THALLIUM

Thallium is... a rough element. Namely because the more I learned about thallium and its properties, the less keen I was on having a sample of thallium in the element collection. Less keen than any of the stable elements, certainly, but somehow less keen still than elements like uranium and thorium, and less keen than even the americium that would grace my collection once the smoke detector needed replacing.

For one thing it looks about what you'd expect a metal ending in -ium to look like. A silver colour, almost nothing to write home about. But - oh. It corrodes in air, so you need to store it under oil or preferably argon. And - oh, what does it do? Right, it is rather absorbent, and even holding a sample in the hand is enough to lead to poisoning. Right.. and it likes to live action roleplay in the human body and pretend that it's potassium, an element actually necessary for cellular processes. Problem though - that thallium does a rather carbon-radium-phosphorus job of being potassium, and its exposure leads to sickness and death.

Likely because of this acutely toxic nature, the United Kingdom's home office restricts the ownership of thallium 'and its salts' to those who possess a license. I have questioned whether this would also apply to tiny samples that are permanently sealed, but since I don't particularly like thallium as an element I decided against arguing. Though I did ask a veteran element collector to send an e-mail on my behalf to the UK Home Office to ask about this. To my knowledge, there was no response.

And so I decided to take a different route with thallium. Lorandite is a mienral species which contains thallium, in addition to arsenic. Fun! Some mineral deposits in the Republic of North Macedonia contain some amounts of Lorandite, the most commonly-occuring thallium mineral in nature. That which is in the vial is not so much lorandite as it is a rock containing lorandite, and since this picture was taken I have added even more similar rocks so now the vial is filled with lorandite-bearing mineral - the result of a generous listing on eBay, which also includes a rock far too big for a vial sample but should look pretty in a decently-sized glass box kept in a secure location.

But perhaps my concern about thallium is futile. Because in the 21st century it was found that bismuth is ever so slightly radioactive, with half life of 20 quintillion years. And it decays to a stable isotope of thallium. So assuming within my lifetime we find the secret to eternal life, when comes the time in god knows how many years when the sample could be considered a sample of thallium, and assuming that within that many quintillion years' time the UK home office still exists and hasn't changed their position about this, then maybe I will hand myself in. But who knows? Maybe by that many quintillion years' time I will already have the response from the Home Office I have been waiting for since 2026. This specimen was acquired in June of 2026.