Via NewScientist.com -
Traces of radioactive polonium have been found in the blood of the deceased Russian ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko, the UK’s Health Protection Agency (HPA) said on Friday. His urine also tested positive for radiation.
“This is an unprecedented event in the UK,” said HPA chief executive Pat Troop. “It is the first time someone in the UK has apparently been deliberately poisoned with a radioactive agent.”
The agency is now assessing the health risks posed to members of the public who may have come into contact with Litvinenko, including family members and hospital staff who cared for him during the weeks he spent in hospital. They are also trying to decide the safest way for pathologists to conduct an autopsy of his body, and indeed whether such a procedure is safe enough to be performed at all.
Litvinenko, aged 43, died on Thursday of heart failure after claiming he had been poisoned in a London restaurant. He was formerly an agent of the Soviet, then the Russian, security service. He specialised in investigating organised crime and its involvement with corrupt officials.
High levels of radiation have been discovered in a central London hotel that Litvinenko frequented, and at the sushi restaurant where he said he ate on 1 November 2006. The restaurant has now been closed, said the HPA.
“Tests have established that Mr Litvinenko had a significant quantity of the radioactive isotope polonium-210 in his body,” the HPA announced on Friday. “It is not yet clear how this entered his body. Police are investigating this.”
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"To poison someone, large amounts of polonium-210 are required and this would have to be manmade, perhaps from a particle accelerator or a nuclear reactor," said Dudley Goodhead at the UK's MRC Radiation and Genome Stability Unit. “Polonium has a half-life of 138 days. This means that if that was the poison it will still be in the body and in the area – which makes it relatively easy to identify.”
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