BioterrorismRicin can kill, but there are more potent bioterror weapons

Ricin was in the headlines a few weeks ago, when envelopes containing the poison were mailed to President Obama, Senator Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi), and a Mississippi judge.

Yahoo News reports that the threat from ricin is low, however, because ricin cannot poison someone through contact with the skin. To be poisoned, an individual would have to ingest or inhale traces of the poison.

The poison, which is made from castor beans, first made headlines in 1978 when Bulgarian writer Georgi Markov was killed in London by an agent of the Bulgarian secret service who stabbed him with the tip of an umbrella which was rigged with the poison.

The poison is an organic compound in castor beans which is removed when the beans are processed in castor oil. When the poison enters the body, it enters cells and stops them from making protein, killing the cells, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Symptoms may appear in less than a day, and include fever, seizures, fluid in the lungs, and organ failure. There is no antidote to the poison, and if the dose is big enough, it leads to death.

.  CDC defines bioterrorism is as “the deliberate release of viruses, bacteria, and other germs (agents) used to cause illness or death.” The CDC divides bioterrorism threats into three categories.

Class A includes diseases that can be transmitted between people and have high mortality rates, such as anthrax, smallpox, plague, and the Ebola virus. Class B and Class C are lower grades that only require enhanced surveillance.

Ricin is considered to be a Class B threat, ad Marko is the only person known to be killed by ricin poisoning.

To identify a bioterroism threat inside the United States, DHS operates the National Biosurveillance Integration Center, which keeps track of potential high-threat diseases.