SODIUM AZIDE, COFFEE - USA: (MASSACHUSETTS)
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Date: Tue 26 Jan 2009
Source: WBZ TV [edited]
<http://wbztv.com/local/harvard.university.poisoning.2.1449817.html&g t;


Harvard University police have ended the "active phase" of an 
investigation into the possible poisoning of 6 medical school 
researchers without identifying a suspect.

The university stated in a memo to faculty and staff that campus 
police interviewed about 150 people during their investigation into 
the 26 Aug 2009 incident, but the case will no longer be pursued, 
even though it is "still officially open," The Boston Herald reports.

The 6 people hospitalized over the summer [2009] allegedly drank 
tainted coffee.

One of the researchers poisoned said the coffee came from a 
single-serve espresso machine in a common area on the 8th floor of 
the Harvard Medical School New Research Building. "It tasted weird. 
It had a metallic taste...I felt a sudden drop in blood pressure. I 
was feeling like I was going to faint," [the researcher] told WBZ 
back in September [2009], adding he and his colleagues were told that 
toxicology tests showed the coffee contained sodium azide, a 
preservative used in labs that is potentially deadly. [He] said it's 
unlikely the poisoning was accidental, but says he has no idea who 
did it or why.

Sodium azide is a toxic, but common preservative used in school labs.

A Harvard Medical School post doctoral fellow says the chemical does 
not leave certain areas, and it would never find its way into a 
coffee maker. However, the Centers for Disease Control says accidents 
involving the chemical have happened in lab settings.

In one case, sodium azide was poured into a drain where it exploded 
when it contacted metal and the toxic gas was inhaled.

--
Communicated by:
ProMED-mail
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[If indeed all of the 6 poisoned individuals prepared and drank their 
coffee from a single serve espresso style coffee maker, then one 
wonders if the sodium azide was in the sugar or the powdered creamer. 
If this single serve coffee maker is like many of the new single 
serve types for homes, then many have a water reservoir. Could it 
have been in the water reservoir?

I am not sure I would be drinking something that didn't taste right 
and had a metallic taste.

Readers are encouraged to learn more about sodium azide by reading 
the moderator's comments in ProMED-mail post 20091027.3712. - Mod.TG]

[see also:
Sodium azide, coffee - USA: (MA) 20091027.3712]
...................................tg/mj/dk

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