XPost: alt.engineering.nuclear   
   From: daestrom@NO_SPAM_HEREtwcny.rr.com   
      
   "Harlan Osier"  wrote in message   
   news:89ec59b9.0407121648.7b99eb5e@posting.google.com...   
   > You can eat it and nothing will happen !   
      
   Sure, encase it in stainless steel and it passes through the GI track about   
   as fast as your last meal.  And the steel shields any alpha.  But lodge a   
   'raw' chunk of it in your lung where it will irradiate lung tissue for years   
   and you're likely to develop a cancer.  Inject it into your blood stream (or   
   through an open wound) and it may find its way to some bone marrow (another   
   cancer).   
      
   Some drug-runners 'eat' many times the fatal dose of heroin before boarding   
   a flight trying to smuggle it into some country.  Often they pass the   
   drug-filled condoms harmlessly.  But I wouldn't say that it is '100% safe'.   
   Neither is plutonium.   
      
   daestrom   
      
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