Word: thallium
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Arsenic, strychnine, phosphorus and thallium salts are effective rat poisons, but far too dangerous where there are children or pets. Probably the oldest of rat poisons is about the most effective and also the safest: red squill, from the ground root of a European plant. Mixed with freshly ground meat or fish baits, it is harmless to children, cats, dogs and even squirrels...
...poisons man has concocted to combat his insect and rodent enemies, thallium sulfate is one of the most potent. Vermin can hardly stay away from it; they go right on nibbling baits containing the chemical until they have absorbed a fatal dose. Trouble is, children are likely to do the same, because thallium-sulfate baits are often put up in the shape of doughnuts or made of crumbled cookies. Last week, after years of tracking down victims of infantile curiosity, the A.M.A. Journal reported that nine Texas children died of proven thallium-sulfate poisoning between...
...Thallium sulfate (the inexpensive salt of a metal akin to lead) was used by some dermatologists as late as 1940 to make a patient's hair fall out-which made it easier to treat ringworm of the scalp. After such treatment hundreds of patients became ill, and scores died. Thallium salts were shunted from the medicine cabinet to the poison shelf. In 1957, the Texas legislature cut the allowable dose of thallium sulfate in a rat-poison mixture from 3% to 1%; the U.S. Department of Agriculture did the same in 1960. But even the weaker mixture is dangerous...
...were found-months or years after their accidental poisoning-to be suffering from uncontrolled and abnormal movements, severe mental illness or retardation, or combinations of these handicaps. Several of the children had to be sent to institutions for the mentally retarded. Since no safe and effective treatment for thallium poisoning has yet been perfected, doctors say that the only way to protect children against it is to forbid completely the use of thallium sulfate in preparations for household...
...have an important engagement. We're going to talk politics. You wouldn't be interested." When he returned late at night, he tossed fitfully, next morning awoke complaining of agonizing stomach pains. With a medical student's precision, he diagnosed his poison as thallium, a paralyzing ingredient in certain rat poisons. Hurried to a hospital and placed in an iron lung, he came out of a coma long enough to murmur "Red Hand," the name of a counterterrorist organization which operates in West Germany and Belgium against suspected arms suppliers to Algerian French Africa. He also muttered...