Beryllium is highly toxic, yet useful

Uniquely strong and light, beryllium is used to make cell phones, missiles and aircraft.

In Isaac Asimov’s sci-fi story ‘Sucker Bait’, scientists struggle to understand why all the colonists of the planet known as Junior died after settling on its surface. Finally, one mutinous renegade realises that high levels of beryllium in the soil caused the colonists to slowly die of berylliosis.

The dangers of beryllium aren’t just the stuff of fiction, however: The element (atomic number 4) is recognised as a carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. Uniquely strong and light, beryllium is used to make cell phones, missiles and aircrafts. But workers who handle the metal need to watch out, as airborne beryllium has been known to be highly toxic.

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In another form, however, beryllium is highly desirable, even priceless. When combined with trace amounts of chromium, beryllium takes on a beautiful green hue as the gemstone commonly known as the emerald. Emerald, morganite and aquamarine are precious forms of beryl. Some of the oldest emerald mines were developed by the Romans in the Eastern Desert of Egypt about 2,000 years ago.

Beryllium was discovered in 1798 by the French chemist Louis Nicolas Vauquelin, who found it in the oxide form in beryl and a green-coloured variety of beryl, emerald.The metal was isolated in 1828 by two chemists — Friedrich Wölhler from Germany and Antoine Bussy from France.