🚀 go-pugleaf

Kym Horsell has suggested that plutonium is far more toxic than common
highly toxic substances and has cited figures to bolster this point.

There are some most significant misunderstandings in this which bear
mentioning.

Hydrogen cyanide is often fatal at a dose of 50 milligrams. It is a highly
volatile compound and is easily inhaled. A lethal dose of potassium
cyanide is approx 250 milligrams. It is hydrolysed by stomach acid to
generate hydrogen cyanide. It has been used as war gas, often in
combination with phosgene (which is often fatal at a dose of 35
milligrams) and sometimes in association with nerve gases.

Talking of nerve gases, sarin is often fatal if 1 milligram in inhaled. It
is less toxic by skin absorption on account of its volatility. However,
closely related soman is about six times as toxic by skin absorption and
twice as toxic by inhalation.

Then of course, there's VX -- 300 micrograms of VX is usually a lethal
dose by skin absorption, 10 micrograms by inhalation. VX is not volatile;
it's a heavy oily substance.

Now, plutonium... there's not a single recorded death of anyone anywhere
in the world actually as a result of plutonium. People on the Manhattan
Project were expsoed to considerable amounts of plutonium containing dust
and received vastly greater doses than the allegedly lethal dose proposed
by Donald Geesaman in 1969. The "hot particle" theory has been rejected by
specialists in nuclear medicine. The interesting thing is this puts Kym;s
LD 50 data in perspective -- it's totally speculative as there haven't
been any cases of death attributable to plutonium anyway. Of course, only
the inhalation of plutonium actually presents a risk -- it cannot be
absorbed through the skin as poisons such as sarin, hydrofluoric acid etc
can be; if swallowed it largely passes through the gut, unlike sarin,
hydrofluoric acid, cyanides etc. If ingested hydrofluoric acid generally
dissolves the gut and precipitates calcium in the blood... lovely stuff.

Then, too, in actual production, sarin claimed victims at Dyhernfurth
where it was manufactured under supervision by its inventer, Gerhard
Schrader (after 1942). Oh yes, being a fluoride (isopropyl methyl
phosphono fluoridate) you have to use hydrofluoric acid to manufacture it.
So you risk being poisoned by that as well.

My vote for most toxic substance known to man goes to the Ebola Zaire
virus. As little as 5 viral particles; that's just 35 molecules, can cause
an explosive infection which has a case fatality rate in excess of ninety
percent. Furthermore, it amplifies itself billions of times in the course
of the infection and its origins and natural hosts are unknown.

Philip Ross
Chairman
NZ Atomic Energy Advocacy Council
http://www.inhb.co.nz/proceedings/atomic

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