Polonium were marketed by Firestone from 1940 to 1953. While the amount of radiation from the plugs was minuscule and not a threat to the consumer, the benefits of such plugs quickly diminished after approximately a month because of polonium's short half-life and because buildup on the conductors would block the radiation that improved engine performance. (The premise behind the polonium spark plug, as well as Alfred Matthew Hubbard's prototype radium plug that preceded it, was that the radiation would improve ionization of the fuel in the cylinder and thus allow the motor to fire more quickly and efficiently.) Polonium is
Polonium "natural environmental origin". Following later Russian tests, Vladimir Uiba, the head of the Russian Federal Medical and Biological Agency, stated in December 2013 that Arafat died of natural causes, and they had no plans to conduct further tests. It has been suggested that chelation agents, such as British Anti-Lewisite (dimercaprol), can be used to decontaminate humans. In one experiment, rats were given a fatal dose of 1.45 MBq/kg (8.7 ng/kg) of Po; all untreated rats were dead after 44 days, but 90% of the rats treated with the chelation agent HOEtTTC remained alive for 5 months. Polonium-210 may be quantified