Cesium scare

When the firemen become too numerous, they take to arson.

Oriental proverb

When we created a $50 bn. plus a year, 200,000-staff monster called Department of Internal Security, it was clear to everybody who has any understanding how bureaucracy works that they would work tirelessly to expand their sphere of competence. One of the well-treaded methods is to circulate sensational new threat, usually through a strategically corrupted Brit, then let Government officials to ward off angry questions by the media and the Congress when they do something about it until public hysteria reaches such proportions that they will be “compelled” to take resolute and very expensive action. Works every time. Worked for Bush Sr. and Kuwait (“babies thrown onto the bayonets”), Clinton in Kosovo (still remember “stopping the genocide?”), Bush in Iraq (“mushroom cloud in 45 minutes”); Iran (another mushroom cloud) and Sudan (another genocide) are the cases still pending.

Now new threat, namely Cs-137 in medical devices is posed to take over public imagination. This isotope of cesium is typically used as a salt crystal(s) packed into hard ceramic pellet. By itself, Cs-137 (half-life 30.2 years) decays through a normal β-channel. Its medical use is based on the by-product of the decay: a metastable isotope Ba-137 (half-life 2.6 sec.), which emits energetic γ-radiation. Collimated, this radiation kills tumors.

Dr. Zimmerman, Professor of King’s College in London, a well-known national security guru suggested in his op-ed piece in “New York Times” that the malefactors using only the isotopes in available medical radiation devices can contaminate pretty much the entire United States. Though, Zimmerman is a highly educated expert, my single personal contact with him suggested of someone capable of rush and unfounded judgments. Lately, he seem to have lost his mental stability completely over the polonium poisoning accident in London, inserting his ramblings about it in everything he writes or talks about.

Metallic cesium is highly reactive (can conflagrate in open air) and technically applied chloride CsCl is well-soluble in water. These properties are in sharp contrast to, e.g. uranium and plutonium and their oxides, which are rather neutral and can exist in the environment in the form of dust for millennia. High reactivity of cesium means, for one, that rain provides a fair degree of decontamination. Stuff going through rivers into water treatment plants is likely to be immobilized in mud, again due to the extreme ease, with which Cs as all other alkali metals form stable salts. Its relatively short half-life (30 yrs. vs. 24,000 years for Pu) makes contamination of the ground water table a remote threat.

Of course, Cs-137 is a highly dangerous substance if ingested or inhaled. Dismantling of sources containing radioactive isotopes must be performed by trained and competent personnel and not by every London-based fugitive from the Russian justice or junkyard bum hunting for the rare metals. I would abstain from using even ordinary cesium chloride as a dietary replacement for table salt: diarrhea and vomiting may ensue. But it is not lethal in practical quantities as suggested by Zimmerman, unless you are force-fed by it through enema somewhere at Abu Ghraib. Yet, because of the same solubility issue and affinity to natural salt, simple increase of water intake already provides a workable method to mitigate exposure, before professional help becomes available. In the case of attack by the Cs bomb, I would recommend drinking enough water and not to consume unknown substances, picked from the ground or technical devices, nor use them as components for body washes and paints. And do not wallow in the mud naked.