Continuing my article from Various
Types Of Poison As A Reference For Your Novel (1) here are the following
items:
3. CYANIDE
Although it had
a gloomy history as a killer, cyanide is actually believed to be one of the
responsible compound that shapes life. Cyanide is a chemical
compound that contains the cyano group, with a carbon atom bonded to a nitrogen
atom and encapsulated in the chemistry of C = N or CN.
CN group can be found in
a wide variety of chemical compounds. Some of them are gases such as hydrogen
cyanide, while others form are solid, liquid, or crystal such as potassium
cyanide or sodium cyanide.
In everyday life
cyanide easily found on various objects such as almond, apple seeds, apricot,
tobacco, insecticides, pesticides, and many others. Due to the prevalence of
cyanide around us, the death by cyanide can be misinterpreted as a domestic or
a household accidents, it could be the result of ingesting pesticides by
accident.
The way to used
cyanide as poison is you have to apply it on the edge of glass or bottle or
injected into an ice cubes. Cyanide is only reacting as hydrogen cyanide-free,
therefore the swallowed crystals should met water or stomach acid before
freeing the acid hydro-cyanide.
When this thing
abound then the process takes just a few seconds before the reaction shows. The
fusion will make the color of food or drink change into yellow or dark green
along with distinctive smell of almonds.
Beside ingestion
(swallowed), cyanide can be absorbed through inhalation (lungs) or skin before
it is distributed throughout the body. Therefore, one way to see if someone
contaminated with cyanide from the exterior is irritation, like a burn scar,
which is exposed on the skin.
Cyanide kills
its victims by preventing red blood cells in the process of absorption of
oxygen and is also known as the "Internal Breath Away". Conceivably
tormented victims of this poison cyanide after contamination as strangled and
because of that they can’t breathe.
Death may take
1-15 minutes, depends on the dose that went into the body, if they catches fatal
dose of 1.5 mg/kg of body weight, and the reaction was very terrible because
the victim will be banging their heads and drooling as efforts to prevent their
life.
Cyanide still
used in mining to extract gold and silver sometimes. Because of it the safety
of workers in the mining of gold or silver are very vulnerable, cyanide could
affect the health of humans and creatures living in the vicinity.
4. THALLIUM
Thallium is a
chemical element in the periodic table that has the symbol of TI and atomic
number of 81. When isolated in soil Thallium resembles tin but when exposed to
air thallium becomes colorless.
A chemist named
William Crookes and Claude-Auguste Lamy discovered independent thallium in 1861
in sulfuric acid production residues. They examine Thallium with a newly
developed method of light spectroscope and found that the thallium produce a
line of green spectrum. That's why it called Thallium compounds, in Greek,
means Thallos or green branch.
Thallium has the
characteristics of a water-soluble, colorless, and odorless. It has highly
toxic properties with caution treat. Thallium poisoning can occur through
inhalation, skin absorption, ingestion, even eye contact. Thallium safe dose in
the skin is exposed to 0.1 mg/m3 over 8-hour working day but when it exceeds 15
mg/m3, Thallium is harmful to health. While inhalation exposure should not
exceed 0.1 mg/m3 of weighted average over 8 hours.
The compound is a
high rating caution poison, once added to food or beverage it can’t be detected.
It doesn’t have any smell, doesn’t change the color of the food or beverage, or
changing tastes. It works most effectively when it enters the body through the
tongue, so that material can be added via water, tea, coffee, vegetables, fruits,
and even medicine.
The toxin very
effective in human’s body, there’s no antidote to stop the effect especially
when the lethal dose levels already within the body for five hours. This
substance will immediately damage various organs from the lungs, kidneys, and
brain. Some of the typical effects of thallium poisoning are hair loss,
although the hair loss generally occurs at low doses, and peripheral nerve
damage (victims experiencing the sensation of walking on hot coals).
Thallium was the
perfect murder weapon once before its effects are understood and found an
antidote in the form of Prussian blue, a solid ion exchange material, which
absorbs thallium. Prussian blue with a rate of up to 20 g per day given via ate
to people, neutralized thallium compounds through the digestive system and out
in the form of feces. In the next stage of the poison treatment they added extra
potassium to mobilize the compounds from tissues.
Thallium is
currently used as an ingredient of poison of rat and ant, as well as for the
elements of infrared detectors. Nowadays Thallium main source comes from
man-made pollutants such as emissions of cement plants, coal-burning power
plants, and metal gutters from copper ore processing operation.
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