Polonium-210, smoking, and spies

What do cigarettes and the strangest (publicly known) assassination in the recent history have to do with each other?  Polonium-210!  It's a radioactive isotope that is one of the many "daughters" of the decay of natural uranium.  It's present in small quantities in soil and rock around us.  Interestingly, tobacco plants take up Polonium from soil and fertilizer.  A significant contribution of the cancer-causing power of smoking comes from radiation from Polonium-210 alpha decays in the lungs.

I recently ran across an article that is an "expose" of the fact that tobacco companies have long known about the radioactive material in their cigarettes and kept it quiet.  Check it out: ABC News article on radiation in tobacco smoke.

A concentrated (but still invisibly small) dose of pure Polonium-210 was slipped into a cup of tea consumed by former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko in 2006, and led to his rapid death from radiation poisoning.  This story of this assassination is fascinating and disturbing.  Read about it in this CBS News Article or by following the book review link below.


Image credit:  The Alexander Litvinenko Family, via Getty Images, taken from a New York Times book review on "The Terminal Spy," a book about Litvinenko's death.