Is Ernest Rutherford Killing From Beyond the Grave? (Probably not)
February 24th, 2009
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There’s a scare over at the University of Manchester in the UK where the words “cancer” and “radiation” are being thrown around and resulting in the typical panic and news coverage. A laboratory building was recently closed due to concerns about radioactive and heavy metal contamination which some believe could be associated with cases of cancer in four faculty members since the early 1990’s. Professor Tom Whiston, 70 was recently diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Two other professors died of cancer in the past two years and one professor died of terminal brain cancer in 1992.
Coincidence? Probably.
But it turns out that the building had previously been occupied by Nobel Laureate Ernest Rutherford, who in the early 1900’s had used the space for (among other things) experiments involving radioactive substances and possibly mercury metal. One newspaper called it “Rutherford Cancer Scare.”
University lab in radiation scare closes
Four workers have been moved out of two rooms in the Rutherford Building at Manchester University after tests revealed the “likely presence” of mercury under floorboards.
The university has been investigating claims that contamination from lab experiments by Ernest Rutherford a century ago had caused the death of two lecturers.
Concerns have been raised since then that four other people have contracted cancer, two of whom have since died, after working in the building.
The rooms affected are understood to be in the area of the building where Rutherford did his research.
But the university says there is no danger to staff or students.
A spokesman said: “Measurements in one of the rooms have indicated the likely presence of mercury under the floor, but it is important to stress that these levels were well below the legal workplace exposure limits.”
The building was where Rutherford, the Nobel Prize-winning chemist and pioneering nuclear physicist, carried out experiments using radioactive materials, such as radon and polonium, in 1908.
As it turns out, the only material which has been detected at any elevated level was mercury, which was well bellow what is considered safe for a general workplace enviornment. The reports have mentioned radon and polonium, both of which were used by Rutherford and his contemporaties in their research, but it neglects to mention that the half life of radon is at most about 3.8 days (for Radon-222, the longest lived isotope). Of course, radon is an inert gas so it would not leave a resedue anyway. Polonium-210, the variety of polonium which would have been avaliable to Rutherford has a half-life of 138 days, and while the longest lived isotope of polonium, Po-209 has a halflife of just over a century, this isotope does not occure in nature and is difficult to produce in quantity, even with modern nuclear reactors.
The laboratory would have been used by Rutherford and his collegues in the early 20th century, although it was reportedly used for other experiments involving radioactive substances until 1947. This severely limits the possible substances which could have been stored or experimented with on the premises. Prior to the availability of reactor-generated isotopes, the only highly radioactive material with a significant halflife which was avaliable was radium-226. Polonium-210 was also avaliable, though in smaller quantities, and radon gas was sometimes used in experiments, through collection of the gas from a radium sample.
It was not until 1945 that fission byproducts or other artificially produced nuclear materials began to be produced at the Hanford Site in the United States. However, the primary activity of the Hanford site was the production of weapons grade plutonium, and isolation of other radioactive materials did not occure in any signifficant capacity until the 1950’s. The first nuclear reactor in the UK did not begin full scale operation until 1950.
Therefore, the only the material that could possibly have been at the site and therefore left any residue is radium-226 and its daughter products, although even this seems unlikely in any quantity, given that radium was extremely expensive and thus would not be left haphazardly around a laboratory. However, it is not unheard of for old structures to contain some traces of radium. It’s been found in aircraft maintenance areas and in old clock factories, where it was used for the production of luminescent paint. That being siad, radium-226 is primarily an alpha emitter and although some of its daughters are strong gamma emitters, it would have to be present in enormous quantities to pose any significant hazard to those in the area. It could pose some hazard if the material found its way into food or drinking water, but that seems highly unlikely in these circumstances.
Press reports confirm that no radioactive substances have been found in significant quantities:
n October 2008, a spokesman for the university stated: “It is important to stress that we do not believe there to be any risk to current occupants of the Rutherford Building. It was surveyed by an independent specialist company as part of the refurbishment in 2006 and some minor contamination—below levels reportable to the Health and Safety Executive—were found in a limited number of locations. This was removed by specialist contractors and the building was re-surveyed prior to the move into the building of its current occupants.”
They continued: “We believe the evidence presented to date does not support a connection between the deaths of former staff and possible exposure to radioactive contamination.”
This being the case, why is the university evacuating a perfectly good building? Why are they demanding additional surveys and commissioning a full enviornmental report on the subject? Why spend so much time and money moving people around and having crews come in to test everything? Because the only thing that scares people more than the accusiation of slightly elevated mercury levels is the very mention of the word radiation. Despite all the efforts the university is going to, I have a feeling anyone who’s ever been near the building and developed cancer is going to be crying foul. They may even end up shooting themselves in the foot on this one when the question comes up “If they knew about this in 2006 why did they wait three years to do something?”
This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 24th, 2009 at 3:46 pm and is filed under Bad Science, History, Misc, Obfuscation, media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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February 24th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
The problem is that modern instrumentation can find ‘trace’ of just about any given element from floor sweepings if you provide a large enough sample. This is generally enough to set off the Precautionary Principled, Linear-Nonthreshold Dose-Response, Zero Tolerance busy bodies who always get excited about these things with no real understanding what they are talking about.
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February 24th, 2009 at 5:02 pm
The news stories you linked to aren’t even the worst of the lot.
Radiation ‘time-bomb’ at Manchester University
Sixth cancer death renews Manchester radiation fears
OH NO THE SKY IS FALLING! MUST BE THE RADIATION!
Some people seem to not be able to accept that cancer happens, like so many other diseases it just happens sometimes. Nobody lives forever. Sooner or later something always gets you. Maybe it’s a control issue that every time someone has a disease that does not have an obvious cause they have to invent one instead of just admitting that it happens and nobody can prevent it 100%
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February 24th, 2009 at 5:22 pm
There will be no atoms of Polonium-210 left from Rutherford’s time, or indeed from 1947. The 62 years since 1947 repesents about 164 half-lifes of Po-210, which is enough time for a mass of Po-210 equal to the whole Earth to completely decay.
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February 24th, 2009 at 7:17 pm
What more is there to say other than we live in a society where a small broken mercury thermometer is grounds for evacuating an entire school and a distant history of radiation experiments combined with people randomly getting cancer every once in a while is grounds for evacuating and surveying a perfectly good building.
The mercury levels they are talking about, btw, are nothing to get concerned about. The standards are set very conservatively and it could just as likely come from a couple broken fluorescent bulbs a while back. Are we to evacuate every building where once a long time ago someone once might have had something dangerous?
This is just ridiculous.
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February 24th, 2009 at 8:22 pm
I guess I should be dead. As a kid I used to love playing with mercury, it was such fun to watch all those little blobs combining into a big one and then breaking it up again. Went to work in Africa, every night, a few hours before bedtime
closed the bedroom doors and windows and sprayed the hell out of the room with DDT. And horror of horrors, my house there had a corrugated asbestos roof. Kept it nice and cool on the hottest days. For the ultimate in horror, I have been smoking for 55 years. I do know the evils of drink and cigarettes, it killed my mother. She got cancer and decided to go out drunk, drank nearly a bottle of Chivas Regal every day, she was going to go out in style and she did. She was 88 when struck down by the demon drink.
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February 24th, 2009 at 8:47 pm
ciccio said:
Of all the things you mention, the only one that really has a significant probability of causing you harm is the cigarettes.
Asbestos is really only a hazard when it’s flying around in little fibers and being inhaled. If it’s something that is embeded in resin or otherwise in a solid product then it’s not likely to cause any problems. DDT, for all the research applied has never been shown to be harmful to humans (except in ridiculously high doses which can be acutely toxic) Exposure to mercury is probably not what I’d recommend, but if it hasn’t gotten you yet, then what you did as a kid is certainly not going to kill you now.
Alcohol is not necessarily going to have negative impacts in any significant way on your long term health if it’s moderate, but a whole bottle of liquor a day is not going to do you any good – if you drink that much then it can certainly raise your risk of liver cancer or sclerosis of the liver.
Smoking is one of those things that all the data indicates always increases your risk of respitory disease and cancer. Of course, it’s a probability thing, so you can’t draw conclusions from any single case. My grandmother was a chain smoker for most of her life. She recently turned 84 and is still quite healthy. My aunt smoked for much of her life and died a hideous death of lung to brain cancer in her 40’s. There’s no absolute way of predicting who it will strike and when. However, it can be conclusively said that a person who smokes has a considerably higher probability of lung cancer and other respiratory ailments.
Thus, I’d personally recommend you quit. I know, it’s not my place to tell you what to do, but I’m just recommending that. It’s your free choice to not take that recommendation, but I’d prefer the smarter people last longer as we have a shortage of them to begin with. I’m not a smoker so I don’ know first hand how difficult it is, although my understanding is that it is extremely difficult. Still, most people I know who have smoked and quit say that it’s only hell for the first couple of months and after you’re over the hump and have endured it, it becomes much easier. My other aunt (the one who quit much earlier and hasn’t died of lung cancer) used to be a heavy smoker and now, having quit for a few years, she says the smell of cigarettes makes her sick and she has no desire to smoke again. But I guess that’s probably not universal.
In any case, lung cancer is fairly rare in non-smokers and fairly common in heavy smokers. Not that a heavy smoker can’t at least reduce their risk if they stop.
Anyway, I know something is going to get you sooner or later, but I still do what I can to try to stack the deck in favor of it getting me later as opposed to sooner. That’s why I wear a seatbelt and don’t smoke and avoid things that are excessively dangerous.
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February 25th, 2009 at 5:57 pm
Speaking of smoking (and Polonium), how about a post on the scaremongering over Po-210 in tobacco?
I’ve heard excessively-gullible types natter on about “the tobacco companies are giving you cancer because there’s polonium in the tobacco! that’s why you should just smoke marijuana!” for a while now.
(The presence of some Po-210 is unsurprising, since it’s going to occur naturally from the fertilizer; but I have immense doubts about the quality of the speculations as to the dangers involved from the levels present, especially compared to the normal carcinogenic effects of the plain combustion products and tars.
As far as I know, the actual science on the dangers is quite properly speculative – the British paper I found referred to it as a “Big Idea”; the hype surrounding it far less so.)
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February 25th, 2009 at 10:17 pm
Sigivald said:
There is some Po-210 in tobacco, but there can’t be much. Po-210 is so extremely short lived that it really doesn’t ever get a chance to build up in nature to any kind of significant level.
That’s not to say that cigarette smoking isn’t quite bad for you, it’s just the Po-210 is not really the component of the tobacco smoke that is of concern. The burning of something like tobacco at low temperatures creates a lot of volatile organics and short-lived aromatic compounds which can be pretty reactive. It also produces some vaporized tars that can cause emphysema or other problems.
But worrying about Po-210 is like worrying about uranium in coal smoke. There are so many other things that are more hazardous and present in larger quantities it borders on ridiculous.
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February 25th, 2009 at 10:49 pm
I just spent the better part of a day talking to an epidemilogist and I quized them about “cancer clusters.” I have often heard very uneducated types talking about them and based on knowledge of statistics it would seem to be very hard to prove one with a small sample size. She agreed and said you could only identify statisitcally signifcant cancer rate increases with a population size of several million or more. It statisically possiable for 6 people that stood next to each other in line to all get the same cancer without a common cause. Therefore without a known exposure you have no idea what you are looking at.
People get shared s**tless about involentary exposures, but they don’t give a damm about volentary ones (smoking, drinking, weed, drugs, fast driving, sex with hippie chicks, etc.). Your odds of an involentary exposure causing cancer are pretty low.
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February 26th, 2009 at 12:46 am
I work there (not in the actual building; just nearby in the John Rylands Library), and the reaction to the news in the student newspaper was predictably over the top.
I haven’t heard anything else about it for a while now, although the Politics, Media Studies, and Peace Studies with Henna Design students are apparently taking care to smoke their spliffs well away from the place. Well, when they’re not occupying random buildings in a fearless attempt to affect Israeli policy, anyway.
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November 9th, 2009 at 6:21 am
i need the biography of ernest rutherford but you dont keep in touch your so lame and insane what is this website you make my day bad
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