Antimony, carbon monoxide, and strychnine poisoning

1. Antimony, carbon monoxide, and strychnine poisoning

2. Dioxin • Considered one of the most toxic compounds • Formed from burning of wood (phenols plus sodium chloride) – one way • Times Beach, Missouri • Yushchenko – Sept, 2004 • Chloracne

3. Yushchenko

4. Antimony • As toxic as arsenic (gram for gram) • Is a cumulative poison • Triggers the stomach to expel the poison • Hard to kill a person with antimony • Survive 48 hours – should be ok • Also tested by the Marsh test. Forms an orange-red sulfide with H2S, arsenic forms yellow As2S3.

5. Forms • Inorganic antimony • Stibine gas, SbH3 • Antimony potassium tartrate (tartar emetic) • Antimony nitrate, antimony oxide sulfide, antimony trichloride (butter of antimony)

6. Uses • Skin rash • Emetic • Fire retardant (cot death from stibine gas)

7. Poison • Overdose of emetic • Stibine gas • Mozart – probably from treatment for tapeworm (trichinosis) • Crib death from flame retardants containing antimony

8. Strychnine • Is an alkaloid • Death can come within 3 hours. • “Produces some of the most dramatic and painful symptoms of any known toxic reaction” • No specific antidote. Can add a charcoal infusion to absorb any poison in GI tract • Anticonvulsants. • If the patient survives 24 hours – recovery possible. • Kill varmints – replaced since 1990 with zinc phosphide poisons

9. Poisonings • Alexander the Great • Thomas Cream – poisoned prostitutes in London. • Blues singer Robert Johnson (poisoned whiskey) • Belle Gunness (IN), Lady Bluebeard – murdered her lovers • Jane Stanford (Stanford Univ) • Oskar Dirlewanger (Nazi SS) would kill Jewish girls by injecting them with strychnine to the entertainment of his troops

10. Literature / TV • Agatha Christie • TV series The Wire • Psycho (Norman Bates mother and her lover) • Peter Robinson “Cold is the grave” • Christopher Pike, “Die Softly” • Movie Cape fear • James Herriott, “All Things Wise and Wonderful” • Monk and the Secret Santa

11. Polonium • Litvinenko poisoning – first thought to be Thallium – now know to be Po-210 radioactive isotope

12. Others • Barium acetate – 16 year old murdered father, barium carbonate, barium sulfate • Chromate – Erin Brockovich • Cadmium – Shrek glasses, Miley Cyrus jewelry • Copper – used as a bactericide • Fluoride – HF treatment • Nickel – any metal, heavy metals

13. Adrenalin • Epinephrine • Used to treat extreme allergic reactions • Kristen Gilbert injected adrenalin (at least 23)

14. Morphine • Opium (~20% morphine and 1-2% codeine) • Morphine can be isolated as crystals (Morpheus, Greek god of sleep) • Modified – diamorphine is heroin (diacetylmorphine) can cross the blood brain barrier • Harold Shipman (addiction to pethidine, used to ease labor pain) used it to kill maybe 140+. “people became suspicious”

15. Chloroform – CHCl3 • Anesthesia – Queen Victoria for childbirth • Were reports of patients dying with simple procedures • Murder – Gavin Hall (2005) killed his daughter drugged and then used a cloth with chloroform • Winifred Markland by Father Daly (gin and chloroform) • Edwin Bartlett by his wife Adelaide (drank chloroform)

16. Carbon monoxide • Binds to the hemoglobin and either keeps oxygen from binding or keeps oxygen from leaving