Spark Plugs

Few of us consider spark plugs until a professional informs us that we need a new one. After discovering that they cost around $20 and just take a few minutes to replace, you have a brief moment of worry before returning to your previous attitude. And that's a shame since, at least for a while, you could actually obtain radioactive spark plugs without any valid justification.

Spark plugs made by Firestone once used polonium electrodes. You could now be asking whether polonium is dangerous. It is, in fact, more hazardous than hydrogen cyanide, according to scientists. Okay, so how? It is 250 billion times more poisonous, to be exact. That is quite a few times.

The half-life of polonium-210 is approximately 138 days, so all of those spark plugs are now inert. Hopefully, the factory workers who created them wore protective clothing. The rationale behind the plus was that perhaps by making it simpler for the spark to leap the gap, the radiation might enhance performance. It's difficult to say for sure because the science doesn't really make sense, which is just one of the many reasons why these plugs aren't currently available on the market.