Thread: US - Russia Visas

and all the known evidence is pointing at Lugovoi.

Чего? All the evidence is pointing at British special servises.

I don't think it has any connection with visas though.

You are right.

Why should only Crocodile and Eric C get to "troll" and never me?

I don't understand. Could you translate it into Russian or explain?

Originally Posted by Marcus

I don't understand. Could you translate it into Russian or explain?

Basically, she meant she wouldn't put up with me and Croc being the only chars who have permission to troll here.

Originally Posted by Marcus

Чего? All the evidence is pointing at British special servises.

What evidence?

Well you are right Marcus, some special service probably did it.... and if it was the UK, then that explains why all the signs point in some other direction.
The UK screws up a lot of things, but as I understand it, the special forces are really, really good.
I think the Russians have more of a motive though? Why would the UK want to get rid of Litvinenko according to you? What have Russian papers written about the case?

What have Russian papers written about the case?

They laughed at British position. Probably Litvinenko knew something or did something against British interests.

Well that just goes to show that it's very hard to trust anything you read in the papers!

99% of everyone who read British papers (including me) basically take it as a fact that 'the Russians killed him'.
And then you say it's the opposite in Russia! LOL!

I guess we will never know... I can't remember the facts clearly, but at the time, it really seemed to me this Lugovoi person must be guilty and I thought it was pretty apalling even though I Litvinenko seemed a bit odd too....

There was another totally bizarre killing of a British spy recently. He was found dead inside of a body bag, in the bathtub, in his flat. Somehow media found out about it... after the story had been running for a few weeks, suddenly 'new' evidence was discovered, and it 'turned out' he was a pervert, participating in a sex game....
Who knows whether it was true, or a game.
The guy was a top cryptologer, working for MI6.

If Russians had wanted to kill him, they would have done it in another way. He could not be poisoned by polonium, because its halflife is 140 days.

Originally Posted by Marcus

If Russians had wanted to kill him, they would have done it in another way. He could not be poisoned by polonium, because its halflife is 140 days.

Which means its radioactive life is 280 days. Given that he died in under 25 days after allegedly ingesting polonium, and that the alleged killer arrived from Russia to London only two days prior to the alleged poisoning, why exactly is it not possible for it to have killed him if it was in fact polonium?

Originally Posted by zxc

Which means its radioactive life is 280 days. Given that he died in under 25 days after allegedly ingesting polonium, and that the alleged killer arrived from Russia to London only two days prior to the alleged poisoning, why exactly is it not possible for it to have killed him if it was in fact polonium?

Actually, given a half-life of 140 days, after 280 days approximately 3/4 (75%) will have decayed, leaving 25% still active and emitting radiation. After 420 days (i.e., 3 half-lives), about 7/8 (87.5%) will have decayed, leaving 12.5% active. (Radioactive decay is exponential; after each half-life period, about half of the remainder decays.)

Anyway, so if we assume that someone slipped some Po-210 into his food about 30 days before he died, then 30/140 means that approximately 1/5 (.2) of a half-life had expired. So using this formula:

100% / 2^(.2) = percent of polonium left after 30 days = about 87%

Meaning that about 13% of the Po-210 would have decayed in that time. Given a sufficiently large starting mass of the polonium, 13% translates to a sh*tload of alpha particles irradiating you from the inside out.

So the real question to ask is, how much Po-210 in grams would they have had to dose Litvinenko with in order for him to die of acute radiation poisoning in just 30 days (rather than dying of leukemia 5 years later, for example)?

And that's actually a question that no one knows the exact answer to -- basically because there are so few known human cases. (Besides Litvinenko's alleged poisoning, Marie Curie's daughter Irène died from accidentally inhaling polonium -- but from leukemia, a full 10 years after the laboratory accident.)

So we can only make crude estimates based on tests done with rats, and then scale up to the body weight of a typical adult man. Also the quantity needed would depend in part on the chemical form of the polonium that was given -- for example, an oxide of polonium might be absorbed by the body differently than a polonium chloride salt. But the amount, for sure, would be a tiny fraction of a milligram; perhaps a few dozen micrograms.

But again, that "10-50 micrograms" estimate is assuming that you're trying to cause extremely acute radiation poisoning that will kill someone within the course of several weeks -- you'd need much less than a microgram of Po-210 if you simply wanted to increase someone's odds of developing leukemia.

[accidental duplicate post deleted --Th.M.]

If Russians had wanted to kill him, they would have done it in another way. He could not be poisoned by polonium, because its halflife is 140 days.

Leaving aside the point that I made above about what "half-life" actually means, Marcus's statement is odd in another way: What on earth would the British gain by making up a lie that Po-210 was used to kill Litvinenko?

Granted, most of the world's Po-210 is produced in Russia, so if Po-210 was indeed the poison, that tends to raise suspicion of Russian involvement. But (1) the use of Po-210 doesn't PROVE Russian involvement; and (2) Russia would've ALREADY been a logical suspect, because (duh) Litvinenko was a defected Russian agent, and had also made inflammatory claims that Russia was blowing up its own apartment buildings in order to frame the Chechens, etc.

Thus, lying about Po-210 would seem to be unnecessary (because Russia would already be suspected no matter what), while at the same time being insufficient to conclusively blame Russia (because the Po-210 could have come from another source). So such a lie would accomplish nothing, in my opinion.

Moreover, Litvinenko's symptoms were generally consistent with thallium poisoning -- in fact, this was the original diagnosis, and polonium wasn't confirmed until his autopsy.

But if he had been indeed poisoned by thallium, making up a lie about Po-210 would create a totally unnecessary and expensive public health crisis for the UK -- because the sweat, urine, and feces of a polonium-poisoned individual are more hazardous to hospital workers and acquaintances than the bodily excretions of a thallium-poisoned person. Also, the general public is just scared as hell of radiation, even when there's not actually enough of it to harm them. (For example, the trace amounts of polonium-sweat that Litvinenko left on the seat of a London taxi would arguably pose very little danger to other people using the taxi, because your underwear and other clothes would block essentially all of the radiation!)

So, in short, if you falsely tell the public that a thallium-poisoned person was actually killed by polonium, you have to spend a lot more money on decontamination efforts. And for what gain? If the point was to frame Lugovoi for something he didn't do, planting a vial of thallium in his hotel room would have done the job nicely, without creating a public radiation scare!

Finally, making up a false story about polonium would require a relatively large conspiracy in which a lot of ordinary police and doctors and other investigators were paid off to lie about having detected polonium in Litvinenko's body, and in the blood of his wife and other associates like Mario Scaramella, and in various restaurants, taxis, and hotels that Litvinenko had visited, when they actually hadn't detected polonium anywhere or in anybody.

And if you're MI6 and you're trying to kill a former Russian intelligent agent while framing Russia for the murder, you naturally want to involve as few people as possible in your conspiracy!

So, while different people can disagree about who poisoned Litvinenko with Po-210, it seems to me literally unbelievable that polonium wasn't the substance used to poison him.

[Aaargh. ANOTHER accidental duplicate deleted. I've been having some buggy Internet access in the past week, sorry... --Th.M]

I must say I kind of agree with Throbert McGee but I don't know enough about chemistry or medicine to argue the case. I think that logic still points at Russians as the main suspects.
I suppose the suspects in order would be:

Russian spies
Some criminal corporation / interest that Litvinenko upset
British spies
the most bizarre suicide ever....

Not that I know a lot about Litvinenko but it's hard to imagine a good reason why the UK would like to kill him? After all, he was on "their" side...

Depending on who actually did it, it's either a huge cock-up or rather successful... making it a very good warning for those who actually know the truth about what happened. What a horrible way to die! Nobody is going to upset that group/organisation again if they can help it!

Originally Posted by Throbert McGee

... making up a lie about Po-210 would create a totally unnecessary and expensive public health crisis for the UK -- because the sweat, urine, and feces of a polonium-poisoned individual are more hazardous to hospital workers and acquaintances than the bodily excretions of a thallium-poisoned person.

not quite. Difference between external emitters and internal emitters. Externally, Po210 is very low risk. Alpha particles can't even go through a piece of paper. Not even through skin. Internally, very serious problem. Commercial antistatic brush contains Po210. Relatively safe. Antistatic Brushes

Originally Posted by Seraph

Externally, Po210 is very low risk. Alpha particles can't even go through a piece of paper. Not even through skin. Internally, very serious problem.

You're right, seraph -- Po-210 has to be inhaled or ingested in order to be dangerous. So in the case of hospital workers caring for Litvinenko and changing his bedsheets, etc., the main danger to them would NOT be from getting a little bit of his radioactive sweat or urine on their skin.

Rather, the risk would be that as the sweat/urine/feces dry out on Litvinenko's clothing and bedsheets, particles of polonium dust could become airborne and then be inhaled by a hospital worker. Although the risk from a one-time inhalation might be negligible because the Po210 dose was so tiny, if the same worker were visiting Litvinenko's bedside several times a day over a period of two or three weeks, then the total amount of inhaled Po210 could, in theory, become high enough to put the worker at statistically greater risk of lung cancer or leukemia. (Which could translate into expensive legal liability for the hospital.)

But as far as I know*, inhaling tiny amounts of airborne thallium dust from the dried bodily fluids of a thallium-poisoned patient wouldn't put hospital workers at significant risk. In other words, the "secondhand exposure" danger isn't as serious with thallium as it is with polonium.

Hence, my argument (mainly to Marcus) that it would have been utterly irrational for British agents to poison Litvinenko with Tl but then make up a total lie for the public that he'd been poisoned with Po210.

* Based on a lot of Googling -- I'm not a medical expert!

Of course, if you believe that British agents killed Mr. L, you could argue that they chose to use Po210 on the assumptions that:

A. It would be mistaken for thallium poisoning (which it was, for a few weeks), while also...
B. Killing with more certainty than thallium (there's a fairly effective treatment for Tl poisoning, quite a few victims have successfully recovered, and Litvinenko was said to be in robust physical health -- so there's a good chance that thallium would have failed to kill him)

But if plan was indeed to kill him with polonium but make it look like thallium, then things backfired rather expensively when the Po210 was detected, which ultimately cost the UK government a few million pounds in decontamination efforts and laboratory tests for hundreds of people. (Fortunately, it appears that fewer than 20 people suffered a level of polonium exposure that MIGHT MAYBE POSSIBLY raise their risk of developing cancer during the next two decades.)

Originally Posted by Throbert McGee

...the risk would be that as the sweat/urine/feces dry out on Litvinenko's clothing and bedsheets, particles of polonium dust could become airborne and then be inhaled by a hospital worker. Although the risk from a one-time inhalation might be negligible because the Po210 dose was so tiny, if the same worker were visiting Litvinenko's bedside several times a day over a period of two or three weeks, then the total amount of inhaled Po210 could, in theory, become high enough to put the worker at statistically greater risk of lung cancer or leukemia. (Which could translate into expensive legal liability for the hospital.)

For another reason entirely, I was looking up radiological medicine issues for several weeks, and found out that the radioactive heavy metals do not eliminate as readily as things like radioactive iodine. Iodine does eliminate as sweat, urine etc. Except for things like Tc99/Tc99m, the heavy metals do not behave so nicely, from the point of view of de-toxification. The heavy metal elimination profile starts off at about 1% the first day (feces/urine), and then rapidly falls off to less than ~0.1% vicinity. Large amounts are deposited on bone. This is on longer time lines. You can see from these kinds of things that the inhalation hazard is very low, to the point that you probably could not tell the difference from background. The fact that you can legally buy antistatic brushes containing Po210 should be telling you something.

Take a look at this radiation exposure chart. If you look at the lower right area of the chart, you can tell that a worker probably would not get an amount from Litvinenko that could be even linked to an increased chance of getting cancer. You have to do a little ball-park calculation, based on the low elimination rate, and dilution of dust, time in room,etc. If you assume that the fatal dose was ~8 Sv (or even much larger), then you can see that the ~1% elimination as feces/urine first day would allow only a tiny fraction of 1% as a possible dose. Estimate several hundred mL feces/urine, single digits volume mL drying would give thus 1% of 1% as a high estimate. Then to dust, and more dilution before a worker could inhale it. See where it is going? We would now be down below the mSv level, but more likely much less than that. A chest CT scan is list at 7 mSv. . http://blog.xkcd.com/2011/03/19/radiation-chart/
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Quote from IAEA "Po-210 can enter the body through eating and drinking of contaminated food, breathing contaminated air or through a wound. The biological half-time (the time for the level of Po-210 in the body to fall by half) is approximately 50 days. If taken into the body, Po-210 is subsequently excreted, mostly through faeces but some is excreted through urine and other pathways. People who come into contact with a person contaminated by Po-210 will not be at risk unless they ingest or inhale bodily fluids of the contaminated person. "
http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Fac...lonium210.html
When they say ingest of inhale, they mean amounts that get into several percent. Not really very possible. The 50 day bio-half life is including the decay in the body also at the 138 day radioactive half life. The elimination rate slows down a lot after the first few days, resulting in incorporation in bones. This behaviour is similar for Plutonium radium, etc.
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Seraph: Wouldn't the elimination rate depend on whether the radioactive substance was ingested in pure metallic form or as a salt? I would assume that finely powdered metallic Po would be passed very quickly in the feces, but a polonium salt might be significantly absorbed by the digestive system, with less going out in the feces and more going out in the urine and sweat.

But anyway, if your main point is that the UK public health service spent a lot more money on "polonium clean-up" after the Litvinenko poisoning than was "logically necessary", then I would agree. But humans aren't Vulcans, and a lot of people in the general people have difficulty accepting that their risk from a low dose of polonium because they sat next to Litvenenko on the bus is going to "fade into the background" of the normal environmental polonium levels.

You can see from these kinds of things that the inhalation hazard is very low, to the point that you probably could not tell the difference from background.

Well, a lot depends on whether I'm an epidemiologist, or a tort lawyer!