Murder most mysterious
The death of ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko has highlighted how long it can take to diagnose a poison. Nicola Jones asks how hard can it be?
You'd think, in this day and age, that diagnosing the culprit in a suspected poisoning wouldn't be that tricky. Bang the symptoms into a database, plug the blood into a mass spec and spot the toxin.
Read the column here.
Comments
This is the best precis of the case I've seen; thanks to Nicola Jones.
Given the specific activity of polonium, which is mostly Po-210 with a half-life of ~130 days, it would seem that placing a sample of fecal material or urine in a liquid scintillation counter would have immediately pointed in the right direction. Po-210 alpha particles may also be energetic enough to be detected by some Geiger-Muller type counters.
The salt or chemical form of Po would also seem to be important in its toxicity. Unabsorbed, effects would presumably be limited to the GI tract. Analagous to Pb+2, perhaps Po cations are absorbed along with a desirable metal. This might suggest that, if detected early enough, systemic Po toxicity could be treated by chlelation therapy (unless the absorbed radiation dose was orders of magnitude above the lethal threshold, which seems possible in this case).
Posted by: Alistair McKay | November 29, 2006 02:40 PM