Comment by AngryData
1 month ago
Outlawing tiny samples of specific elements is so ridiculous. Whats he gunna do with it, nuke a small ant hill with it? Make a neat spectrograph of it?
1 month ago
Outlawing tiny samples of specific elements is so ridiculous. Whats he gunna do with it, nuke a small ant hill with it? Make a neat spectrograph of it?
The median lethal dose of Polonium-210 is about 50 nanograms. (1 twenty millionth of a gram)
30 mg of plutonium administered properly is fatal. Much less will give you a significant increased risk for cancer.
These things are dangerous in any quantity and no amount of enthusiasm overrides the risk when it comes to writing laws.
1lb of hammer administered properly is also fatal and I can buy that at the store.
EDIT: this also appears to be 30 nanograms, not mg.
You can buy bleach at the store, but if you drink a mouthful of it you're probably toast. We don't ban things just because they kill you when you eat them.
To say nothing of the fact that if you accidentally mix a bit with ammonia, which is extremely easy to do because they are both used in cleaning, you just created a deadly chemical weapon that is also a gas. The world would be much better, even if perhaps a bit 'scarier', if people treated each other like adults.
You can buy a polonium anti-static brush for photofilm cleaning, with about 1 millicurie (~250 nanograms) of polonium. Absolutely legally: https://amstat.com/products/anti-static-brush-with-ionizing-...