What Is Plutonium?

ATSDR says plutonium is a radioactive material produced in nuclear reactors, with only trace amounts occurring naturally, and that plutonium released during atmospheric testing of nuclear bombs, which ended in 1980, is the source of most of the plutonium in the environment worldwide. The EPA says plutonium levels in the environment are very low and pose little risk, and that because microscopic particles from atmospheric nuclear weapons testing are dispersed widely, virtually everyone comes into contact with extremely small amounts of plutonium.

How you are exposed matters. The EPA says alpha particles pose no direct or external radiation threat but can pose a serious health threat if ingested or inhaled, and that most forms of plutonium emit alpha particles. It says that when plutonium particles are inhaled, they lodge in the lung tissue, where the alpha particles can kill lung cells, causing scarring of the lungs that leads to further lung disease and cancer, while plutonium ingested from contaminated food or water does not pose a serious threat because the stomach does not absorb it easily and it passes out of the body in the feces.

ATSDR says the main health effect from exposure to plutonium is cancer, which may occur years after exposure, and that the types of cancer most likely to develop are cancers of the lung, bones and liver.