Polonium years) can be made through the alpha, proton, or deuteron bombardment of lead or bismuth in a cyclotron. Tentatively called "radium F", polonium was discovered by Marie and Pierre Curie in 1898, and was named after Marie Curie's native land of Poland (). Poland at the time was under Russian, German, and Austro-Hungarian partition, and did not exist as an independent country. It was Curie's hope that naming the element after her native land would publicize its lack of independence. Polonium may be the first element named to highlight a political controversy. This element was the first one discovered by
Polonium general population is exposed to small amounts of polonium as a radon daughter in indoor air; the isotopes Po and Po are thought to cause the majority of the estimated 15,000–22,000 lung cancer deaths in the US every year that have been attributed to indoor radon. Tobacco smoking causes additional exposure to polonium. The maximum allowable body burden for ingested Po is only , which is equivalent to a particle massing only 6.8 picograms. The maximum permissible workplace concentration of airborne Po is about 10 Bq/m ( µCi/cm). The target organs for polonium in humans are the spleen and liver.