Was cadmium an ideal homicidal agent in the late 70’s?
0:30 I have already stated: No1: cadmium is difficult to obtain Arsinic is more easily available, but cadmium is difficult to obtain and even if somebody says it is available in nickel cadmium batteries it’s difficult to extract it unless you have knowledge of chemistry… One of the qualities of a homicidal poisoning is that it must be easily accessable, that in a way is not. Second, It should be a poison that should be easily
1:00 mixed with food or anything without raising any suspicions in large quantities or even over a long period of time in small quantities.. When we are talking of cadmium we are not talking about the element…much of the time when we are talking about heavy metals we are talking about salts, cadmium iodide, cadmium chloride, cadmium sulfide, there are so many salts, whatever it is, this or that salt, in my opinion, cadmium almost as any form, except elemental, will cause some irritation of the GI tract, that is bound to happen because it has corrosive properties. If fact if you take it as acute poisoning it causes sever corrosion, almost as you see in acalides.. so it is not at all a poison someone who wanted to commit homicidal poisoning would want to select. Because it would cause GI upset and that is something that
2:00 anybody would immediately suspect, there is something wrong here. Food that we are giving is alright.. so and ideal homicidal poisoing is something that should not cause much in the way of suspicion of what was given. And even if it does cause something it should mimic some disease so that people would think that it because of this like some poisons which may mimic heart disease…so you give it to somebody and he develops those symptoms and the usual thing is people will make mistake that it is due to heart disease and not do to a poison. That is again an example of an ideal homicidal poison, like for instance digitalis, that drug is for heart disease but it can be used as a homicidal poison, because when you use it as an overdose it can produce the same kind of heart disease manifestaions. People will think he is going into heart failure. Nobody will think it is digitalis being used here.
3:00 Cadmium is a poison that raises suspicions. It is not a poison that does not raise suspicions. It is like cyanimide. It has a lot of properties that make it an ideal homicidal poison, but it is not preferred by a homicidal poisoner because it produces dramatic manifestations, a person starts frothing from the mouth, goes blue, everything indicates that something is going wrong which is happening to this person. It can be investigated. So cadmium is one of those. I think if you give a chance that there is something is amiss
3:45 Third point. Cadmium is a poison that has not been administered enough to know what is the ideal dose… to be given it chronically, or how much to give over a period of time, there is nothing much out there. So why would anybody pick something that he knows nothing about as to how much to give, how long to give and things like that? Very difficult. So I would say cadmium is not really a ideal homicidal poisoning at all. None of the heavy metals are, except for one or two like thallium, not even arsenic Cadmium… I am not sure about the taste but if you add it to food or water it definitely will alter the taste to some extent. Not like thallium which doesn’t alter the taste at all not like arsenic that also does not alter the taste. But there are so many issues here that mitigate here against the opinion of somebody that it can be used as a homicidal poison. I don’t think a person who knows his poisons would select cadmium if he wants to use it for some malicious reason, it is a very unusual choice and a very illogical choice.
Audio: DrPillay_9782 – Length 9:29 – https://youtu.be/W1MdKcCDIYk