Poison analysis

Pesticide poisoning incidents from 1959-68 in Uzbekistan were analyzed. The acute poisoning analysis permitted us to divide sufferers into three groups the first indudes workers who have direct contact with pestiddes the second includes collective farm workers who worked in the fields shortly after the crops were treated and the third includes people who suffered the effects of pestiddes introduced into their bodies through water, food, and inhalation. 

Muscle from 66 foxes found dead on Kiska Island, Alaska, after 1080 poisoning analysis 60 days after Muscle from males contained 0.7 (0.12-2.2) mg 1080/kg FW for females, it was 0.81 (0.09-2.8) mg/kg FW 1... 

Muscle from 66 foxes found dead on Kiska Island, Alaska, after 1080 poisoning analysis 60 days after collection... 

Verhelst D, Moulin P, Haufroid V, WitteboleX, Jadoul M, Hantson P. Acute renal injury following methanol poisoning analysis of... 

Because of the risk of lead poisoning, the exposure of children to lead-based paint is a significant public health concern. The first step in the quantitative analysis of lead in dried paint chips is to dissolve the sample. Corl evaluated several dissolution techniques. " In this study, samples of paint were collected and pulverized with a Pyrex mortar and pestle. Replicate portions of the powdered paint were then taken for analysis. Results for an unknown paint sample and for a standard reference material, in which dissolution was accomplished by a 4-6-h digestion with HNO3 on a hot plate, are shown in the following table. 

Bromine ttifluoride is commercially available at a minimum purity of 98% (108). Free Br2 is maintained at less than 2%. Other minor impurities are HF and BrF. Free Br2 content estimates are based on color, with material containing less than 0.5% Br2 having a straw color, and ca 2% Br2 an amber-red color. Fluoride content can be obtained by controlled hydrolysis of a sample and standard analysis for fluorine content. Bromine ttifluoride is too high boiling and reactive for gas chromatographic analysis. It is shipped as a Hquid in steel cylinders in quantities of 91 kg or less. The cylinders are fitted with either a valve or plug to faciUtate insertion of a dip tube. Bromine ttifluoride is classified as an oxidizer and poison by DOT. 

Workers who produce or use lead should be aware of possible ha2ards. Symptoms of chronic lead poisoning include fatigue, headache, constipation, uneasy stomach, irritabiHty, poor appetite, metallic taste, weight loss, and loss of sleep. Most of these same symptoms also occur in many common illnesses, such as the flu, thus a physician must rely on tests, such as blood lead analysis, to determine chronic lead poisoning. 

This proliferation in the use of color additives was soon recognized as a threat to the pubHc s health. Of particular concern were the practices of a dding poisonous colorants to food, and of using dyes to hide poor quaUty or to add weight or bulk to certain items. References 5—14 provide additional information on the history of food colorants and thek regulation. Reference 15 provides more information regarding the appHcations, properties, specifications, and analysis of color additives, as well as methods for the determination of colorants in products. 

In the Slimmer of 1989, Rutland Water, the largest man-made lake in Western Europe and which supplies potable water to approximately 500 000 people in the East of England, contained a heavy bloom of Microcystis aeruginosa. By the end of the summer, a number of sheep and dogs had died after drinking from the bloom and concentrated scum. Analysis revealed that the cyanobacterial bloom material was toxic to laboratory mice, and that rumen contents from a poisoned sheep contained fivemicrocystin variants.Microcystins were detected in waters used for recreation in Australia at concentrations greater than 1 mg per... 

Poisoning by ergot still occurs occasionally in countries where rye is extensively used as a food grain or where ergotised grain is liable to be fed to cattle and methods for its detection have been devised, but interest in the analysis of ergot centres chiefly on the estimation of the active alkaloids in the crude drug or its preparations. The methods used may... 

Analysis of alkaloids, barbiturates, and other drugs and poisons in forensic science 97AC123R. 

In order to reduce or eliminate off-line sample preparation, multidimensional chromatographic techniques have been employed in these difficult analyses. LC-GC has been employed in numerous applications that involve the analysis of poisonous compounds or metabolites from biological matrices such as fats and tissues, while GC-GC has been employed for complex samples, such as arson propellants and for samples in which special selectivity, such as chiral recognition, is required. Other techniques include on-line sample preparation methods, such as supercritical fluid extraction (SFE)-GC and LC-GC-GC. In many of these applications, the chromatographic method is coupled to mass spectrometry or another spectrometiic detector for final confirmation of the analyte identity, as required by many courts of law. 

In the modern forensic chemistry laboratory (Figure B) arsenic is detected by analysis of hair samples, where the element tends to concentrate in chronic arsenic poisoning. A single strand of hair is sufficient to establish the presence or absence of the element. The technique most commonly used is neutron activation analysis, described in Chapter 19. If the concentration found is greater than about 0.0003%, poisoning is indicated normal arsenic levels are much lower than this. 

Safety procedures must be observed in the laboratory at all times. Many chemicals encountered in analysis are poisonous and must be carefully handled. Whereas the dangerous properties of concentrated acids and of widely recognised poisons such as potassium cyanide are well known, the dangers associated with organo-chlorine solvents, benzene and many other chemicals are less apparent. 

The percentages of amino acids in silk fibroin which Poison et al. (224) found by direct visual and indirect photometric analysis of ninhydrin paper-partition chromatograms are shown in Table VII. The percentages obtained for alanine, glycine, and serine appear to be reasonably accurate, inasmuch as they agree closely with those found by other methods. It would be of interest to determine alanine by the microbiological method reported recently by Sauberlich and Baumann (238), in view of the widely different values found for this amino acid by the described ninhydrin-chromatographic procedure and the selec-... 

A sophisticated quantitative analysis of experimental data was performed by Voltz et al. (96). Their experiment was performed over commercially available platinum catalysts on pellets and monoliths, with temperatures and gaseous compositions simulating exhaust gases. They found that carbon monoxide, propylene, and nitric oxide all exhibit strong poisoning effects on all kinetic rates. Their data can be fitted by equations of the form ... 

EMETICS Because treatment of poison ingestion is an emergency, the nurse immediately obtains equipment for treatment. The nurse obtains the drag, an emesis basin, towels, specimen containers for sending contents of the stomach to the laboratory for analysis, and a suction machine and places them near the patient. The nurse obtains the patient s blood pressure, pulse, and respiratory rate and performs a brief physical examination to determine what other damages or injuries, if any, may have occurred. 

Figure 5.59 Molecular structures of the diarrhetic shellfish poisons (a) pectenotoxin-6 (PTX6) (b) okadaic acid (OA) (c) dinophysistoxin-1 (DTXl) (d) yessotoxin (YTX). Reprinted from J. Chromatogr., A, 943, Matrix effect and correction by standard addition in quantitative liquid chromatographic-mass spectrometric analysis of diarrhetic shellfish poisoning toxins , Ito, S. and Tsukada, K., 39-46, Copyright (2002), with permission from Elsevier Science.

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