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
It depends on the isotope and the length of exposure. As you mention a lot of heavy metals have common radioactive isotopes, this is not a coincidence but is due to different mechanisms both relating to the size of the atom. So things like uranium is toxic because it is a heavy metal. But for example depleted uranium or even natural uranium is not very radioactive as it contains mostly U-238 which have a half life of over 4 billion years. So it is going to give you heavy metal poisoning long before you get enough to give any radioactivity symptoms. Po-210 on the other hand is very radioactive with a half life of just 138 days, emitting alpha particles which cause even more damage then other forms of radiation. But it is not actually toxic, at least from what we can see. So it will only kill you from the radiation, either acute radiation poisoning where the radiation kills enough cells in your body that you die, or from causing cancer that kill you in the long term.
I do not know the effects of all radioactive isotopes but it is theoretically possible that there is a radioactive isotope which gives you acute radiation poisoning if you are exposed to high amounts, but then heavy metal poisoning if you get exposed to lower amounts of it. It would also pose a cancer risk at even lower exposure levels.
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