THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE APPEARED IN THE

JULY 2000 ISSUE

THE POISON SLEUTHS

DEATH BY POTASSIUM BROMATE

-Dr. Anil Aggrawal

"Good morning doctor. Oh, my God, what are you doing today? You have the dead body of a young child today. What happened to him? Please tell me.”

“Good morning Tarun. The name of this young child is Nitya, and he is four years old. He was the only son of his parents. Till yesterday evening he was alright. He was playing in front of his house quite cheerfully. After sometime, he started vomiting and felt very restless. His parents noted that he vomited some blood too. They became very afraid, and took the child immediately to the doctors. The doctors took it to be a case of gastroenteritis and started treating him along those lines. However the child failed to show any improvement and died today morning. Now the police has brought his body to me. My job of course is to tell them, how Nitya has died.”

“But surely Nitya has died due to some natural disease. We don’t really need a post-mortem in this case, do we?”

“Tarun, the doctors at the hospital where he was being treated have refused to give any cause of death. They say, that they just did not have the time to diagnose his disease. For all we know this could very well be a case of poisoning too.”

“Really? Have the parents of Nitya given some hint in this direction?”

“Police has made some enquiries and have come up with some interesting results. Ramlal, the father of Nitya was not going along well with his neighbor Raghav. Both Ramlal and Raghav claimed a hundred square yard plot somewhere in Ghaziabad. A court case was also dragging on in this connection for quite sometime. Recently there had been indications that Ramlal would ultimately win the case. Raghav had become very restless after that. He had sworn several times before neighbors that he would teach a good lesson to Ramlal. It is quite probable that Raghav gave some kind of poison to Nitya to get even with Ramlal.”

“What do you think Doctor?”

“Tarun, the first thing I did was to ask the police what Raghav does. They told me that he works at a modern hair saloon called “Hairwaves”. Now “Hairwaves” is really a very modern and posh hair saloon offering all kinds of hair treatments to their customers. The moment I heard this, I immediately became attentive, because a chemical potassium bromate usually found at hair saloons usually produces the kind of symptoms Nitya showed. Come to think of it, I think Nitya in fact has been poisoned by Potassium Bromate.”

“But doctor how can you be so sure?”

“Potassium bromate seems the most likely candidate Tarun. Now let me tell you that in Japan, in the 1960s and 1970s there were about 20 cases of suicides by hair dressers. And do you know which chemical they used for self-poisoning? All of them used potassium bromate, because this is so easily available to hair dressers.”

“Doctor, it looks like we are on to one of your great stories. Why don’t you tell me about potassium bromate from the beginning?”

“Tarun, the chemical formula of potassium bromate is KBrO3. Both Potassium and sodium bromate (NaBrO3) have no medicinal use. They are used solely as flour bleaches and as “neutralizers” in cold wave hair permanent kits, which can contain either 2% potassium bromate or 10% sodium bromate.......”

“Sorry to interrupt you doctor, but what are flour bleaches and how are they used?”

“Tarun, flour that we get from wheat has to be “treated” with the use of “improvers”. These “improvers” are nothing but oxidizing substances which enhance the baking quality of flour, allowing production of better and larger loaves. Relatively small amounts of these “improvers” are required, generally a few parts per million. Similarly to reduce the yellowness of the flour, bleaching agents may also be required. Although such improvers and the bleaching agents used to rectify excessive yellowness in flour are permitted in most countries, the processes are not universal. Improvers include bromates, chlorine dioxide (in gaseous form), and azodicarbonamide. The most popular bleacher used is benzoyl peroxide. But in many places potassium bromate is still used.”

“Oh, I see. You used another word ‘neutralizers’. What are these?”

“Tarun, there was a time when making the hairs wavy had become a fashion. In the late 1940s and during whole of 50s, it was fashionable to make the hair wavy. To do this, the hair was first treated with a milky waving lotion, the active ingredient of which was ammonium thioglycollate. At the appropriate time its effects were arrested by applying a neutralizer, i.e. a solution of potassium bromate, prepared from a small packet of the crystals. Outfits for permanent waving of hair by a cold process in the home became available in the UK round about 1950 and a little earlier in the United States. In the US in the late 1940s and early 1950s, home kits for making hair wavy were easily available, resulting in several cases of bromate poisonings, primarily in children under the age of 4. As I told you earlier, in Japan several cases were reported where hair dressers had apparently taken potassium bromate as a suicidal agent.”

“Oh, that is most interesting. So this chemical is so dangerous that it can kill too?”

“Yeah, and what makes it still more dangerous is that it is colourless, odourless and tasteless too, thus making it a very good candidate as a homicidal poison. A substance which is colourless, odourless and tasteless can be very easily administered to a victim mixed in his food, without him knowing anything about it. For the same reason, it can be taken by mistake too, especially if left in a cup or milk bottle. Cases have been reported in medical literature about the death of children who have ingested hair neutralizer accidentally. Many toxicologists in fact have talked about the possible danger of the ‘home perm’ outfits.”

“Doctor, what are the other circumstances in which potassium bromate may be ingested by a human being?”

“The majority of cases of poisoning are of course the result of accidents. A case has been described in the medical literature of the accidental poisoning of four adults who drank coffee prepared with fluid which proved to be hair neutralizer placed in an empty milk bottle. Except that they had thought the coffee tasted salty they were unaware of its nature until, half an hour later, they were seized with abdominal cramps and vomiting and, at the end of an hour, abdominal pain of a griping nature and diarrhoea. Fortunately all four made a complete recovery at the end of 24 hours. Hair neutralizer was administered by a woman to members of her family, apparently to enable her to enjoy the company of another man. She put some in her husband’s tea, and in orange squash which she gave to her daughters. The husband had abdominal pain which was ascribed to dysentery contracted while absent on military service. When the others became ill, the doctor suspected poisoning. The woman was later convicted of administering poison with intent to injure and was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment.”

“Oh, that is quite interesting. What are the symptoms after ingesting this poison?”

“Tarun, this compound is absorbed almost unchanged in the gastrointestinal tract. A very slow reduction of bromate to bromide may occur in the body, which can minimally elevate bromide levels in the blood. Potassium bromate causes gastrointestinal irritation and kidney damage as its principal effects and there may be incidental damage to the liver. Unlike potassium chlorate, however, potassium bromate does not break RBCs, a process known as haemolysis. The gastrointestinal symptoms are non-specific. Within half an hour the patient has nausea and vomits and this may be accompanied by epigastric cramps. Vomiting is repeated and may continue for a few days. There may be blood in the vomit. Within about an hour there is abdominal colic and diarrhoea. Some toxicologists think that the stomach and intestinal complaints are due to the caustic hydrobromic acid produced when bromate reacts with gastric juice. I may tell you that in Potassium chlorate poisoning, a special compound is formed in the blood. This is known as methemoglobin, and is chocolate brown in color. This feature has not been detected in humans with bromate poisoning. Fall in blood pressure may or may not occur. Severe poisoning leads to damage of kidneys and in consequence there is decrease in the formation of urine, coming to a complete halt after some time. This causes a rise in the blood urea concentration. In some cases generalized seizures are seen. It has been estimated that the fatal dose of potassium bromate is about 240-500 mg/Kg. If 300 mg/Kg is taken as the average fatal dose, then about 18 g would be required to kill a 60 kg man. The weight of Nitya is about 14 kg. So only about 4-5 g of potassium bromate must have been needed in this case. If you look under the microscope you would find that the kidneys of Nitya are damaged. Technically this change is known as renal tubular necrosis. Similarly I am also finding damage to his liver and heart, both of which are seen in potassium bromate poisoning. I have also recovered potassium bromate from Nitya’s stomach and have chemically identified it. There seems little doubt now that he was poisoned. And Raghav is indeed the poisoner. It was only he who had access to this dangerous chemical. He must have been taught during the course of his profession that this is a dangerous chemical. He somehow was able to smuggle some amount of Potassium bromate from his work place to his home. When Nitya was playing in the evening, he must have approached him with some kind of drink, may be a sherbet, in which he must have mixed potassium bromate. He wanted to kill Nitya, which was his way of getting even with Ramlal. Come let us tell the police who the culprit is. They will search his house, and if any of the remaining chemical is found in his house, everything would become very clear.”

“That is very clever of you doctor. Without your clever deduction it would have been impossible to say how Nitya died and Raghav may have gone scot-free. What are you going to tell me next time?”

“Tarun, next time, I would tell you about a very interesting poison - Ethylene Glycol."