Industrial chemicals keep careless risks
Modern life runs on industrial chemicals, and people remain careless about how poisonous many of them are. The hazards of the 1920s are not as distant from the present as they seem.
BioMed
Deborah Blum traces New York medical examiners’ poison tests, showing how forensic evidence exposed deaths from government-tainted alcohol.
Likely detection deters poisoners
Poisoning deaths fell once the public grew aware of the danger and murderers realised they were increasingly likely to be caught. Poisoners plan their crimes in advance, so a credible chance of exposure changes their calculations.
Governments can poison their own people
Under alcohol prohibition, people kept drinking despite the risk to their lives. The government tried to discourage drinking by deliberately poisoning the alcohol supply, so its own policy added to the deaths.
Undetectable poison invites murder
When no one can reliably find a poison in a body, poisoning becomes an easy route to a crime that goes unpunished. The danger lies not in the poison's strength but in the investigators' blindness to it.
Patronage offices can't do science
When death investigation is a political job handed out for loyalty, scientific skill has no place in it and corruption spreads. Replacing such officials with trained examiners turns the work from favours and guesswork into analysis of evidence.
Same atoms, sweet or deadly
Carbon, hydrogen and oxygen combined one way make table sugar, and arranged differently they make other substances, some of them toxic. Whether a compound feeds or kills depends on how its atoms are put together, not just on which atoms it contains.
Poisoning is always premeditated
Unlike a killing in the heat of the moment, poisoning requires planning: getting the substance, choosing the dose and arranging the setting. This deliberate, hidden quality is what makes poisoners so frightening.
Science can both threaten and save
The same chemical knowledge that gives a killer new poisons also gives investigators the tools to detect them and convict the killer. Progress in chemistry arms both sides at the same time.