(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-03-01 11:36

Multiple vials would probably contain enough ricin to sicken many people if it was spread, for example, around a buffet table or sprayed in a closed room.

"If it was aerosolized in a confined space then it certainly could harm dozens of people," he said.

Police said they had spent 12 hours containing and cleaning up the site.

"My understanding is cleanup has been done," said Dr. Lawrence Sands, chief health officer of the Southern Nevada Health District. "There should not be a threat to anybody at this time."

The motel room had been unoccupied since the man was hospitalized. Someone who knew the sick man found the ricin in the room and brought it to the apartment manager, Suey said.

"He claimed to be a relative. We haven't confirmed that yet whether he is a relative or a friend," she said.

The manager had begun an eviction because the sick man hadn't paid his bill, and the friend or relative had gone to retrieve his items, she said.

Suey said there were several pets in the room when officers arrived. A dog was found dead but the animal had gone at least a week without food or water, Suey said, and she did not attribute the death to ricin.

Evans, of the Institute for Biosecurity, said that if ricin is inhaled, symptoms would include difficulty breathing, fever, cough and nausea. Injection would lead to vomiting and severe diarrhea. Eventually these symptoms would progress to seizures, hallucination, bloody urine and damage to the kidney, liver and spleen and death.

Tom Obrig, an expert on ricin who teaches nephrology at the University of Virginia, said there have been about 700 reports over the years of people trying to commit suicide by eating castor beans.

"Usually it doesn't work because it's not digested well," he said.

For the most part, however, the toxin has more of a cloak-and-dagger reputation linked more closely to spies and assassins. He recalled one particularly famous murder in 1978 involving Georgi Ivanov Markov, a Bulgarian dissident in London.

Markov "was standing on a corner waiting for a bus and some spy came along and injected a pellet in his leg from an umbrella," Obrig said. "The guy died three days later. It was traced back by Scotland Yard who figured the only thing potent enough to do that was ricin."

   1 2   

   1 2