Plutonium
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Comment by Brian Hanley on April 14th, 2014 at 5:14 pm
The LD50 for injected plutonium is 22 milligrams for an adult man. This is orders of magnitude higher than the stated 5 mcg/kg in the article. Please cite your sources.
My source is:
George L. Voelz, Ileana G. Buican Plutonium and Health – How great is the risk? 2000. Los Alamos Science, Vol 26, 74-89.
Page 78 states, “… the LD50 for dogs after intravenous injection of plutonium is about 0.32 milligram per kilogram of tissue. Assuming this animal dose also applies to humans, an LD 50 by intravenous injection for an average human of 70 kilograms would be about 22 milligrams. By inhalation, the uptake would have to be about 4 times higher.”
There is a great deal of mythology about plutonium.
Comment by Brian Hanley on April 14th, 2014 at 5:18 pm
The LD50 figure should be about 300 mcg/kg. I believe someone accidentally took a figure from some other standard. Note that if you divide 300 mcg by 60 kg you get 5 mcg.
Comment by Jennifer Tanabe on April 23rd, 2014 at 3:26 pm
Thank you, Brian, for your feedback. I will review the article and revise it appropriately.
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