Word: toxication
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...that people should strive to keep the perils posed by dioxin in perspective and remember other threats that are more easily averted. "Phantom risks and real risks compete not only for our resources but also for our attention," Graham observes. "It's a shame when a mother worries about toxic chemicals, and yet her kids are running around unvaccinated and without bicycle helmets...
...smaller than protozoans, generally do their damage indirectly, producing toxins that stimulate the body to mount an immune response. Ideally the immune cells kill the bacteria. But if the bacteria get out of control, their poisons can either kill cells or generate a huge immune reaction that is itself toxic...
Plutonium is generally more available than enriched uranium but harder to build a bomb with. Smuggling enough stolen plutonium is reasonably easy: the gray metal commonly comes in 2-lb. bars or gravel-like pellets. While it is highly toxic to breathe in -- one grain can cause lung cancer -- its radioactive alpha rays do not penetrate very far, so thick lead shields are not necessary. But airport metal detectors, which would register any sizable quantity, are to be avoided...
When 350 grams of plutonium, the world's most toxic substance, shows up in a suitcase at the Munich airport, the imagination rushes to sci-fi scenarios. But the threat is real. Is this deadly material one more indication of nuclear proliferation? The basis for the next wave of terrorism...
...smuggling weapons-grade plutonium into Bremen, the fourth seizure in a widening scandal traced to ex-military contacts in the former Soviet Union. Last weekend police arrested other couriers who arrived on a flight from Moscow. They were carrying more than 10.6 oz. of plutonium-239, a substance so toxic that a few millionths of a gram can kill. Another seizure netted 4 kg, the largest amount ever discovered in private hands. Though German analyses reportedly show that all the plutonium came from the former Soviet Union, red-faced officials in Moscow today denied it, claiming "no leak" had been...