Read other letters about this article

• Friday, December 1, 2006 08:28 AM

  holes big enough to drive a brush through?

  The train of thought in several previous letters seems to be:

  1. Polonium-210 is readily available as an ingredient in anti-static brushes;

  2. Therefore it would be a simple matter to poison someone with polonium-210, in such a way that the death would be very rapid (in the order of weeks rather than many years).

  Let me be the first to admit I know nothing about the specific radiological properties of polonium, other than what I've read in these articles and letters. However, none of your letter-writers, who have so quickly concluded that Salon's article was a crock, have dealt with a couple of key issues cited by John Large:

  1. The isotope suspected in the Litvinenko case has a very short half-life (making it far from obvious, to my untutored mind, how these ubiquitous anti-static brushes could be the source of a quick-acting radiological poison);

  2. When such a metal contaminant is ingested, most of it is normally screened out in the gut, and very little will actually pass into the bloodstream. (Therefore, just because polonium can be acquired simply as part of an anti-static brush, it does not follow that it is at all simple to get that polonium into the human body and make it stay there to do its harm.)

  If anyone can address these issues more convincingly and logically than Mr. Large did in the interview, I'd be quite interested.

  —northbranch Read northbranch's other letters
  Permalink
  Flag
  Click "Submit Flag" if you feel this post is inappropriate. Explain why below if you wish.

  Cancel