It's sometimes hard to tell if the British government's handling of a radiation poisoning case is inept or just poorly reported, but it certainly could be improved. The difficulty of the UK's response to a  radiological attack on an individual demonstrates, on a much smaller scale, the kind of challenge Americans would face if terrorists used radioactive substances to inflict mass casualties in the United States.

By the time British government authorities publicly identified polonium-210 as the likely cause of Alexander Litvinenko's death, thousands of people had been exposed to cross-contamination as they passed through each of the places visited by the former Russian spy, and possibly his assassin, before he fell ill on November 1. It is unclear if doctors failed to quickly diagnose the cause, or if officials intentionally withheld the diagnosis for investigative purposes.

So far, though, investigators report finding traces of radiation at a dozen locations, among them Litvinenko's home, the Park Lane Hotel, the Millenium Hotel, a sushi restaurant, offices of fellow Russian Boris Berezovsky, and two currently grounded aircraft. British authorities say that only low levels of contamination have been discovered and the threat to public health is "minimal." But,  monitoring and sampling can only determine how much contamination remains. How much was there originally may never be known.

(originally posted at Hoot at the Dark.)

Daily Press has a must read Special Report:

"The Army now admits that it secretly dumped 64 million pounds of nerve and mustard agents into the sea, along with 400,000 chemical-filled bombs, land mines and rockets and more than 500 tons of radioactive waste - either tossed overboard or packed into the holds of scuttled vessels."