ABSTRACT
A poison was considered a coward’s weapon. A poison is deˆned as a chemical that can sicken or kill another organism. An ideal poison is one that is eective in a very small dose and di°cult to detect. As the times changed, obscure poisons were introduced. Some of them were lethal drugs like fentenyl, insulin, and muscle relaxants. Some household chemicals like antifreeze were used to commit murder for insurance money. Arsenic was a common agent to commit murder (7). With the growth of the science of clinical
toxicology and forensic toxicology, the development of centralized laboratory facilities, and the availability of sophisticated analytical tools like gas chromatography (GC), gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC-MS), high-pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC), and liquid chromatography/ mass spectrometry (LC-MS) it became easy to detect almost any poison. With the use of an inductively coupled plasma (ICP) mass spectrometer, it is now possible to detect and quantitate up to 70 elements in the periodic table. It is also possible to extract toxin from the hair and ˆngernails and quantify metals, drugs, or a toxin trapped in these matrices. Today, no matter the poison, a method is easily being developed to detect it (6). If the present analytical methods are inadequate, forensic toxicologists develop new methods to detect and quantify any new toxin that is being used and abused.
