Citation

Di Candia D, Muccino E, Battistini A, Boracchi M, Gentile G, Zoja R. Leg. Med. (Elsevier) 2019; 42: e101661.

Affiliation

Laboratorio di Istopatologia Forense e Microbiologia Medico Legale, Sezione di Medicina Legale e delle Assicurazioni, Dipartimento di Scienze Biomediche per la Salute, Università degli Studi di Milano, Via Luigi Mangiagalli, 37, 20133 Milano, Italy. Electronic address: riccardo.zoia@unimi.it.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, Japanese Society of Legal Medicine, Publisher Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.legalmed.2019.101661

PMID

31874453

Abstract

The banning of the heavy metal thallium (Tl) in many countries, because of its toxicity, led to a remarkable reduction of the number of cases of poisoning both accidental and homicidal forcing us to better study the pharmacokinetics of this poison using new technologies. The Authors, in this work, are reporting the case of a collective thallium toxicosis caused by voluntary adulteration of an infusion with thallium sulfate, occurred in 8 members of the same familial nucleus; the administration of Prussian Blu resulted to be ineffective for 3 of these members that died at a later time. The most peculiar aspects of this rare manner of poisoning are discussed; the analytical procedures used, Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS) in particular, resulted to be fundamental in the forensic diagnosis process of acute poisoning cause by thallium.

Copyright © 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Language: en

Keywords

Acute thallium poisoning; Forensic pathology; Homicide; ICP-MS