Polonium | Wikipedia audio article
Channel: wikipedia tts
Date: 2018-12-08

This is an audio version of the Wikipedia Article:
Polonium


00:01:27 1 Characteristics
00:02:18 1.1 Solid state form
00:03:29 1.2 Chemistry
00:04:26 1.2.1 Compounds
00:06:45 1.3 Isotopes
00:07:31 2 History
00:09:47 3 Occurrence and production
00:12:00 4 Applications
00:15:54 5 Biology and toxicity
00:16:04 5.1 Overview
00:17:54 5.2 Acute effects
00:19:14 5.3 Long term (chronic) effects
00:19:17 5.4 Regulatory exposure limits and handling
00:19:28 5.5 Well-known poisoning cases
00:20:02 5.5.1 20th century
00:22:13 5.5.2 21st century
00:22:22 5.6 Treatment
00:24:45 5.7 Detection in biological specimens
00:26:47 5.8 Occurrence in humans and the biosphere
00:27:24 5.9 Tobacco
00:28:06 5.10 Food
00:29:40 6 See also
00:30:27 7 References
00:30:40 8 Bibliography



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SUMMARY
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Polonium is a chemical element with symbol Po and atomic number 84. A rare and highly radioactive metal with no stable isotopes, polonium is chemically similar to selenium and tellurium, though its metallic character resembles that of its horizontal neighbors in the periodic table: thallium, lead, and bismuth. Due to the short half-life of all its isotopes, its natural occurrence is limited to tiny traces of the fleeting polonium-210 (with a half-life of 138 days) in uranium ores, as it is the penultimate daughter of natural uranium-238. Though slightly longer-lived isotopes exist, they are much more difficult to produce. Today, polonium is usually produced in milligram quantities by the neutron irradiation of bismuth. Due to its intense radioactivity, which results in the radiolysis of chemical bonds and radioactive self-heating, its chemistry has mostly been investigated on the trace scale only.
Polonium was discovered in 1898 by Marie and Pierre Curie, when it was extracted from uranium ore and identified solely by its strong radioactivity: it was the first element to be so discovered. Polonium was named after Marie Curie's homeland of Poland. Polonium has few applications, and those are related to its radioactivity: heaters in space probes, antistatic devices, and sources of neutrons and alpha particles. This radioactivity makes polonium dangerously toxic.