TOXICOLOGY:
Arsenic Researchers Face Isotope Shortage
Jocelyn Kaiser
To understand how arsenic causes cancer, researchers are using arsenic-73 to find genes that metabolize arsenic and to explore how these metabolites enter cells and damage DNA. But Los Alamos National Laboratory, the only place in the world that sells the radioactive isotope, has run out, and it could be the middle of 2001 before some two dozen labs around the world studying arsenic are back in business.