Poisoner's Corridor: "Ouch-Ouch"

     Elements in the "poisoner's corridor" ingeniously undo life. The lightest of these elements is cadmium, which was mined centuries ago from the Kamioka mines in AD 710. Japan needed zinc during the war, and it just so happens zinc mixes with cadmium in the earth's crust. After they separated the metals, the cadmium was dumped into streams or on the ground. Soon after, farmers ended up with joint and deep bone pain, kidney failure, and soft bones. After the war, a local doctor named Norboru Hagino began studying the disease. He found out that cadmium replaces zinc in the body and it evicts sulfur and calcium. Once his results went public and they were proven, the mining company began paying restitution to 178 survivors in `972. This disease was forever known as "itai-itai," which means "ouch-ouch," after the cries of pain that escaped its victims.
     Scary enough, cadmium isn't the worst poison among the elements. Below it sits mercury, a neurotoxin, and lead, thallium, and polonium are all to the right of it. These elements are subtle and can "migrate deep inside the body before going off," and because they can give up different numbers of electrons, they can mimic many other elements. Thallium, for this specific reason, is the deadliest element on the table. Once inside the body, it unstitches key amino acid bonds inside proteins and unravels the folds, making them useless. One man used it to experiment on his family, for which he was sent to a mental institution.
     These elements work so well as poisons because they are likely to form stable nuclei that never go radioactive. The heaviest almost-stable elements is bismuth, element number 83. It's a whitish metal with a pinkish hue that burns with a blue flame and emits yellow fumes. When it freezes, it expands and it forms rocks known as hopper crystals when it cools. These crystals twist themselves into elaborate rainbow staircases. A French experiment proved that "bismuth will live only long enough to be the final element to go extinct." However, it can be medicinal. It's been used to soothe ulcers, and it is the "bis" in Pepto-Bismol. On the periodic table, it "marks the transition of poisoner's corridor from the conventional retching-and-deep-pain poisons to the scorching radioactive poisons." Right after bismuth comes polonium, which causes hair to fall out. Beyond that is the noble gas radon which can displace air, sink into the lungs, and discharge lethal radioactive particles that lead to lung cancer. Pleasant huh?


The following picture is of the element bismuth, #83, when it cools and forms what is known as hopper crystals.