting flashback from the cold war? It would make Robert Ludlum, John le Carre, and Tom Clancy shake with excitement. As a result of this sensational killing, Anglo-Russian diplomatic relations are strained, the language centre of the British Council in Moscow has been ordered closed by the Kremlin (half of the Brit Council officials in Moscow are spies anyway. This is also true for the US Embassy in the Philippines . Those 'diplomats' with 'weird' job titles are actually CIA field agents), and Russia is loathe to admit that for $10M or less one can buy radionuclides from their cash-strapped research centres. As if to make things interesting, Scaramella was arrested yesterday in Naples by Italian agents on suspicion of arms smuggling. It's truly a tangled web. Going back to alpha particle spectroscopy, the decay of this particular polonium-210 will definitely leave a 'unique' fingerprint. It is actually possible to determine where it came from and how it was made. (I had one nuclear scientist verify that this statement is true.) The Brits know this. They know that the Russians know this. The Russians know this. The Russians know that the Brits know this. Both will not admit anything more and we, the public, will unlikely be told full details of this case. We can only speculate. (Another fodder for conspiracy theorists/writers with fertile imaginations.) The assassins probably didn't expect Litvinenko to have survived poisoning as long as he did and were hoping the short half-life of polonium-210 would prevent its detection. Now for some fun trivia: polonium-210 is naturally occurring and has a high affinity for protein allowing it to be passed up the food chain. We do ingest it naturally from seafood. (Very small doses, nothing to be worried about.) More malevolently, it exists in cigarette smoke and is deposited in the lung tissues. Depending on where the tobacco was grown and how the cigarette was manufactured there will be different average activity concentrations of polonium-210. Philippine cigarettes have average polonium-210 activity concentrations of 10.7 mBq/cigarette while French cigarettes have 23.2mBq/cigarette (Kahter, J. Envi Radioactivity,71, 2004, pp 33-41). A sunog-baga who smokes one pack a day will be inhaling around ~123mBq of polonium-210 (among other things!) One British study shows raised levels of Polonium-210 in the teeth enamel of children living in a 10 km radius of major motorways (Henshaw, Lancet 345, Feb 4, 1995.) It was suggested that the Polonium-210 comes from with the exhaust fumes of unleaded petrol. I'm only saddened that this event has released another wave of radiation-phobia, paranoia, scare-mongering, and the unnecessary and misdirected spending of money for the so-called 'war on terror'. Let us not forget that the 'secondary' characters in this sensational spy case, the Chechens, are still suffering. Cheers, Nash Toledo, [email protected], UK , Dec. 27, 2006 OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO |