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Comment by hammock | Hacker News Reader

The sticky stuff on the tobacco leaves (where most of the Po210 is) is important to the product.

Also worth clarifying that the tobacco plant is radiophilic, meaning it proactively takes up radioactive elements into the body of the plant and tends to grow better in the presence of radioactivity.

It’s for this reason that Big Tobacco also quietly seeks out radioactive fertilizers

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> tends to grow better in the presence of radioactivity.

Can you post a source for this? Curious.

It's complex, but the fertilizer itself is actually the source of the radioactive stuff. Tobacco has the odd characteristic of capturing that and the decay products are things like polonium

https://news.cancerresearchuk.org/2008/08/29/radioactive-pol...

That doesn't say anything about Polonium being selectively taken up by the plant and used for growth. Just contamination on the sticky covering of the plants. Which doesn't make smoking tobacco good in any way, shape or form whatsoever, but it's not at all the same claim.

A quick search doesn't bring up any examples of radiophile organisms, in the sense of taking up radionuclides that are used for something. "Radiophile" bacteria exist, but that just means they are highly resistant to ionizing radiation. What are radioactive fertilizers? Potassium is radioactive to a small extent, but it doesn't seem like it's ever used for that property.

> It’s for this reason that Big Tobacco also quietly seeks out radioactive fertilizers

Wooow. All these years and I'm still learning new things about how criminally insane those greedy fucks are. Two in a day today.

Sure would be cool if any of our well funded institutions did something about it.

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