[ RadSafe ] Arafat Po poisoning report

[פרומה ודב בריקנר]

Hmmmm
17MBq/g in bone tissue and hypercellular bone marrow almost 3 weeks after
ingestion? 
Dov  Brickner  MD
 Beer-Sheva ISRAEL 

-----Original Message-----
From: radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu
[mailto:radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu] On Behalf Of KARAM, PHILIP
Sent: Thursday, November 07, 2013 11:02 PM
To: radsafe at health.phys.iit.edu
Subject: [ RadSafe ] Arafat Po poisoning report

For those who are interested, one of the labs analyzing Arafat's remains has
concluded that he was poisoned with Po-210. A copy of their report can be
downloaded from the Al Jazeera website
(http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/11/6/swiss-study-poloniumfoundin
arafatasbones.html).

I have not had a chance to review the report at all - it's about 100 pages
in length and I just downloaded it. But I have to say that I'm dubious that
Po-210 could be detected so long after it was administered - with a
half-life of 138 days, it's undergone 24 half-lives of decay so the original
activity has decayed by a factor of 2^24 (about 17 million) since
mid-October, 2004.

The report did mention a concentration of almost 1 Bq/gm in bone in one
sample, which means that the concentration at death would have been over 17
MBq/gm if I'm doing the calculations correctly. That seems like an awful lot
of Po-210.

In any event, it would be interesting if those of you who are better versed
in laboratory procedures and such could comment on the plausibility of this
part of the report being correct. It would also be interesting if those of
you better-versed in radiation sickness could comment on the symptoms
reported.

Finally, I should say that, although I'm dubious, I'm also willing to change
my mind! If the reported lab results are correct then that's the way it
goes.

All the best -

Andy
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