A substance found in a Universiity of Texas dormitory has tested positive for ricin.
A substance discovered by a student in a University of Texas dormitory has tested positive for ricin, a potentially deadly poison, officials said.
The chunky powder was found at the Moore-Hill dormitory Thursday and reported to university police, officials said. Tests for ricin came back positive Friday. Officials don't know where it came from, said campus police spokeswoman Rhonda Weldon.
According to Wikipedia, ricin can be extracted from castor beans and is known to have an average lethal dose in humans of 0.2 milligrams (1/5,000th of a gram), though some sources give higher figures [1]. It is considered to be twice as deadly as cobra venom.
This news report raises some important questions. Who manufactured this ricin? What was their motivation? Who suspected that a test for ricin was necessary, and what led to that suspicion? We need to know much more.
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Update: Gateway Pundit has more, including a report that the ricin was packed in a roll of quarters being used by a student to do laundry in her dormitory.
Second Update: Because nobody exposed has suffered symptoms which would usually appear within 6 to 8 hours and two other tests did not find the substance to be ricin, county emergency medical officials now believe that the substance was not ricin, but are waiting for more laboratory results to confirm their opinion.
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