[Tig] Polonium

[Rob Lingelbach]

In the days when I maintained a tube-based machine before the advent  
of high-voltage
ionizing dust control at the CRT, I used a brush commonly found in  
photographic labs that
included traces of the element polonium.   I'm not sure which isotope  
of polonium was
in this brush, or whether this type of brush is still in use
(ref.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polonium   and search on the page  
for "dust")  but
I was curious if the Russian spy who was recently killed by ingestion  
of polonium, and those
who poisoned him with isotope 210, had scraped their polonium from a  
photographic
static-control brush, or perhaps they were all colorists and now  
there's a critical shortage
of colorists in Moscow.

Rob
http://www.colorist.org/robhome.html