Two on Ricin
Two articles on Ricin:
First from
Derek Lowe who is a pharmaceutical chemist:
bq. Now that the suspected ricin in the
Senate (and
White House?) has been confirmed, I thought I'd repost a version of something I wrote about a year ago on my previous site, Lagniappe. (This was written after British authorities had rounded up several suspects in London who had some ricin of their own.) So what is the stuff, and what kind of threat is it?
bq. Ricin's a protein from castor beans - yep, the same ones used to prepare castor oil. The parent plant is sometimes used as a warm-weather ornamental, and used to be an industrial crop. The leaves aren't a problem, but the beans contain up to 5% ricin, which is a rather high yield for a natural product. It's quite toxic, although there are certainly worse things out there. Botulinum toxin, for example, is a thousand times more potent, but you can't grow anerobic bacteria very well in your back yard (and they're not very ornamental, either.)
bq. The purification methods for ricin are in the open literature, and aren't particularly challenging. I'm not going to go over them, though, in the interest of not making its isolation any easier than it already is - it's already probably one of the easiest toxins to isolate. For that matter, you can order various forms of it from biochemical supply houses. It's quite cheap, by the standards of protein natural products (which are usually priced rather steeply.)
Second is a
Chronology of Incidents from the Monterey Institute of International Studies in Monterey, CA. (side note: Monterey seems to be home to a number of very quiet but
very interesting groups. The navy trains people out there, some very high-level brains visit there frequently. I would love to take six months off and just wander the halls of the buildings in that town...)
Back to topic:
bq. The discovery of ricin powder in the U.S. Senate office of Majority Leader Bill Frist may not turn out to be very harmful, but will certainly prove disquieting. The use of ricin, a deadly toxin derived from the castor bean, marks the second case in three years where someone has sent mail containing a toxic substance to the offices of the country's most senior lawmakers. The previous case in 2001 involved spores of Bacillus anthracis and resulted in five deaths and numerous infections. The current ricin incident looks unlikely to cause any casualties, but could be the result of a copycat seeking to emulate the mayhem the "anthrax letters" caused. Although this is the first time ricin has been blatantly used against such a high-profile target, precedents for the use of this biowarfare agent exist. Below is a chronology of incidents derived from the Monterey Institute's WMD Terrorism Database that lists previous incidents that involved the possession, threat, and/or use of ricin. All incidents are based solely on data derived from open sources.
bq. October 2003: a metallic container was discovered at a Greenville, South Carolina postal facility with ricin in it.
bq. On 3 March 2003, FBI agents arrested Bertier Ray Riddle in Omaha, Arkansas on suspicion that he sent an envelope to the FBI field office in Little Rock that claimed to contain ricin.
bq. On 5 January 2003, six Algerians were arrested at their apartment in London, United Kingdom on charges of "being in the possession of objects which give rise to reasonable suspicions of the intention of carrying out preparing, or instigating an act of terrorism" and for trying to "develop or produce a chemical weapon." Following the arrests, authorities discovered traces of ricin in the apartment located in Wood Green, located in northern London.They also discovered castor oil beans and equipment for crushing the beans.
bq. August 2002: Reports have emerged that Ansar al-Islam, a Sunni militant group, has been involved in testing poisons and chemicals including ricin.
bq. On 19 June 2002, Kenneth R. Olsen, 48, was arrested for possession of the biological agent ricin in his Spokane Valley office cubicle.
And it goes on for another couple pages. As Derek says, it's not that hard to make...
Posted by DaveH at February 3, 2004 9:47 PM