Re: Tungsten

["Jim Lux" <jimlux-at-xxxxxxxxxxxxx> (by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-xxxxxxxxxx>)]

Tesla list wrote:
> 
> Original poster: "Finn Hammer" <f-hammer-at-post5.tele.dk>
> 
> John, all
> 
> I wonder too, and I`l never know, because being a smoker, if I die from
> lung cancer, nobody will want to look into the possibility of the cause
> being thorium dust. (I can hear the doctors walking down the corridor
> mumbling: thorium dust, pixi dust, the guy is must be nuts!)
> 
> Well, I use a mask most of the time, but don`t pay much attention to it
> as I probably should.
> 
> Chers, Fin Hammer

Turns out that one of the postulated causes of increased cancer for smoking
is that the fine particulates in the smoke provide a means to carry the
omnipresent radium, thorium, and uranium daughters (i.e. radon, etc.) into
the lungs, where their relatively feeble alpha emissions can do their dirty
work.  In the normal scheme of things (non-smoking), your respiratory tract
does a fairly good job keeping particles in the "wrong" sizes from getting
in there.