Radioactive Scientist

With a license from the Atomic Energy Commission, a radiologist named Harris Levine began some dangerous tinkering at his New Jersey home. Using the radioactive isotope americium 241, he devised a technique for spotting counterfeit money. The trick was to contaminate the engraver's ink with a trace of a radiation-free isotope, boron 10, activate it with americium and then pick out the bills that did not properly respond to detectors.

Although the system failed to impress the U.S. Treasury, it has taught Levine a costly lesson. Last week, more than six years after he began the experiment, doctors reported that the radioactive isotope had found its way not only into the body of the 57-year-old researcher but into that of his ten-year-old son as well.

Radioactivity, of course, is an acknowledged laboratory risk. Since it was discovered in 1896, hundreds of scientists and technicians have been affected by various kinds of acute radiation poisoning, whose signs range from nausea and loss of hair to fatal blood diseases. But Levine's case, though hardly as serious, is highly unusual. He is one of the few people thus far who have been contaminated by americium, a man-made element that is being increasingly used by industry in smoke detectors, calibrators and antistatic devices.

Like Ten X Rays. Levine's plight was accidentally discovered during a routine radiation check of the New York state health department's radiological sciences lab in Albany, where he is now employed. At first, the state kept quiet about the case. But eventually a reporter heard about it, and state officials decided to head off scare stories by giving the facts. "From a public health point of view," they insisted, "there is absolutely no hazard."

They are probably right. Americium emits almost exclusively alpha particles, the nuclei of helium atoms produced by the isotope's slow decay into lighter elements. The alpha particles are so weak that they remain confined inside the victim's body. While contagion is virtually impossible, this is only slight comfort to the victims. As americium spreads through the body, it may linger in such areas as the liver, spleen and lymph system and eventually settle into the marrow of the bones. According to Pittsburgh Radiologist Niel Wald, a leading radiation specialist, the effect over a year-long period is roughly equivalent to the radiation produced by ten X rays. No one is quite sure about the ultimate damage to the chromosomes. The only treatment: intravenous injection of chemicals known as chelating agents (named for the chelae, or claws, of crabs and lobsters), which can draw out heavy elements like lead, radium or americium.

Fortunately, neither Levine nor his son seems to have been hurt by the poisoning. Even 300 times their dose has produced no ill effects in the two other known cases. But unless the radioactive element is removed, they will go right on "ticking" as long as they live--and probably for some time thereafter. Americium has a half-life of 458 years; it takes nearly half a millennium for 50% of the isotope to disappear.

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