I read about toxicity of uranium plutonium and polonium but I don’t understand how do we know it’s a chemical toxicity. In case of Litvinenko poisoning, Wikipedia says «victim of lethal polonium-210-induced acute radiation syndrome» so it was not toxicity of polonium that killed him, it was radioactivity. Can radioactive heavy metals kill cause harm in the same way lead, cadmium and other heavy metals poison you. Or most damage will be from radiation.
In: Physics
Some things are toxic. Some are radioactive. Some are both. And it’s always the dose that makes things dangerous.
Uranium (235 and 238 usually) is more toxic than radioactive, it is quite safe to touch and hold some; I would still advise against licking it for multiple reasons. Uranium ores and nuclear by-products however contain many stronger radioactive sources, so that stuff is definitely bad for you.
Other materials such as polonium-210 kill due to their high radiation.
And then there are some in-between. The very infamous radium poisonings from the early 20th century are an example. This stuff not only is quite radioactive, it also replaces calcium in your bones. This not only makes them more brittle for chemical reasons, it also eternally deposits a strong radiation source close to the bone marrow. Lots of not so fun things ensue.
On the other extreme, heavy-yet-also-technically-radioactive metals such as bismuth are of so little danger, you are probably a hundred times more likely to cut yourself on a piece and then die from sepsis. It’s toxicity is pretty low, and the radioactivity is beyond ridiculous in its lack of relevance (despite there not being a single stable isotope of bismuth).
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