LONDON: A rash of fresh cases of radiation contamination linked to the murder of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko has triggered speculation as to how he and others were exposed to the deadly substance, polonium-210.
Theories ranging from polonium-infused ice cubes being dropped into drinks to the possibility of spreading contamination through cigarette smoke have gained media currency after it was revealed that seven staff in London hotel had tested positive for radiation.
The staff, all bar workers, were on duty in the Pine Bar of the Millennium Hotel in the upmarket Mayfair area on Nov 1, the day Litvinenko met three Russian contacts there before falling fatally ill.
The question of how the staff were affected has puzzled experts because human contamination from polonium 210, while a highly radioactive isotope, can only come via ingestion, inhalation or transfer through a wound.
The Times newspaper said on Friday it could have been inhaled from vapour evaporating from a contaminated drink or ice cube or by breathing in poisoned cigarette smoke.
The chief executive of the Health Protection Agency, Professor Pat Troop, refused to speculate on the possible causes at a news conference on Thursday.
But she said: “You can breathe it in if there are large volumes of it around. But the amount you would take in that way would be very small.” The agency has repeatedly stressed that the danger of contamination to the wide public is negligible.
Philip Day, a fellow of Britain's Royal Society of chemistry and reader in environmental chemistry at the University of Manchester in northwest England, said the amounts of polonium in tobacco smoke are normally “trivial”.
“The sort of things we’re hearing about the various amounts of polonium in various workers is much greater than you could have got from smoking normally,” he said.
But he rejected the theory of inhaling vapour from a contaminated drink.
“You might get very faint traces, but they would be comparable with (traces from) smoking. It just doesn't evaporate in significant quantities,” he said.
“I don't think that anything that was in a drink would get into the air and be breathed in by bar staff. It would be more volatile from a hot drink, such as tea, there would be more possibility but even then, it's a little bit far-fetched.” Instead, he suggested there was a “common route”, perhaps from a liquid aerosol in the bar or dust, but that would not be guaranteed to hit a specific target.
“It could have been put in a drink, perhaps an ice cube, which would have contaminated the bar staff, they'd be picking up the glass, tipping the drink down the sink, and they could easily get their hands contaminated,” he said.
Bar staff could then have contaminated themselves by rubbing their eyes, touching their nose or mouth or eating food with their bare fingers.
One of the three men Litvinenko met in the bar-- private security agent Dmitry Kovtun-- was reported to have a “serious form of radiation sickness” that was affecting his critical organs: the liver, kidneys and bowels.
Russia's Interfax news agency quoted a medical source as saying Kovtun had fallen into a coma on Thursday although he had since regained consciousness.
The Russiam health ministry on Friday offered radiation contamination tests in two Moscow hospitals for anyone fearing to have come into contact with polonium 210.—AFP
