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How Can People Be Exposed To Ricin?
- It would
take a deliberate act to make ricin and use it to poison people. Accidental
exposure to ricin is highly unlikely.
- People can
breathe in ricin mist or powder and be poisoned.
- Ricin can
also get into water or food and then be swallowed.
- Pellets of
ricin, or ricin dissolved in a liquid, can be injected into people’s bodies.
- Depending on
the route of exposure (such as injection), as little as 500 micrograms of
ricin could be enough to kill an adult. A 500-microgram dose of ricin would
be about the size of the head of a pin. A much greater amount would be
needed to kill people if the ricin were inhaled (breathed in) or swallowed.
- Ricin
poisoning is not contagious. It cannot be spread from person to person
through casual contact.
- In 1978,
Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian writer and journalist who was living in London,
died after he was attacked by a man with an umbrella. The umbrella had been
rigged to inject a poison ricin pellet under Markov’s skin.
- Some reports
have indicated that ricin may have been used in the Iran-Iraq war during the
1980s and that quantities of ricin were found in Al Qaeda caves in
Afghanistan.
National Terror Alert Resource & Information Center 2003
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