SODIUM
AZIDE, COFFEE - USA:
(MASSACHUSETTS)
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A
ProMED-mail post
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roMED-mail is a program of the
International Society for Infectious
Diseases
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Date:
Tue 26 Jan 2009
Source: WBZ TV [edited]
<http://wbztv.com/local/harvard.university.poisoning.2.1449817.html&g
t;
Harvard University police have ended the "active phase" of
an
investigation into the possible poisoning of 6 medical
school
researchers without identifying a suspect.
The
university stated in a memo to faculty and staff that
campus
police interviewed about 150 people during their
investigation into
the 26 Aug 2009 incident, but the case will
no longer be pursued,
even though it is "still officially
open," The Boston Herald reports.
The 6 people hospitalized over
the summer [2009] allegedly drank
tainted coffee.
One of
the researchers poisoned said the coffee came from
a
single-serve espresso machine in a common area on the 8th
floor of
the Harvard Medical School New Research Building. "It
tasted weird.
It had a metallic taste...I felt a sudden drop in
blood pressure. I
was feeling like I was going to faint," [the
researcher] told WBZ
back in September [2009], adding he and
his colleagues were told that
toxicology tests showed the
coffee contained sodium azide, a
preservative used in labs that
is potentially deadly. [He] said it's
unlikely the poisoning
was accidental, but says he has no idea who
did it or
why.
Sodium azide is a toxic, but common preservative used in
school labs.
A Harvard Medical School post doctoral fellow says
the chemical does
not leave certain areas, and it would never
find its way into a
coffee maker. However, the Centers for
Disease Control says accidents
involving the chemical have
happened in lab settings.
In one case, sodium azide was poured
into a drain where it exploded
when it contacted metal and the
toxic gas was inhaled.
--
Communicated
by:
ProMED-mail
<promed**At_Symbol_Here**promedmail.org>
[If indeed all of the 6 poisoned individuals prepared and drank
their
coffee from a single serve espresso style coffee maker,
then one
wonders if the sodium azide was in the sugar or the
powdered creamer.
If this single serve coffee maker is like
many of the new single
serve types for homes, then many have a
water reservoir. Could it
have been in the water
reservoir?
I am not sure I would be drinking something that
didn't taste right
and had a metallic taste.
Readers are
encouraged to learn more about sodium azide by reading
the
moderator's comments in ProMED-mail post 20091027.3712. -
Mod.TG]
[see also:
Sodium azide, coffee - USA: (MA)
20091027.3712]
...................................tg/mj/dk
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