Onko torium toksista?
After accounting for the contribution of radon, Rutherford, now working with the British physicist Frederick Soddy, showed how thorium decayed at a fixed rate over time into a series of other elements in work dating from 1900 to 1903. This observation led to the identification of the half-life as one of the outcomes of the alpha particle experiments that led to the disintegration theory of radioactivity. The biological effect of radiation was discovered in 1903. The newly discovered phenomenon of radioactivity excited scientists and the general public alike. In the 1920s, thorium's radioactivity was promoted as a cure for rheumatism, diabetes, and sexual impotence. In 1932, most of these uses were banned in the United States after a federal investigation into the health effects of radioactivity. 10,000 individuals in the United States had been injected thorium during X-ray diagnosis; they were later found to suffer health issues such as leukaemia and abnormal chromosomes. Public interest in radioactivity had declined by the end of the 1930s.
no