• Question: What would happen if you touched neptunium with your bare hands

    Asked by anon-239807 to Struan, Charlotte, Isabel, Douglas, David on 6 Mar 2020.
    • Photo: Struan Simpson

      Struan Simpson answered on 6 Mar 2020:

      This is something I haven’t really thought about before! I’m not an expert in this area, but you probably wouldn’t notice any immediate effect. Neptunium is a radioactive element, but it would take time for any radiation poisoning to appear, especially if you only held it for a very short period of time and didn’t get a big dose of radiation. Having said that, I still wouldn’t recommend touching it!

      I think for me, the bigger danger would actually come from handling the element itself. I work with elements in a similar area of the periodic table like cerium and samarium, and it’s really easy for them to spark and catch fire. This has happened to me a few times, and it looks just like a sparkler when it catches fire! From what I understand, elemental neptunium would behave similarly to these elements, so I think this is a danger that might sometimes be overlooked.

    • Photo: David Threlfall

      David Threlfall answered on 9 Mar 2020:

      Plutonium is radioactive, poisonous and can spontaneously ignite in air (pyrophoric), so if you touched it and absorbed some into your body you might suffer from radiation sickness, burns to the skin or develop DNA / cell damage.

      Best idea is not to touch !

    • Photo: Douglas Bray

      Douglas Bray answered on 17 Mar 2020:

      As a radioactive substance it would definitely not be advisable to touch it and could cause serious damage to you’re DNA; but this is completely out of my area of expertise so I couldn’t give much more detail.

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