Disturbing

There has, of course, been a lot of buzz about the murder of a former member of the Russian FSB, Alexander Litvinenko by polonium 210 poisoning. I called the Daily Mail article about it irresponsible for calling polonium "the deadliest poison known to man".

Which does not, in any way, negate the irresponsibility of an American company for actually selling polonium 210 to anyone with a credit card. Now, I do not know what a lethal dose of this stuff is, but this is a pretty small "source" (0.1 μCi). And it is a sealed source as well, the polonium could not just be poured out, it should be bound in a matrix (as far as I know at any rate). But it still seems that these sorts of things should be very heavily regulated. Why would the average Joe need anything like this?