Cyanide: An Old Enemy With Heightened Risks

Abstract

August 2006 32:4S yanide is an old enemy of human health. One of C most notorious of poisons, cyanide has caused both accidental and purposeful human fatality since antiquity. In Rome during the first century, long before cyanide was identified or named, the Emperor Nero allegedly used the cyanogenic plant cherry laurel to kill enemies. Cyanide continued to be used through the centuries as an agent of suicide and genocide and a weapon of war. Histories of 20th century warfare are peppered with references to cyanide, purportedly used by France in World War I, Japan in World War II, the Nazis in World War II, and Iraq in the 1980s. Cyanide remains a viable weapon in the 21st century as exemplified by its planned or actual use in terrorism including the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1995 Tokyo subway attack, the 2002 plot to poison the water supply to the American Embassy in Rome, and the alleged amassment by ‘‘Dr. Chaos’’ of more than 1 pound of cyanide in the Chicago subway system in 2002. The latter examples show that, its status as an old enemy notwithstanding, cyanide is a current threat to human health. Today, cyanide is associated with heightened risks. Always a relatively accessible poison, cyanide might be more readily available today than ever before with the advent of widespread use of the Internet. In the study ‘‘Look What I Found! Poison Hunting on eBay,’’ cyanide was among the poisons advertised as available for sale in searches of the online auction web site over the 10-month period from May 2003 to February 2004. The perpetrator in the 2003 cyanide murder of a Baltimore teenager obtained cyanide over the Internet from a chemical and laboratory-supply company. The potential availability of