Ukrainian presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko was poisoned with pure TCDD, one of the most toxic chemicals, the scientist analyzing his blood said.
The tests, confirmed by three separate labs in the Netherlands and Germany, also confirmed that Yushchenko's blood contained 100,000 units of the poison, the second highest concentration ever recorded.
Doctors had announced last weekend that Yushchenko was poisoned with a dioxin chemical, but lead investigator Abraham Brouwer told reporters on Friday that his team has now zoned in on TCDD, the most hazardous of all the dioxins.
There are hundreds of dioxins and they are usually produced inadvertently during manufacturing processes that use chlorine, such as those for herbicides, paper and pulp bleaching. Waste incinerators also produce dioxins.
TCDD was an element in Agent Orange, a herbicide sprayed by US troops during the Vietnam War to clear dense vegetation and expose their enemy. The herbicide became infamous after being linked to myriad health problems in US veterans and local villagers.
The poison, chemically known as tetrachlorodibenzoparadioxin, usually occurs mixed with other dioxins produced by the same processes.
However, the investigation led by Brouwer at BioDetection Systems in Amsterdam found Yushchenko was poisoned with pure TCDD, not a mixture.
"That excludes a huge number of sources," said dioxin expert Dr. Arnold Schecter, a professor of environmental Sciences at the University of Texas School of Public Health in Dallas who was not involved with the investigation.
"If it's pure TCDD that means it could only be labs that buy or sell TCDD [for research purposes], government biological or chemical weapons units or a clever chemist," Schecter said..
Brouwer said he agreed that the search for the source of the poison can now be focused on those three possibilities.
Most people living in Europe and North America have some level of several dioxins or dioxin-like poisons in their bodies, experts say. The pattern and concentration of those gives clues to the source, whether chiefly from an incinerator, factory or other location.
Brouwer, also a professor of environmental toxicology at the Free University in Amsterdam, said all of the other dioxins found in Yushchenko's blood were at levels normally found in people from his region.
None were elevated, except for TCDD, which means that even if the poison originally came from a factory or incinerator it must have been purified in a lab afterward.
TCDD is synthesized by labs in Europe, Russia and the United States for use as a benchmark sample in lab tests measuring dioxin levels.
Several labs around the world may also purify TCDD for research purposes. It is not used in any commercial products.
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
Hundreds of Filipinos and tourists flocked to a sun-bleached field north of Manila yesterday, on Good Friday, to witness one of the country’s most blood-soaked displays of religious fervor, undeterred by rising fuel prices. Scores of bare-chested flagellants with covered faces walked barefoot through the dusty streets of Pampanga Province’s San Fernando as they flogged their backs with bamboo whips in the scorching heat. Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalists said they saw devotees deliberately puncturing their skin with glass shards attached to a small wooden paddle to ensure their bleeding during the ritual, a way to atone for sins and seek miracles from
RSS