How can radiation poisoning be treated?
At lower doses, intense antibiotic treatment, bone marrow transplant and “chelation,” a medical stripping of heavy metals from the body, can help patients. However, poisoning has to be diagnosed quickly and alpha radiation is difficult to detect in the body. Q: What is the connection between polonium and cigarettes? A: Polonium occurs in nature at very low levels. Tobacco plants absorb a polonium isotope different from polonium-210 as they grow. And a cigarette contains less than a billionth of the amount of polonium implicated in Litvinenko’s death, according to a 1996 study in the journal Radiologic Technology. The tobacco link somewhat complicates the Litvinenko investigation, says Dimitroyannis. If any suspects in the case are now undergoing chelation to remove polonium from their system, the telltale signs of exposure to polonium will persist, Dimitroyannis says. But elevated readings of polonium could be explained away as the effects of heavy smoking, he says. Q: How could poloni
