Uranium “daughter products” naturally present in the soil seem to be selectively absorbed into the tobacco plant, where they decay into radioactive polonium.
Polonium 210 killed former KGB agent Alexander V. Litvinenko last week.
Smokers inhale .04 picocuries of polonium 210 per cigarette. Filters are not very effective in reducing this. Pack and a half smokers are dosed to the tune of about 300 chest x-rays.
Hello Bugman!!!
Billy
Surely a pack is about 200 hundred x-rays is a better quoteable stat?
Scary stuff, or it would be if anyone I loved or cared about smoked.
polonium gives me superhuman strength
… Ive tried quiting again yesterday…
… and found myself smoking a butt out of an ashtray this moroning that I
havent emptied yet.
Maybe for you, but most people wouldn’t be so concerned about a mere 200 X rays/day.
300 starts to scare 'em, I think.
Another reason to stop or not start smoking, not that we needed any more…
Just repeat that to yourself. Do you really want to be reduced to a… butt-smoker? 
Why do you view this as a bad thing? Smokers don’t have to go in for chest x-rays anymore. They just tape film to their chests for a week and mail it in at the end. This is very efficient for everyone involved. Why are you so negative, Billy?
Any reference to where this nonsense originate? Or did you came up with it yourself?
Either way, I think Putin is more harmfull than sigarettes are.
That stat might be numerically easier, but strays even further from what the statistician probably said.
I suspect that what he actually said was similar to: " A man smoking a pack and a half a day, for his entire adult life, subjects himself to a total similar amount of radiation as that received in 300 chest X-rays."
But even that statement is unscientific. Polonium produces alpha radiation, a short range radiation totally unsuited to body scanning. X-rays are a different animal, so comparing the two is rather suspect to begin with.
Nao
naomi wins
But polonium-210 when ingested produces those energetic, ionizing alphas within the body and within the organs. Comparison between alphas, protons, electrons, neutrons, gammas, and x-rays is done in various equivalent dose units. These are in general takien to be sources of radiation outside of the body and alphas barely penetrate the skin. I think that the massive number of chest x-rays may be accurate because the polonium is going directly into the lungs. It may also be insignificant.
The sources for the rapid increase in polonium levels in tobacco can be Googled quite easily. Do you believe web hysteria, though?
is this stuff worse than pot
Taken internally, in a defector’s breakfast, Polonium does indeed become highly dangerous.
Extract:
In 1982, an article titled `Radioactivity in Cigarette Smoke’ in the New England Journal of Medicine by T.H.Winters and J.R.DiFranza of the University of Massachusetts Medical Centre, provided the wake up call. They showed that cigarette contains radioactivity in the form of polonium-210 (Po-210) and lead-210 (Pb-210). They claimed that a person smoking 1 and 1/2 packs of cigarettes per day receives a radiation dose to certain regions of the lung equal to 300 x-ray films of the chest per year. Others estimated that the dose is over 70 times more. The dose rate depends on the radioactive content of the tobacco, the puff size and the frequency and number of cigarettes smoked.
This would appear to be a source of the original information: note that some estimates were a factor of 70 greater than the quoted 300. Making a range equivalent to 300 to 21,000 X-rays per year. So I think accuracy is somewhat out of the window here.
But hysteria is not just confined to the web. They grounded three of BA’s aeroplanes in the recent Polonium scare, and were trying to contact 35,000 passengers. This seemed rather extreme. I could sit on a block of Polonium for a year and its radiation would not even get through my knickers.
…and before you say it: I’ve seen your picture: less chance even than Polonium.
Nao
There is proof polonium exists, and is harmful.
And it is in tobacco.
And tobacco is harmful, partly because of polonium.
Now Naomi did discuss one half of your comparison, I’d like to focus on the other. And I’m not the biggest expert in the world on radiation-hygiene, especially not on medical use…
But how do you define chest x-ray? The dose that was common in the quoted year 1982? The regular dose in the 90ties? (something like 10 times smaller) The newest trend (up to even 5% of that, especially at children).
In tap-water there is water.
In water there is H20.
Pure H20 is not very healthy to drink (google for it!).
So; tap-water is unhealty, beer might possible be 300 x better, and maybe even a factor 70 of that.
Anyway you shouldn’t drink water: fish fuck in it!
Naomi, this is a family forum. Actually, I think you’re making a pass at me by challenging me in such a subtle way.
