Read More. If a castor bean seed is swallowed whole without damage to the seed coat, it will probably pass harmlessly through the system.
But if the coat is chewed or broken and then swallowed, the poison will enter the body. Get CNN Health's weekly newsletter. The CDC says unintentional exposure to ricin is "highly unlikely," except through ingestion of castor beans. If injected, ricin causes the immediate death of the muscles and lymph nodes near the site of the injection.
Symptoms can appear as early as 4 hours and as late as 24 hours after exposure. Death can occur between three and six days after exposure. How does one become exposed? Simply touching ricin is not likely to kill a person unless he or she ingests it from the skin. Has ricin been used as an agent of warfare and bioterrorism? Ricin has a long history as an agent of biological warfare.
The US War Department first considered using ricin in and worked with British scientists to develop a ricin bomb that appears never to have been used in combat. The US military experimented with inhalable ricin powders in the s and the Iraqi military packed it into artillery shells in the s.
Ricin was also detected in and in a South Carolina postal facility, in a mailroom serving the office of the US Senate's then-majority leader Bill Frist, and in a letter sent to the White House, though it did not cause any illnesses or deaths in those cases. In the mids, members of a militia group, the Minnesota Patriots Council, were convicted of conspiring to kill law enforcement officials using ricin. It has also been found in the possession of suspected terrorist groups such as al Qaeda.
How is ricin detected? For instance, ricin has greater potential for causing illness if it has been purified by special, technically difficult processes that are not readily available.
In addition to the complexities involved in producing ricin that is highly purified, it is also very difficult to produce ricin that retains the physical properties which make it easy to inhale. These are just some examples of the more important factors that can help predict whether or not someone may get sick after being exposed to ricin. You can be exposed to ricin either by ingesting swallowing or inhaling breathing material containing ricin.
In a few rare, past cases, injections of ricin have led to poisoning. This is a very unlikely method of exposure because it requires someone to actually inject the material into you.
If ricin is ingested, initial symptoms typically occur in less than 6 hours. These initial symptoms are most likely to affect the gastrointestinal system and include nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain. The symptoms of ricin poisoning are then likely to rapidly progress generally over hours to include problems such as severe dehydration, and kidney and liver problems.
This rapid progression of symptoms and illness is noticeably different than what typically occurs with most but not all commonly encountered infectious foodborne illnesses, which generally resolve within a day or two. Nevertheless, it is important to note that ricin is not the only potential cause of such symptoms, other illnesses due to chemicals and non-chemical causes e. If ricin is inhaled, initial symptoms may occur as early as hours after exposure, but serious symptoms could also occur as late as 24 hours after exposure.
The initial symptoms are likely to affect the respiratory system and can include difficulty breathing, shortness of breath, chest tightness, and cough. The symptoms of ricin poisoning are then likely to rapidly progress generally over hours to include problems such as worsening respiratory symptoms, pulmonary edema fluid within the lungs , and eventually, respiratory failure.
This rapid progression of symptoms and illness is noticeably different than what typically occurs with most common colds and cough-type illnesses. Death from ricin poisoning can take place within 36 to 72 hours of exposure, depending on the route of exposure inhalation, ingestion, or injection and the dose received. It is true that no antidote exists for ricin. Because no antidote exists, the most important factor is avoiding ricin exposure in the first place.
If exposure cannot be avoided, the most important factor is then getting the ricin off or out of the body as quickly as possible.
Ricin poisoning is treated by giving victims supportive medical care to minimize the effects of the poisoning. The types of supportive medical care would depend on several factors, such as the route by which victims were poisoned that is, whether poisoning was by inhalation, ingestion, or skin or eye exposure. Care could include such measures as helping victims breathe, giving them intravenous fluids fluids given through a needle inserted into a vein , giving them medications to treat conditions such as seizure and low blood pressure, flushing their stomachs with activated charcoal if the ricin has been very recently ingested , or washing out their eyes with water if their eyes are irritated.
Anthrax is the spore form of a bacterium an organism that can be dried, purified, and made into a powder that can be inhaled breathed in. After anthrax spores are inhaled, they can become active, reproduce in the body, and cause disease.
This process takes at least 24 hours but usually several days. However, the spore can stay in the body for weeks before becoming active and causing illness, which is why antibiotics to prevent anthrax are given for a long period 60 days after a person has been exposed. Ricin can be made from the waste material left over from processing castor beans and then purified, and treated to form a powder that can be inhaled although this is a very technically difficult and complicated process.
Most ricin poisonings have occurred when the ricin was injected or when the person swallowed the ricin. Symptoms of ricin poisoning are most likely to occur within 4 to 12 hours if the ricin was inhaled or swallowed. If the dose is big enough, it can kill within three days.
One milligram of ricin, in food or water, can kill an adult. A person who inhales ricin will develop a cough within three hours. Nausea, diarrhea, and aches and pains will follow within 18 to 24 hours.
If the dose is big enough, death will occur within 36 to 72 hours — from damage to the heart and blood vessels, and fluid in the lungs. Injecting ricin will destroy muscles around the injection site right away.
Death follows quickly, from failure of major organs in the body. Absorbing ricin through the skin is the least likely way anyone would be exposed to the poison — and the least likely to cause death. It has to be mixed with a solvent to be used in this way. Ricin is considered a possible terror weapon because: it is cheap and easy to make there is no vaccine or treatment for it it is very poisonous, and could cause a large number of deaths What should I do if I think I may have been exposed to ricin?
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