The Toxicology Test - Too Much or Too Little Drugs

On the TV show CSI, one of the laboratories in the show that deals with searching for minute evidence of foreign substances such as drugs in the blood or tissues of a victim is a toxicology lab. A "tox lab" result can determine if a victim was poisoned to death which could mean the possibility of a homicide or a suicide. Whichever crime it is, the deceased obviously was not so lucky.

Toxicology is a hybrid of physiology and chemistry that deals with drugs, poisons, and other toxic materials, and how these substances change or harm living beings, especially humans. The very first toxicological test dates back to 1775 when Swedish chemist, Karl Wilhelm Scheele, found a way to prove that arsenic (As) was to blame in a suspicious death.

Scheele discovered that chlorinated water converts arsenic to arsenous acid and that adding metallic zinc (Zn) and heating the acid solution releases arsine gas. These gaseous molecules then settle onto a cold vessel where arsenic precipitates on the vessel. In 1821, this technique was first used to find arsenic in the stomach and urine of poisoned people. From then, the field of forensic toxicology began.

The job of a modern day forensic toxicologist is to find a toxic substance and determine its effect on the individual who ingested it. A forensic toxicologist may do the following:


Assess the state of drunkenness of a victim involved in an auto or industrial accident.

Determine whether somebody died from a poison or from natural causes.

Assess whether drugs played a role in somebody's seizures or coma or in a culprit's actions.

Conversely, the absence of a drug in a person's system may be just as important. Let us suppose that toxicological tests yielded no drugs in somebody who is displaying erratic or bizarre behavior. This situation can call for a psychiatric evaluation. If the toxicological results determine that the seizure medication was less than normal in the blood for the driver of a motor vehicle involved in an accident, he may conclude that the seizure was the cause of the accident.

The next time when you watch CSI, pay attention to what the technicians look for whenever CSI's investigate a crime scene involving a death by poison.

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