December 29, 2017
Iranian media are reporting that a substantial amount of radioactive polonium was found in the body of the late President Ali-Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani after he died last January.
The daily Etemad carried an interview with Faezeh Hashemi, the late president’s daughter, who said government authorities told the family that an autopsy showed Rafsanjani’s body contained 10 times as much polonium as normal.
But they said the polonium was not the cause of his death, which was reported in January to have been a heart attack.
No one gave any explanation for why the radioactive substance was in Rafsanjani’s body.
Polonium is a rare and highly radioactive metal and none of it is found naturally in the human body. Today, polonium is usually produced in milligram quantities. Due to its intense radioactivity, its chemistry has mostly been investigated on the trace scale only.
Polonium was discovered in 1898 by Marie and Pierre Curie, when it was extracted from uranium ore and identified solely by its strong radioactivity. Polonium was named after Marie Curie’s homeland of Poland.
Polonium has few applications, and those are related to its radioactivity: heaters in space probes; antistatic devices; and sources of neutrons and alpha particles. Polonium’s intense radioactivity makes it dangerously toxic.
