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.

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.