Nov 30 2006
Many More Contamination Sites
The number of sites with contamination now supposedly stands at a dozen, according to the UK government.
Traces of radiation have been found at a dozen sites in Britain during the investigation of the poisoning of a former Russian spy, Home Secretary John Reid said Thursday.
Here is my list of the potential dirty dozen sites I knew of:
Berezovsky Offices
Itsu Sushi Bar (Scaramella meeting)
Millenium Hotel (Russians for business opportunity)
28 Grosvenor Street (security business meeting a friend)
58 Grosvenor Street
Sheraton Park Lane Hotel
Litvinenko Home
2 Hospitals that treated Litvinenko
2 Airplanes.
For those counting this only adds up to 11. And I keep reading conflicting reports on the Sheraton Park Lane site – most saying it was not contaminated. It seems authorities have been more successful in establishing the Litvinenko’s trail than is being reported:
Mr. Reid said “around 24 venues†have been or are being monitored and that experts had confirmed traces of contamination at “around 12 of these venues.â€
Hopefully we will start getting some idea of where this is leading sooner rather than later.
Update: The number of planes being investigated just jumped to five, which may be where the extra locations are coming from. It would seem authorities are tracing certain people right now.
Update: Again, here is reporting that the Sheraton Park Lane Hotel is not one of the 12 ‘venues’ showing contamination. It does show contamination in the rooms of the Hotel where Litvinenko met two Russians on a business opportunity. I would gather those are the rooms of the Russians he met with and that he contaminated them since he was already leaving a trail at the Sushi Bar and I believe the bar at the hotel.
Does anyone else get a very creepy feeling about this? Look at what has happened as a result of the poisoning of one guy…33,000 people contacted for possible contamination???
Hmm:”Reid told parliament scientists were monitoring a fourth aircraft for possible radioactive contamination. The plane, a Boeing 737 leased by the Russian carrier Transaero, arrived at London’s Heathrow airport on Thursday morning, he said.
Reid said Britain was also interested in a fifth plane — a Russian aircraft — and there could be more.
“Those are the five we know of,” he told parliament.
The announcement about the planes and their destinations may rekindle suspicions of a Moscow link to the death of Litvinenko. He accused Putin of ordering his murder.”
5 planes
Let’s think of how these sites might have become contaminated.
1. polonium on Litvinenko’s clothing brushed off onto others
2. Vomit
3.Nosebleed or sneeze/cough /spit.
4. sweat
5.Urine/feces
6. Source of polonium traveled from Moscow with a container which leaked some polonium and he was contaminated in the process of transporting and administering the lethal dose.
Have I missed something?
Are 2 and 3 possible?
You count the two hospitals among your dirty dozen, but according to the Telegraph
“Barnet and University College London Hospitals, where Mr Litvinenko was treated, are also in the clear.”
But since (from the same article) “Mr Lugovoi, a former KGB agent who runs a security firm in Moscow, said he visited London to take his wife and three children to watch CSKA Moscow play Arsenal” they might want to check the football stadium.
Clarice,
2-4 are only possible if the human is contaminated, with one exception. If the human wore clothing or had something which came into contact with Litvinenko’s bodily fluids.
The information I am reading shows it takes 2-3 hours after the Polonium enters the body before it would begin showing up in bodily fluids. The real problem is knowing the amount of contamination since such small amounts can kill. A small amount doesn’t have enough material to migrate many places. If Litvinenko was ‘oozing’ the radiation all this time his dose would have to have been massive to keep excreting this stuff for hourse. But it took him 3 weeks to die, and only after his immune system broke down. So I cannot see this as being that big of a dose.
Moreover, if he was oozing the material in his pores and glands he would be all puffy as the material burned his mouth and eyes, etc. The pictures of him show none of that. So I think the dose was smaller. But the trail shows a much larger amount of material since it is being spread around so many places.
If the tansfer agent has not ingested the material (which is what we are seeing in all the cases except Litvinenko) then only three options exist. Your first and last examples and someone who had Litvinenko’s bodily fluids on something – which is what I suspect is how the Russians he met in the bar contaminated the planes. They were probably in their sport or suit jackets, embraced Litvinenko as Europeans do, and then later they wore their jackets on the plane home. Thus the trasnfer. You should see it anywhere the Russians were with their jackets (taxi, airport, etc.).
AJStrata
My guess would be that Litvinenko had enough Po210 put in/on his food/drink to eventually cause death, but it needn’t be a huge amount. Maybe some Po210 got on his clothing when the food/drink was dosed, most probably some got on his hands after ingesting it and this lead to other people, doorknobs, etc… being contaminated. I don’t think much would be excreted through sweat, I think it took some time before they thought to look at urine etc… where it was eventually found. He probably died as the radiation killed more and more cells in his stomach, intestine, spleen, and liver.
We don’t know who took what planes, it would be interesting if one of the planes could only have been contaminated before Nov 1.
AJ and Clarice,
You have it right. Everytime I read more on this my warning sirens ratchet up another notch. Airplanes are a perfect vector for transmitting highly a contagious virus. This whole thing smacks of a dry run for a bio weapon attack with the weapon being a suicide bomber infected with unknown agent. Watching the spread of the radiation metastisize through the public is very instructive to a would be attacker. Also, I sure hope CDC and other public health monitors are watching this for real time, actual data.
Another troubling angle is the fact that as far as we know, no nuclear material warning system triggered while this guy is jetting around. It took his death and word to set everyone down this trail. That bothers me a whole bunch.
Call me paranoid, but there is more to this than a simple “hit”. A lot more.
Tom
Does anyone know if rooms, airplanes, etc. can be cleased of radiation?
How is it possible his family is not contaminated? If he is sweating this stuff, did he not touch them? Or they him? His wife didn’t come into contact with him? How about his car? Was it contaminated? Does he have a car? Maybe not. Did he ride on public transportation? This is something they can get past the screeners at an airport and then leaves a trail everywhere? The perfect terrorist’s weapon, it would seem.
On Fox this morning, Dr. Manny indicated that polonium in small amounts might pose a problem for someone who inhaled it, i.e., lung cancer, which would take years to appear. This is a potential freaking nightmare.
Sue This “Russian speaker” is I think a Chechen.
“Across the road, a car – believed to be a silver Mercedes belonging to a Russian-speaking neighbour who knew Mr Litvinenko well – had also been cordoned off yesterday with a white and blue tarpaulin placed over it.”
http://www.thisishertfordshire.co.uk/news/roundup/display.var.1048696.0.radiation_scare_at_home_of_poisoned_exspy.php
Lizarde,
Yes, that is a Chechen leader in exile! Great catch.
AJStrata
Bizarely, Boris B. is said to have driven him to the airport by some article I read which I now can’t find
Lizarde,
Thank you.
Yes–it does show how this stuff can be transferred. OTOH British authorities say the amounts found on the planes was no greater than that found in a glow in the dark wristwatch.
I do not think this was a trial run for a WMD attack so much as the errors of a first time use of an unconventional assassination vehicle.
Radiation can be removed from surfaces where it hasn’t been absorbed or otherwise integrated into the material. Fabric would have to be thrown out, smooth metal (and maybe plastic) could be cleaned and tested for residual radiation, rough surfaces are more difficult. I worked with radiation a fair bit at one time, in the course of my crazy career, and have some training in monitoring and cleaning up.
That is what scares me about this stuff. In a powdered form it can travel through a population and contaminate large areas before anyone is even aware of it. By the time people start getting sick, it is too late.
But there is even a more terrible angle. Polonium is a terrible carcinogen. It is the main carcinogen in cigarette smoke, for example. Even if one doesn’t get enough of a dose to kill them or even make them sick, they might get enough of a dose to cause cancers on a year or two or several years down the road. A couple of particles inhaled might cause lung cancer. This is also why there are cancer hot spots where radon gas is at high levels. Radon decays into polonium. You inhale the radon gas, some of it decays into polonium in the lungs, the alpha particles cause genetic damage and you get cancer.
This is REALLY nasty stuff. The source of it needs to be located and secured as quickly as possible.
Don’t bring radon in on this — it’s a big environmental scam/sham in regards to home testing and EPA recommended levels.