USA TODAY
By Dan Vergano
Q: What is polonium?
A: Polonium is a lead-colored radioactive element found in uranium. The particular type, or isotope, that killed Alexander Litvinenko is polonium-210, which is mainly produced inside nuclear reactors.
Q: How did polonium-210 kill Alexander Litvinenko?
A: It emits alpha radiation, which kills living tissues up close, but it is easily blocked by the skin and even a few inches of air. If it enters the bloodstream, high doses kill within hours or weeks.
Q: How can radiation poisoning be treated?
A: At lower doses, intense antibiotic treatment, bone marrow transplant and “chelation,” a medical stripping of heavy metals from the body, can help patients. However, poisoning has to be diagnosed quickly and alpha radiation is difficult to detect in the body.
Q: What is the connection between polonium and cigarettes?
A: Polonium occurs in nature at very low levels. Tobacco plants absorb a polonium isotope different from polonium-210 as they grow. And a cigarette contains less than a billionth of the amount of polonium implicated in Litvinenko’s death, according to a 1996 study in the journal Radiologic Technology.
Q: What are scientists and doctors who are watching the case discussing?
A: Everything. “It will be the case study someday,” says health physicist Andrew Karam of MJW Corp. in Buffalo.
RUSSIA TODAY
By Georgiy Vyacheslav
Kremlin Official/ Newspaper Reporter/ News Anchor
Q: What is polonium?
A: A silencer of rats
Q: How did polonium-210 kill Alexander Litvinenko?
A: Because he over slept and missed his flight that blew up, he didn’t drink that pint of beer the ‘girl’ at the end of the bar bought him, and his body, and this goes against everything we know scientifically, has absolutely no reaction to obscene amounts of ricin. One of the guys had some polonium at his apartment so we said, let’s give it a whirl.
Q: How can radiation poisoning be treated?
A: (Laughs loudly) Telling you would kind of defeat the purpose wouldn’t it.
Q: What is the connection between polonium and cigarettes?
A: Usually it’s a tall man with greased back hair in a long black leather trench coat smoking a cigarette who dumps polonium into your food.
Q: What are scientists and doctors who are watching the case discussing?
A: Just let them understand that while they are watching the case, they in turn are being watched. All praise and glory to President Putin, may I thank him for another day on this Earth.
