• Question: What is the worst radioactive substance

    Asked by anon-232436 to Mark, Liam on 18 Nov 2019.
    • Photo: Liam Gaffney

      Liam Gaffney answered on 18 Nov 2019:

      They’re all pretty bad if you get them in the wrong place! Polonium-210 is thought to be pretty nasty because it is very difficult to detect, but if it gets inside your body is can caused a lot of damage. This is how Alexander Litvinenko was famously poisoned…

    • Photo: Mark Johnson

      Mark Johnson answered on 19 Nov 2019:

      I think Liam summed this up really well – any radioactive substance can be pretty bad if it’s in the wrong place. This reminds me a news story from last year, where a museum at the Grand Canyon accidentally displayed radioactive uranium ore in one of it’s exhibits for almost 20 years!

      Having a radioactive source in your body isn’t always a bad thing though. Lots of medical scans and treatments work by targeting radiation at a specific part of your body, either to produce an image of it or to kill dangerous cancer cells.

Comments