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Puffing on Polonium ::
Another reason I’m glad to have quit smoking:
The [tobacco] industry has been aware at least since the 1960s that cigarettes contain significant levels of polonium. ...
If .04 picocuries of polonium are inhaled with every cigarette, about a quarter of a curie of one of the world’s most radioactive poisons is inhaled along with the tar, nicotine and cyanide of all the world’s cigarettes smoked each year. Pack-and-a-half smokers are dosed to the tune of about 300 chest X-rays. ...
London’s smokers (and those Londoners exposed to secondhand smoke), taken as a group, probably inhale more polonium 210 on any given day than the former spy ingested with his sushi.
Sat, 2 Dec 2006, 1:41 PM PST
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