tailieunhanh - Drugs and Poisons in Humans - A Handbook of Practical Analysis (Part 12)

Introduction: Hydrogen cyanide (HCN) is volatile (boiling point: °C) and weakly acidic (pKa: ). It is bound with cytochrome oxidase to inhibit its activity and induce cellular anoxia; it shows an immediate toxic effects. The fatal dose of HCN is about 100 mg. Cyanide has been being involved in various incidents of suicides, homicides and accidents. It is relatively easy to obtain cyanide, because it is being widely used in metallurgy, metal-plating and other chemical industries. It is a typical poison to be analyzed with high priority. Cyanide is also included in some plants, such as some beans and Japanese. | Cyanide by Yasuo Seto Introduction Hydrogen cyanide HCN is volatile boiling point C and weakly acidic p_Ka . It is bound with cytochrome oxidase to inhibit its activity and induce cellular anoxia it shows an immediate toxic effects. The fatal dose of HCN is about 100 mg. Cyanide has been being involved in various incidents of suicides homicides and accidents. It is relatively easy to obtain cyanide because it is being widely used in metallurgy metal-plating and other chemical industries. It is a typical poison to be analyzed with high priority. Cyanide is also included in some plants such as some beans and Japanese plums in the forms of its glycosides by ingesting such plants HCN is sometimes released from the glycosides in the stomach. In the tropical areas it is also contained in cassaba its poisoning by ingesting a large amount of cassaba is being a problem for health. HCN can be produced during imperfect combustion of nitrogen-containing compounds it is also included in cigarette smoke and gases produced in a fire. There are many kinds of qualitative and quantitative methods for analysis of cyanide in wide fields reflecting the great needs of its analysis. The Japanese Industrial Standard JIS standardized a method of cyanide analysis for factory waste water 1 . Nonomura 2 published a review for analytical methods of cyanide in water specimens. In two books 3 4 both edited by the Pharmaceutical Society of Japan the analytical methods for cyanide are also presented. In the field of forensic toxicology the review on cyanide analysis written by Maseda and Fukui 5 seems useful. Many years ago Bark et al. 6 and Guatelli 7 presented reviews on fundamental tests for cyanide such as color tests. Very recently preliminary tests or simplified qualitative tests for cyanide have been described in a book 8 edited by the Department of Legal Medicine Hiroshima University School of Medicine. In this chapter the methods using microdiffusion plus .