Word: strontium
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...energy, huge amounts of carbon dioxide are released into the environment. Furthermore, even during normal operation, power plants emit radioactive particles, including gases such as krypton, xenon, tritium, and argon, all of which can cause genetic diseases and gene mutations, not to mention iodine-131 (which causes thyroid cancer), strontium-90 (which causes leukemia and bone cancer), and cesium-137 (which causes muscle cancer). Then, of course, there is plutonium-239, which is so toxic that just one-millionth of a gram is carcinogenic. The United States has over 100 nuclear reactors, each of which produce about 200 kilograms...
There's more to tattooing than pinpricks. The first detailed analysis of tattoo inks, presented at the American Chemical Society meeting last week, found copper, iron, lead, lithium, chromium and strontium. Rub-ons, anyone...
Corals, it turns out, are like miniature thermometers and rain gauges. When water temperatures rise, these small creatures incorporate less strontium into their skeletons than they do under cooler conditions. Their oxygen content, meanwhile, records salinity swings, which in turn can be used to estimate rainfall. And warm temperatures and heavy rainfall--here, at least--are the telltale markers of El Nino...
...approved a new drug for treating the terrible suffering caused when breast or prostate cancer spreads to the bone. Called Metastron, the drug kills the pain of the cancer (though not the cancer) with radioactive strontium-89 delivered by injection. Metastron works better than narcotics for many patients, and a single shot lasts up to six months...
...back to their farm plots, where they consume contaminated animals and produce. "They would rather die here than live somewhere else," says Alexander Borovoi, a Russian nuclear physicist in charge of the sarcophagus. Some returned to find their homes pillaged of religious art. Although contaminated with cesium 137 and strontium 90, some of the icons have probably entered the world art market...