Vial marked ‘Polonium 210’ sparks scare during German Easter egg hunt

An Easter egg hunt in southwest Germany took a worrying turn Sunday when two men discovered a vial labeled “Polonium 210” in a garden, sparking an emergency response as authorities tested the potentially deadly radioactive substance.

District fire chief Andy Dorroch said the men found a small white plastic bottle with a red cap and called emergency services. He added that both men were unharmed.

The discovery led to a large-scale operation involving firefighters and police in the town of Vaihingen an der Enz, northwest of Stuttgart.

It remains unclear whether the 50 milliliter vial actually contained polonium 210.

“We assume that this is indeed the substance in question,” Dorroch said. He noted that the name “was not simply scribbled by hand, but was clearly and officially labeled.”

The vial also weighed around 200 grams, which would correspond to a relatively heavy substance like polonium, he said.

However, the first on-site measurements aimed at detecting radioactivity were negative, he said.

Officials from the Ministry of the Environment recovered the bottle in Vaihingen an der Enz in order to analyze its contents, police said.

According to the Federal Office for Radiation Protection (BfS), the chemical element polonium is particularly dangerous if it is inhaled or absorbed through the skin via open wounds.

Kremlin critic and former intelligence officer Alexander Litvinenko died in London in 2006 following a polonium-210 attack.