January 12, 2003

• Suppose you’re a terrorist, or just maybe some poor putz with a huge grudge against the world.  You’d like to get hold of some cheap, readily-available, hard to detect poison.  If so, have I got a toxin for you.

  
  

  The stuff is called sodium azide.  It is super-toxic–about the same as cyanide.  A lethal dose can be as little as 50 miligrams.  It is odorless, and looks like table salt.  There are no controls on it.  And you can get all you want, probably, at the nearest junkyard.

  
  

  You see, sodium azide is the stuff that makes airbags go boom.  When thus deployed, the stuff turns into nitrogen gas.  When not deployed, the stuff just sits quietly in its little container.  When air bags were just getting off the groud, so to speak, it was thought that they would be recycles when cars were junked.  However, it seems that most people don’t want to trust a second-hand, albeit unused, airbag, so cannisters of the stuff are just, well, piling up.

  
  

  And what about the environment?  Well, what about it–no one knows how much harm will be done when the 10 MILLION POUNDS of the stuff that are now in cars, gets into the environment.  We do know that the stuff is water-soluable.  Sleep well.

  • 10:58 pm
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