Contaminated phosfate fertilizer?
What farmer, or fertilizer company would sell that? and how would it get contaminated with radioactive material in the first place?
Me thinks you haven't a clue what you are talking about.
have yo any idea how this stuff is made sold applied etc? I do.
Plus Wild turkey, radioactive phosphate fertilizer?
LMAO maybe terrorists might be interested in it to make a 'dirty bomb" LMAO
Me thinks you haven't a clue. The uranium is found in the phosphate mine ores. I really detest it when someone that has no idea calls others clueless. Please do your homework before pursuing the personal attacks. Better yet, just stay away from the personal attacks.
Health effects of polonium
Polonium is studied in a few nuclear research laboratories where its high radioactivity as an alpha-emitter requires special handling techniques and precautions.
Polonium -210 is the only component of cigarette smoke that has produced cancers by itself in laboratory animals by inhalation - tumors appear at a level five times lower than the dose to a heavy smoker.
Lung cancer rates among men kept climbing from a rarity in 1930 (4/100,000 per year) to the No. 1 cancer killer in 1980 (72/100,000) in spite of an almost 20 percent reduction in smoking. But during the same period, the level of polonium -210 in American tobacco had tripled. This coincided with the increase in the use of phosphate fertilizers by tobacco growers - calcium phosphate ore accumulates uranium and slowly releases radon gas.
As radon decays, its electrically charged daughter products attach themselves to dust particles, which adhere to the sticky hairs on the underside of tobacco leaves. This leaves a deposit of radioactive polonium and lead on the leaves. Then, the intense localized heat in the burning tip of a cigarette volatilizes the radioactive metals. While cigarette filters can trap chemical carcinogens, they are ineffective against radioactive vapors.
The lungs of a chronic smoker end up with a radioactive lining in a concentration much higher than from residential radon. These particles emit radiation. Smoking two packs of cigarettes a day imparts a radiation dose by alpha particles of about 1,300 millirem per year. For comparison, the annual radiation dose to the average American from inhaled radon is 200 mrem. However, the radiation dose at the radon "action level" of 4 pCi/L is roughly equivalent to smoking 10 cigarettes a day.
In addition, polunium-210 is soluble and is circulated through the body to every tissue and cell in levels much higher than from residential radon. The proof is that it can be found in the blood and urine of smokers. The circulating polonium -210 causes genetic damage and early death from diseases reminiscent of early radiological pioneers: liver and bladder cancer, stomach ulcer, leukemia, cirrhosis of liver, and cardiovascular diseases.
The Surgeon General C. Everett Koop stated that radioactivity, rather than tar, accounts for at least 90% of all smoking-related lung cancers. The Center for Disease Control concluded "Americans are exposed to far more radiation from tobacco smoke than from any other source."
Cigarette smoking accounts for 30% of all cancer deaths. Only poor diet rivals tobacco smoke as a cause of cancer in the U.S., causing a comparable number of fatalities each year. However, the National Cancer Institute, with an annual budget of $500 million, has no active funding for research of radiation from smoking or residential radon as a cause of lung cancer, presumably, to protect the public from undue fears of radiation.
http://www.lenntech.com/Periodic-chart-elements/Po-en.htm
(from a confidential P-M memo)
That phosphate fertilizer contains natural radioactivity is a well established fact. Natural uranium accumulates in the phosphate rock...Uranium and its daughters are thus carried through the mining and manufacturing process and appear in the commercial product [the fertilizer used on tobacco plants]. Soils to which these products are applied show an increase in radioactivity over that naturally present and this increase is a function of the rate of application and the number of years that the fertilizers have been used....Thus, the smaller particles [of the fertilizer] which would be more likely to be made airborne by normal farming practices, would be expected to settle out on the tobacco leaves during the growing season and/or be more readily taken up by the plant root system.
210-Pb [radioactive lead] and 210-Po [radioactive polonium] are present in tobacco and smoke....For alpha particles from 210-Po to be the cause of lung cancers is unlikely due to the amount of radioactivity of a particular energy necessary for induction. Evidence to date, however, does not allow one to state that this is an impossibility.
The recommendation of using ammonium phosphate instead of calcium phosphate as fertilizer is probably a valid but expensive point....
...The soluble 210-Po is that which one would expect to be cleared by normal physiological processes...A study carried out by us has shown an increase in the soluble 210-Po with time after harvest....