[ RadSafe ] Polonium-210 poisoning

[Mark Ramsay]

Do I not recall some gamma spec (yes gamma) was done which linked it to reactor based production (based on impurities) ?

Rgs

Mark


Sent from my iPhone

On 11 Sep 2011, at 14:12, "Busby, Chris" <C.Busby at ulster.ac.uk> wrote:

> 
> Yes. Interesting. Everyone blamed the Russians because it was said that only someone with access to a reactor could have put the poison together i.e. it was not a amateur job. But it is easy to separate Po210 from old radium tubes with nitric acid and baking soda; a kitchen job, though you'd have to be jolly careful. I think KGB would have far more sophisticated ways of killing someone.
> Chris 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: radsafe-bounces at agni.phys.iit.edu on behalf of Otto G. Raabe
> Sent: Sat 9/10/2011 7:38 PM
> To: The International Radiation Protection (Health Physics) Mailing List
> Subject: [ RadSafe ] Polonium-210 poisoning
> 
> September 10, 2011
> 
> At London's Millenium Hotel on November 1, 2006, Alexander 
> Litvinenko, a Russian defector, was poisoned  with tea containing a 
> large amount of polonium-210. He fell ill that very day and died 
> after a long hospitalization on November 23. He told investigators 
> that he had met with two former KGB agents early on the day he fell ill.
> 
> That event reminded me of an old black-and-white movie that I saw in 
> 1950, and I recently rented it from Netflix. Well, the similarity of 
> that story was surprising, especially since that story was written so 
> early in the atomic age.
> 
> That 1950 movie was named "D.O.A", starring Edmond O'Brien.
> 
> While on vacation in San Francisco, an accountant named Frank Bigelow 
> is purposely poisoned at a bar with a "slow-acting" poison which the 
> doctors called a "luminous poison".  In the movie, the physicians 
> detected the poison in the victim's blood using a blood sample mixed 
> in a test tube with a scintillation solution and observed the tube 
> glowing in the dark. This glowing tube is shown in the movie. The 
> doctors reported extensive blood cell damage and told Bigelow that 
> his condition was terminal. He had only a few days or weeks to live. 
> They said they could have pumped his stomach if he had come in soon 
> after he was poisoned, but he did not know that he was poisoned. The 
> doctors said that there was no antidote for this "luminous" poison.
> 
> Well the story is about how Bigelow searches for the attacker, and it 
> is quite interesting especially with all the old scenes in San Francisco.
> 
> Otto
> 
> 
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