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From: KEN@NJITCCCC.BITNET (Kenneth Ng)
Newsgroups: net.space
Subject: Plutonium toxicity
Message-ID: <8603070944.AA07436@s1-b.arpa>
Date: Fri, 7-Mar-86 04:12:00 EST
Article-I.D.: s1-b.8603070944.AA07436
Posted: Fri Mar  7 04:12:00 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 8-Mar-86 05:33:13 EST
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The ARPA Internet
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About that reference that plutonium is the most dangerous substance
known to mankind.  If that were so we'd have a pretty safe world.
Unfortunately there are many substance far more toxic than plutonium.
Arsenic trioxide, a pesticide often sprayed on food, is about 50 times
as toxic.  Biological toxins such as Botulism and Arrsanax (sp) are
several thousand to a million times as toxic.

The last time I saw a cancer chart of the United States, the highest
cancer rates in the country are the northeast corridor (New Jersey
and New York), and the coasts of Texas and Louisiana.  Since these
areas of the country are heavy petrochemical refineries, I suspect
that petrochemical products are far more cancer causing than radiation.
Utah, Colorado, and Nevada have below the national average.  The
chart I'm looking at was prepared by the National Cancer Institute,
the year is not given unfortunately.

Also, the government has more information on the effects of plutonium
than it does many forms of air pollution.  From the Manhattan Project
we have 17000 workers exposed to plutonium.  Of them, 25 have way
over the permissable level in their lungs.  As of 1973 none of them
have developed cancers. This is from "A 27 Year Study of Selected
Los Alamos Plutonium Workers", Report LA-5148-MS, Los Alamos Sci
Labs, January 1973.

By the way, if the plutonium package was on board the Space Shuttle,
it may have been one of the few objects to survive somewhat intact.
I cannot recall which one, but one of the SNAP nuclear power systems
was tested by blowing up a rocket fully fueled on the launch pad.
This was, of course, in the days when NASA could afford to do such
things!

Finally, some of the material I present may not be entirely correct.
By profession I am not an expert in nuclear energy, or plutonium
toxicity.  I am a computer scientist.  One of my major hobbies is
reading.  I have tried to put references in for those curious, but
there just seems to be too much to remember nowadays.  If anyone is
an expert on these matters and I've misrepresented something, please
enter the correction for us all.  I'd also appreciate some new reading
sources.