Comment by vixen99
8 years ago
Unthinking, I'd always gone for Ralph Nader's 'the most toxic substance known to mankind'. http://atomicinsights.com/how-deadly-plutonium/ tells a different story. Point being - 'During the Manhattan Project in 1944 and 1945, 26 men accidentally ingested plutonium in quantities that far exceeded what is now considered to be a lethal dose. Since there has been a consistent interest in the health effects of this brand new substance (first discovered by Glenn Seaborg’s team at the University of California in 1940), these men were closely tracked for medical studies. Forty Years Later As of 1987, more than four decades later, only four of the workers had died and only one death was caused by cancer. The expected number of deaths in a random sample of men the age of those in the group is 10. The expected number of deaths from cancer in a similar group is between two and three.'. On the other hand, better play safe!
Not sure they "discovered". Strictly speaking the Berkeley team first isolated, or produced Pu. Its theoretical existence had been known for a while prior (which is why they were trying to produce it). I mean, it wasn't that they were walking around and picked up and chunk and wondered what they had discovered. The project was entirely for the purpose of producing something every Nuclear Physicist knew must exist. They succeeded in making a small piece, which nobody had done successfully before.