Talk:Polonium

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Polonium article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Archives: 1: 12 months

Elements High‑importance

	Chemistry portal This article is supported by WikiProject Elements, which gives a central approach to the chemical elements and their isotopes on Wikipedia. Please participate by editing this article, or visit the project page for more details.ElementsWikipedia:WikiProject ElementsTemplate:WikiProject Elementschemical elements articles
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the importance scale.

Environment Mid‑importance

	Environment portal This environment-related article is part of the WikiProject Environment to improve Wikipedia's coverage of the environment. The aim is to write neutral and well-referenced articles on environment-related topics, as well as to ensure that environment articles are properly categorized. Read Wikipedia:Contributing FAQ and leave any messages at the project talk page.EnvironmentWikipedia:WikiProject EnvironmentTemplate:WikiProject EnvironmentEnvironment articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Polonium has been listed as one of the Natural sciences good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
April 28, 2013	Good article nominee	Listed

Archives

Archive 1

This page has archives. Sections older than 365 days may be automatically archived by when more than 4 sections are present.

Chemically toxic?

The introduction states that "[b]esides being radioactive, polonium is extremely toxic". Yet, its radioactivity is the only harmful aspect discussed in the article. If polonium is chemically toxic, then the mechanism of the toxicity should be described, if known. ZFT (talk) 04:59, 9 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Apparently, it's just radiotoxicity. From this article: "[...] not hazardous as long as the alpha particles remain outside the body."

Also, elsewhere: "While some weakly radioactive substances, such as uranium, are also chemical toxicants, more strongly radioactive materials like radium are not, their harmful effects (radiation poisoning) being caused by the ionizing radiation produced by the substance rather than chemical interactions with the substance itself."

And some source which spells it out: "Polonium does not have toxic chemical properties."

The article can definitely be improved to make this clearer. --Klaws (talk) 15:15, 9 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Added a line to the article to make it clearer. Klaws (talk) 13:34, 10 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I suggest that there is simply no experiment that can establish whether a highly radioactive substance has no chemical toxicity and I would bet that it is as chemically toxic as a heavy metal like Pb. However, the usual way in which heavy metals are toxic is for them to be used by the body in place of needed elements (Pb is similar to the necessary element zinc) and I don't know how an experiment would show that Po replaces, say, zinc chemically in the body if the organism dies before this uptake can occur or if the radioactivity itself interferes with uptake of the Po. I doubt that the very tiny amounts needed to kill a human (via radiation) would have chemical effects. Even very deadly organic mercury compounds I do not think have a measurable effect at microgram quantities -- I think it requires milligrams even in the case of dimethyl mercury. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.37.99.86 (talk) 08:26, 30 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It's difficult to find accurate sources, but I'm not sure the current statement is correct and the source provided by @Klaws: (courtesy ping also to @ZFT:) is less than ideal. I can find other sources (although none that I feel are much better than the current one) that suggests polonium is quite significantly chemically toxic, but due to the very small amounts needed for lethal radioactive dose it's chemical toxicity is much less important. Polyamorph (talk) 12:30, 31 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I agree that it's than ideal, and I am kind of suspicious of the "not chemically toxic" statements. Still, that's what I got from the sources. Selenium and Tellurium are "mildly toxic", as well as Bismuth, so I'd expect Polonium to be at least mildly chemically toxic as well.

Still, very hard to verify, even with ²⁰⁹Po which is about 330 times "less radioactive per second" than ²¹⁰Po. --Klaws (talk) 18:19, 3 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Symbol Dalton

symbol Dalton 42.111.124.42 (talk) 16:19, 11 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Citation Needed since 2019

"More than one hypothesis exists for how polonium does this; one suggestion is that small clusters of polonium atoms are spalled off by the alpha decay.[citation needed]"

The CN has existed since 2019. Perhaps it's time for deletion. Rockethead293 (talk) 23:46, 4 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Citation added. Not the highest quality source (workshop paper), but both the lead author and the venue seem respectable, and it's clearly labelled as a hypothesis. Hqb (talk) 07:03, 5 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Which isotope of polonium do the physical properties listed in the main page refer to?

I mean, are those properties based on polonium-208, -209, or -210? 14.52.231.91 (talk) 08:02, 15 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I would guess ²¹⁰Po, as it's the most readily available one. Double sharp (talk) 04:06, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, very likely... :) 14.52.231.91 (talk) 00:43, 19 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sadly, I would rather be interested in the physical properties of ²⁰⁹Po... 129.104.241.27 (talk) 00:36, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Its chemistry as well, for me! Double sharp (talk) 02:55, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]