Woman suspected of sending ricin laced letter to Trump is arrested
A woman suspected of sending a ricin laced letter to President Trump was arrested according to the Buffalo Customs and Border Patrol and Secret Service agents.
She was arrested at the Peace Bridge in #Buffalo while trying to cross into New York State @WGRZ
Yesterday, a letter addressed to President Donald Trump that was intercepted before it reached the White House tested positive for the deadly poison ricin earlier this week, law enforcement officials said,” JimMacKaaOnAir reported. That report was confirmed by multiple sources. At the time, the suspect was believed to be in Canada.
She was arrested while trying to enter into the United States.
The woman has a record. While living in the United States last year, she was arrested in March 2019 by the Mission, Texas, police for possession of an unlicensed weapon, resisting arrest and carrying a fake driver’s license, according to a senior intelligence official.
The Government tells us all about Ricin. It has no antidote.
What ricin is
- Ricin is a poison found naturally in castor beans. If castor beans are chewed and swallowed, the released ricin can cause injury. Ricin can be made from the waste material left over from processing castor beans.
- It can be in the form of a powder, a mist, or a pellet, or it can be dissolved in water or weak acid.
- It is a stable substance under normal conditions, but can be inactivated by heat above 80 degrees centigrade (176 degrees Fahrenheit).
Where ricin is found and how it is used
- Castor beans are processed throughout the world to make castor oil. Ricin is part of the waste “mash” produced when castor oil is made.
- Ricin has been used experimentally in medicine to kill cancer cells.
How you could be exposed to ricin
- It would take a deliberate act to make ricin and use it to poison people. Unintentional exposure to ricin is highly unlikely, except through the ingestion of castor beans.
- If made into a partially purified material or refined into a terrorist or warfare agent, ricin could be used to expose people through the air, food, or water.
- In 1978, Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian writer and journalist who was living in London, died after he was attacked by a man with an umbrella. The umbrella had been rigged to inject a poison ricin pellet under Markov’s skin.
- In the 1940s the U.S. military experimented with using ricin as a possible warfare agent. In some reports ricin has possibly been used as a warfare agent in the 1980s in Iraq and more recently by terrorist organizations.
- Ricin poisoning is not contagious. Ricin-associated illness cannot be spread from person to person through casual contact. However, if you come into contact with someone who has ricin on their body or clothes, you could become exposed to it.
How ricin works
- Ricin works by getting inside the cells of a person’s body and preventing the cells from making the proteins they need. Without the proteins, cells die. Eventually this is harmful to the whole body, and death may occur.
- Effects of ricin poisoning depend on whether ricin was inhaled, ingested, or injected.