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Polonium-210 Available Through Mail Order
Knutsi writes "InformationWeek is reporting that Polonium 210, the radioactive material used to poison former KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko is not as hard to get your hands on as some have previously stated. American family business United Nuclear is actually selling the stuff, and other equally exotic materials, on their company website. Could come in handy for the xmas shopping season."
No it isn't. That's the standard set by OSHA which is several orders of magnitude below the toxic dose in order to prevent health effects in people working with the stuff.
-b.
I did buy magnets from there. They are freakin' awesome.
I accidentally held them too close to each other with nothing in between and they slammed together with such a force that they made sparks and got chipped. I couldn't for the life of me get the magnets apart again until I realized that I could set one on the edge of a table and put my weight on the other to slide them apart but it still hurt my hands to do that.
The strength will amaze you and I only bought the 1" cube magnets. I can't even begin to imagine the strength of the really big ones.
The Internet is full. Go Away!!!
Among the most dangerous things you can give your small child are magnets - particularly the small pea-sized sort that are used in toys that are moved around on a platform by other magnets placed underneath.
If a child swallows more than one of these magnets, they can find each other through bowel tissue and clamp together, eventually killing the tissue that ends up between them due to lack of blood flow and possibly perforating the bowel.
The magnets they are talking about can break bones if you don't handle them correctly, and if you've ever handled smaller magnets before (who hasn't), you know that it can be tricky trying to arrange more than one magnet (even small ones) without allowing them to collide. You could probably also kill yourself with these magnets in freak circumstances.
Oh come on, why don't you people stomp my only joy in life some more. It causes cancer, it smells, it yellows your teeth, it stunts your growth, it makes you sterile, it slaughters small puppies with a chainsaw...and now its radioactive. Son of a bitch! I'm about to start smoking crack...seems less harmful.
Selex
Does the United Nuclear's webpage sell that too?
Check this out: http://wired.com/wired/archive/14.06/chemistry.htm l
Modern magnets are so powerful there are real hazards. When magnets were iron or, at the high end, AlNiCo, they couldn't retain a strong enough field to make much trouble, so people thought of magnets as safe. Neodymium magnets, though, can be made strong enough to be dangerous. The Magnetix building set killed several kids when magnets came loose from the plastic parts and were ingested. The CPSC had to order a recall.
Often times these heavy elements have worse biological properties from their chemical interactions than from the radiation they emit. It might well be that it will be chemically toxic to you long before radiation becomes a worry.
In most cases it's a combination of the two...the chemical properties will ferry the isotope to a sensitive location where the radiation can wreak havoc.
For example, a weak alpha emitter can be held in the palm of your hand without any effects. An element that acts as a drop-in calcium replacement in the body can benignly sit in your bones. Combine both properties, and you'll have irradiated bone marrow and a world of hurt.
There is already clarification on how they sell Polonium 20
http://www.unitednuclear.com/isotopes.htm