In the last 100 years mankind's technology
has exploded, and along with it his understanding
of the natural world.
In the 20th century alone mankind nearly doubled
the number of elements known on the periodic
table, many of them completely artificial
constructions created in scientific labs.
Today man has the power to create matter that
doesn't exist naturally anywhere else in the
universe, and even more than what wondrous
technologies and capabilities all of these
new concoctions could unlock, we want to know
something else entirely: just how fast would
different elements in the periodic table take
to kill you, and which is the deadliest?!
Polonium, or element 84, is one of the radioactive
elements discovered by famous scientists Marie
and Pierre Curie, who helped further mankind's
knowledge of radioactivity at the expense
of their own lives.
Extremely rare, it is nonetheless a naturally
occurring element, and can be found in uranium
ore and even cigarette smoke.
Science hasn't found many applications for
Polonium, and that's probably because it's
insanely radioactive- with one gram of polonium
emitting as many alpha particles as 5 kilograms
of radium.
Polonium is so toxic that one gram could kill
10 million people if it was ingested, and
thus it is a favorite tool of government assassins.
Most famously, former Russian spy Alexander
Litvinenko was fatally poisoned by just a
tiny trace of polonium poured into his tea
after he defected to Britain.
Though it took him 23 days to die, this was
only because of the minute quantities of polonium
he ingested- and even then the assassins,
two Russian intelligence agents, had inadvertently
left a trail of radioactivity throughout London
that investigators found terrifyingly easy
to track.
The submicroscopic dose of polonium Litvinenko
ingested was a death sentence, but also allowed
British police to track down the killers with
ease.
Mankind has known about the dangers of mercury
for a while, but it took many painful thousands
of years to understand the true danger of
this magical metal.
For a long time mercury was used in everything
from paint dyes to makeup, and even ingested
purposefully as an elixir of life.
China's Qin Shi Huang famously sent wise men
and scholars throughout the known world to
search for an elixir by which he could cheat
death, but in the end wound up dying to mercury
poisoning.
Today we no longer ingest magic tonics made
of mercury or use it to paint our faces, but
we ingest it nonetheless every single day
from the seafood we consume, which is itself
polluted by our industries.
Mercury poisoning via seafood has become such
a serious issue in some parts of the world
that young children and pregnant women are
warned against eating fish caught in places
such as the north sea in Europe.
As a powerful neurotoxin, mercury can cause
everything from muscle weakness, lack of coordination,
numbness in extremities, memory problems,
trouble speaking or seeing, and eventually,
death.
Typically less than a gram of the stuff is
enough to fatally poison someone, and death
comes slowly but surely as an individual's
mental faculties slowly break down.
Despite this, doctors throughout the 19th
century often prescribed large amounts of
mercury to patients suffering from constipation,
as its high density helps push waste through
the colon quite effectively.
While this is definitely not recommended today,
the human body typically pushes mercury through
the digestive system before absorbing much
of it.
This element is most dangerous when inhaled,
and because it can be vaporized at room temperature
a spill of mercury can lead to mercury atoms
in the air you breath in.
These atoms pass through the lungs and into
the bloodstream and brain.
Mankind has known about the dangers of arsenic
for hundreds of years, and it has been the
poison of choice since the time of knights
and kings.
As mankind entered the industrial revolution,
arsenic wound up in many paints and wallpapers,
leading to individuals being poisoned by this
nasty element at home.
Today arsenic is used in wood preservatives
and some pesticides, but most people are exposed
to arsenic from the contamination of groundwater.
Drilling of drinking wells into the ground
has led to the puncturing of underground aquifers
rich in arsenic, which inevitably leaks out
and winds up in other, untainted aquifers.
Today an estimated 25 million Americans and
500 million people around the world drink
water that is contaminated with arsenic.
Low doses of arsenic can have a cumulative
effect and result in nausea, bleeding from
orifices, vomiting, and diarrhea.
Long term exposure also often results in cancer,
and a high enough dose results in a very painful
death within hours.
Surprisingly, this deadly element actually
shows promise in treating certain cancers,
and today research is being done using arsenic
compounds to directly attack the ability for
cancer cells to generate energy and communicate.
Element 87, also known as Francium, is a member
of the alkali metal group.
These are metals which are extremely reactive,
and most people know alkali metals by pure
potassium which reacts violently when coming
in contact with water.
While potassium heats up and can burst into
flames when coming in contact with water,
Francium is something altogether different,
and even just coming in contact with the moisture
in your skin would be enough to char your
hand to the bone.
If that wasn't bad enough, Francium is also
extremely radioactive.
The exact effects of francium on the human
body aren't well understood, mostly for two
reasons: number one being that any quantity
of francium coming in contact with moisture
in the human body would immediately turn you
into a human blow torch, and number two being
that Francium is the second rarest element
in the earth's crust.
Scientists believe that only as much as 20
to 30 grams of Francium exist at once throughout
the entire earth's crust, and the element
has never been viewed in bulk- only in microscopic
quantities.
The greatest amount of Francium ever produced
in a lab was only 300,000 atoms, and no useful
application for the element is yet known.
Lead is an element that humanity is well acquainted
with, and unfortunately, is so prevalent that
it is present in nearly everything you come
in contact with.
Lead is used in everything from gym weights
to jewelry, plumbing, paint, and various construction
materials, and most terrifying of all, there
is no known safe exposure threshold.
Yes, that means that any amount of lead is
dangerous, and yet it is present in nearly
everything we touch.
Lead is so toxic because it's known as the
imposter metal, entering the body through
ingestion and working its way throughout.
Lead then fools cells into believing that
it is the metals that cells actually need
to function, such as iron, calcium, and zinc,
and yet lead provides no benefit to the cells,
starving and killing them.
Lead is infamous for causing damage to the
nervous system, and can directly reduce an
individual's cognitive ability if exposed
to high enough quantities.
In children lead is especially dangerous and
can result in developmental delays, damage
to their organs, and even reduced intelligence.
In the late 40s and early 50s, geochemist
Clair Cameron Patterson discovered just how
horrifyingly prevalent lead had become in
the environment thanks to its addition as
an anti-knock agent in gasoline fuels.
Patterson was attempting to discover the age
of the earth by measuring the lead content
of very old rocks and the time it took the
uranium inside them to decay into lead, yet
his samples continuously became contaminated
with lead far too young to be part of the
original sample.
His discovery of widespread lead contamination
led him to discover the source, and after
digging up ice core samples from Greenland
ice, he realized that lead appeared in heavy
concentrations at the same time it was added
to automotive fuels.
Patterson was fiercely opposed by the oil
industry who hired its own scientists to refute
Patterson's results, and the case wound up
before the US Supreme Court, which eventually
helped ban lead's use as an additive in fuels.
Incredibly, lead is so dangerous that researchers
found a statistically significant correlation
between the use of leaded gasoline and the
rise and fall of American crime.
After leaded fuels were banned in America,
researchers discovered that dropping lead
lead levels in blood directly correlated with
a 56% decline in violent crime between 1992
and 2002, relating with the 22 years it took
for lead to reduce in toxic concentrations
from American air- though scientists continue
to debate the link, the implication alone
is terrifying given lead’s prevalence in
our society.
Today though lead is banned in the use of
fuels, it can still be found in very high
concentrations in the soil next to roads that
were heavily used during the pre-ban decades,
and ingesting even small quantities of this
soil can be toxic.
Plutonium is an element most people are familiar
with- or at least know the name- thanks to
the Cold War.
Produced in vast quantities for decades to
be used in nuclear weapons, plutonium is a
deadly element that is not just toxic, but
will kill you through radiation poisoning
long before its toxic effects take hold.
Plutonium constantly emits high levels of
alpha, beta, and gamma radiation, and is so
deadly that an estimated 500 grams of plutonium
could kill 2 million people if inhaled or
ingested.
While not as deadly as polonium, plutonium
is far more abundant thanks to its use in
thousands of nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors.
Plutonium also oxidizes in air and can appear
like a glowing red ember- which might be cool
to see for the few seconds it'll take for
you to die from a lethal radiation dose.
With a half-life of 24,000 years, plutonium
is going to be with us for a very, very long
time.
Another member of the alkali metals family,
Caesium is not as reactive as Francium, but
that's not saying much.
In fact, Caesium is so reactive that it can
combust even in very thin air, meaning that
the only way to safely store any amount of
caesium is under vacuum conditions.
Caesium is also very rare in the earth's crust,
which is probably a good thing or we'd be
having to dodge explosions every time it rained.
If you were to spill some caesium on your
hand, you, your hand, and the air around you
would burst into flames.
Because it is very similar to potassium, it
is also mildly poisonous as the body can mistake
it for much-needed potassium.
Also, Caesium happens to be slightly radioactive,
leaving element 55 packing a triple-punch
of deadly.
The periodic table of the elements may as
well be renamed to the periodic table of horrible
ways to die, given the extreme reactivity,
toxicity, and radioactivity of many of the
elements on the table.
Luckily most of the more dangerous elements
are either manmade and don't exist outside
of laboratory conditions, or extremely rare
in the earth's crust.
Others though, such as lead, are ubiquitous
throughout our society, and have had such
a huge impact on our behavior that only now
are researchers beginning to realize just
how of our past is shaped by our exposure
to toxic elements.
What element do you think is the deadliest?
Do you agree that violent crime could have
been a side effect of mass lead poisoning?
Let us know in the comments!
Also, be sure to check out our other video
The Demon Core - 14lbs of Plutonium!
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