I had hoped the UK authorities were just being coy with the UK media by continuing to feed the assassination stories involving Litvinenko’s poisoning. Sadly I may have been giving them too much credit. As I posted somewhere earlier today the biggest problem with the assassination drumbeat is it can misdirect people into seeing everything through one lense and not keeping an eye on all possibilities. It seems the reality of the full range of possibilities has finally dawned on some people – tragically too late:

Emergency services have been told to review their contingency plans for a dirty bomb attack after criticism of the Alexander Litvinenko investigation.

Police chiefs say that officers were not adequately informed of the risks of polonium-210, the substance used to kill the former KGB spy. Two detectives working on the case have been contaminated with radioactive poisoning and are reported to be “terrified and upset” that they may develop cancer.

Authorities suspect that Litvinenko was poisoned on November 1 at the Pine Bar, in the Millennium Hotel, in London, but they told the 250 people who were there that day that they were in no danger. Now they are trying to track them down to run health checks.

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Experts are apparently still giving contradictory advice. On the Health Protection Agency’s website the agency says that polonium-210 is “not a radiological hazard as long as it remains outside the body” and that “most traces can be eliminated through hand-washing, washing machines and dishwasher cycles for clothes, plates etc”.

However, the only contact one of the contaminated detectives had with the poison was when he removed items such as clothing from Litvinenko’s home. Evidence of the substance was reportedly found in a tea cup at the Millennium Hotel more than a month after Litvinenko was killed and countless washes. Seven bar staff who had minimal contact with Litvinenko all show evidence of exposure.

The agency said last week that Mario Scaramella, the Italian security expert who met Litvinenko on the day he fell ill, had “significant amounts” of polonium-210 in his system. Mr Scaramella has been told he is all clear and that the dose is “significantly less than from one year’s natural background radiation”. The police source said: “Frankly the public don’t know what to believe at the moment about the risks polonium-210 causes.”

As our reader Crosspatch has been pointing out in the comments section of our posts on this subject, the form and dosage of Polonium 210 is very different depending whether someone is trying to assassinate one person verses collect material for a dirty bomb. The dirty bomb form would be the metallic form, probably already in a dust-like form so it will be easier to disperse using explosives, and therefore pose the most risk to the most people through simple inhalation.

The assassin would try for a suspension or compound form which would be easier to handle and apply to food or drink to make sure the victim takes the poison. The fact that Litvinenko had somewhere between 50-100 doses of Polonium-210 was the first tip off this was not aimed at one person. But the form of contamination has been another indicator, pointing to the metallic form in a small particulate form which would be hard to notice on someone but amenable for being deposited as that person went from place to place.

The tea cup is the most worrisome evidence. If it had been so contaminated it could retain the Polonium through multiple washings I am guessing this means the contamination was dense and burned into the porcelain, where it has stayed and probably infected many others since November 1. A solution or salt form would to have been a really high dosage to do the damage in the short 20-30 minutes Litvinenko was in the bar.

But if the Polonium had been in a metallic form it would have started burning the porcelain the minute it came in contact. The Polonium radiation only travels few centimeters. That means the cup’s surface plus two centimeters is as deep as the contaminating layer could be – which is why the liquid form would have to be seriously dense with Polonioum.

It is unbelievable the police on the scenes were not given the full spectrum of scenarios they may have been facing. The news media is the largest culprit in this mess because they do not have the scientific knowledge to determine squat in a situation like this. Their pet assassination theories were called into question early on and they ignored and dismissed anything that threatened those theories. Sadly too many fell into the PR trap and let their views be dictated by the news. Which is only now waking up to some of the other possibilities:

Emergency services have been told to review their contingency plans for a dirty bomb attack after criticism of the Alexander Litvinenko investigation.

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A senior police source told The Times: “We thought we had a game plan. Clearly this episode has shown there are shortcomings. We need to think again how the emergency services should treat a radiological scare, the training the emergency services require and how to alert the public without causing panic.”

The agency said last week that Mario Scaramella, the Italian security expert who met Litvinenko on the day he fell ill, had “significant amounts” of polonium-210 in his system. Mr Scaramella has been told he is all clear and that the dose is “significantly less than from one year’s natural background radiation”. The police source said: “Frankly the public don’t know what to believe at the moment about the risks polonium-210 causes.”

So is there denial going on? Of course there is, and there is no plainer example than the reporters for this story finding some fool with a degree to mistate the obvious

Nick Priest, a radiology expert at Middlesex University, said yesterday that terrorists were unlikely to use polonium-210 as it was hard to find in Britain and difficult to import. But, he said, there were other radioactive materials they could use, some of which could be found in hospital radiology departments.

Well Nick Priest, now that we know Polonium 210 has been smuggled into the UK since Oct 16th and there could be 3-10 times the amount Litvinenko was exposed to (since that incident apparently happened with regards to the last round of smuggling on Oct 31 – Nov 1), by your statement it is therefore likely the Polonium is now highly available to some people.

It is time Britian stopped playing games with the Russians and treat them as critical to them finding what could be, literally, a ticking time bomb. If it means Russians interview people in the UK under the same terms the UK is trying to interview people in Russia so be it. There is not a lot of time for debate given the half life of Polonium 210. It has about another 2 months of useful life in it – if that much. Sooner or later it will be time to use it or lose it.