Radiation tests for hundreds of visitors to bar in spy death

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Toxic trail: Seven staff at the Pine Bar of the Millennium Hotel have been contaminated with low levels of polonium-210 following the visit of Alexander Litvinenko, who was given a lethal dose

Hundreds of customers at a bar visited by murdered former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko are to be tested for the radioactive substance that killed him.

All seven staff working at the Pine Bar of the Millennium Hotel on the day he went there have been contaminated with low levels of polonium-210.

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They have been told by health officials they face no short-term health damage but a "very small" increased risk of cancer in the long term.

Following the results more than 200 others known to have been at the bar on 1 November will be contacted and offered tests. The Health Protection Agency has also asked those who were at the bar the day before and the day after to contact NHS Direct to see if they need to be tested.

Dr Michael Clark, spokesman for the HPA's radiation protection division, said the contamination suffered by bar staff was thousands of times lower than that of Mr Litvinenko but was "approaching" that found in an adult member of his family.

HPA chief executive Professor Pat Troop said: "I appreciate that it is quite hard for them to take in."

She said they did not want to speculate on exactly how the contamination took place.

Meanwhile, Scotland Yard detectives in Russia to investigate Mr Litvinenko's murder were expected to see Andrei Lugovoi, the former KGB officer who met him in the bar. There were conflicting reports about the health of a third man at the meeting, Mr Lugovoi's business associate Dmitry Kovtun.

A Russian news agency said he had fallen into a coma after being questioned by British police and Russian investigators, and that he was critically ill. But this was denied by Mr Lugovoi's lawyer. It also emerged that investigators from Russia and Israel are on their way to London to carry out their own inquiries into the murder.

According to Russian newspaper Izvestya, a team from the Russian Prosecutor's office is also investigating the attempted murder of Mr Kovtun, thought to have been poisoned too. The Israelis are in London because of theories linking Leonid Nevzlin, a Jewish oligarch who sought asylum in Israel, with the death of Mr Litvinenko.

Mr Nevzlin was associated with oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovski, who was jailed for nine years and his company Yukos confiscated and then sold off.

Izvestya claims Mr Nevzlin confirmed he recently met Mr Litvinenko, who gave him documents related to the Yukos case. It says in September 2004 Roman Tcepov, a security firm owner and friend of Vladimir Putin, was poisoned by radioactive material after being in contact with Mr Nevzlin, or his associates, also in relation to the Yukos scandal.

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