• Question: what element do you think is the most dangerous and why, and what element do you think is the least dangerous and why?

    Asked by kora532vend96 on 26 Mar 2026.
    • Photo: Andrew McDowall

      Andrew McDowall answered on 26 Mar 2026:

      It’s a tricky question, the answer would depend a great deal on how the question was structured, what you were and weren’t allowed to consider. The circumstances in which you encounter the element matter a great deal, as does whether you include the uses to which its properties allow it to be put.

      On their own merits both thallium and plutonium are extremely toxic, amongst the most dangerous chemicals to life. But they’re also rather rare. Thallium is a notorious poison and has been used in murders in the past, but it’s not common. Arsenic may be a little less toxic, but is more common in nature and has been easier to get hold of so instances of arsenic poisoning (deliberate or accidental) occur far more often.

      What, then, of gold? By it’s on merits gold is largely inert, non-toxic, and almost completely harmless, and yet human desire for it makes it lethal. The mining, the extraction, the refinement of it and the desire to acquire and hold it. The metal is harmless but more people die for gold each year than for thallium or plutonium. Iron is mostly harmless, but the properties of iron make for excellent weapons. The fault may lie with the wielder not the element, but iron kills many each year. Oxygen? All other gases asphyxiate (including the unreactive noble and otherwise harmless noble gases) , whilst oxygen permits advanced life. It’s natural state is a diradical with the potential to damage cells. It oxidises many things readily damaging them directly and also through fires and explosions. So to choose the least harmful I’d have to chose something that wasn’t normally a gas, wasn’t pretty or a store of value to make possession desirable to us Yahoos (that rules out carbon), didn’t have properties to make it a good weapon, and wasn’t toxic to the human body. Whilst there must be some that fit these criteria, I’m not sure which ones they are.

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