Ricin/ethanol/acetone cocktail?

[Arkangel]

<a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/2872359.stm" target="_blank">This</a> story is about Ricin in Paris

I don't know anything about ricin, but I'm curious if the following statement is true. </font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica"> Mr Sarkozy told French radio that the quantities of the substance were "non-lethal", although they were found with ethanol and acetone.

"A mixture of the three can make an extremely nasty poison," he said.
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica">Could it be that the other chems were for making an explosive, something to deliver the ricin explosively perhaps?

[darkdontay]

Was he just keeping it in a medium, as both with stave off if just left with in the open? I mean using them to store it? Just a thought.

[Ezekiel Kane]

Ricin is a poison found in castor beans, reported to have killed adult humans with as little as one milligram in its pure form. The WRM suggests, to extract ricin from castor beans:

Add a teaspoon of sodium hydroxide to two ounes of hot water, stir, and let cool. Add 2 oz castor beans to the mixture and allow to soak for an hour. Pour off the water and remove the outer husks from the beans with tweezers. Put what's left of the beans in a blender along with 4 oz of acetone for every ounce of beans used. Blend until it becomes milky, and allow to sit in an airtight glass jar for three days. Shake the jar, and filter off all of the liquid, saving the pulp. Allow to dry as long as necessary, and if it doesn't dry into a nice powder, add more acetone and filter again.

Although I haven't personally used this method to obtain ricin, no competent individual could be hurt in the process. Use common sense, wear gloves if you think youre going to spill some on your hands. Be careful, this isn't sugar - even inhalation can be fatal.

[80r15]

Can castor beans be bought at any store?

[PyroTech]

I saw a program on discovery about ricin, there was a lady who killed her husband, using castor beans. It does not needs to be purified, she just crushed the beans, and made a nice little powder. The dead, that you'll get from ricin, is cruel, diarrhoea and feeling terrible are some of the symptoms of being exposed to ricin.
I don't have any experience with this, this is just what I saw on tv.

[Ezekiel Kane]

To answer 80r15's question, yes, castor beans can be purchased at nearly any gardening supply store - they won't think you're in the least suspicious or report the purchase to any government agency.

[VX]

Ezekiel Kane,
The ricin would be in the solvent, not the remaining pulp. The only point of keeping the pulp would be to do another extraction on it, to extract the remaining ricin.

Lots of detailed ricin information can be found
<a href="http://www.ehso.com/ricin.php#ricmech" target="_blank">here</a>

[80r15]

Has anyone experimented with ricin/castor beans on lab animals or people :) ??? I was curious how long it takes to kill the victim wiht what dosage per body weight.... So I guess on tommorows(Sundays) agenda it will be
1. go to gardening store and buy a couple of kilos of castor beans
2. buy 100 hamsters and other assorted rodents
3. put 1 and 2 together
lol
Also I didnt want to start a new post, so does anyone have any info on the synth of LSD or the current price for 1 kilo???

[Ezekiel Kane]

I've read that death comes swiftly, within 12-24 hours, and that after that period of time, if the target is still alive, it's likely that he will fully recover. I don't know how you could survive, considering inhalation is lethal...

A KILO of LSD? You're joking, right? Dude...acid comes in sheets with anywhere from a few dozen to 200 or so hits, each hit containing up to 100 mcg of acid. By the blotter, 100 hits will run you maybe a couple hundred... that's at most 10 mg. You're talking about a kilo - that's enough to feed the entire nation's demand for acid for three months, I mean christ - you're talking about a hundred thousand blotters full of acid. If you want that much acid, I would recommend you synthesize it yourself.

edit: Rhodium has some nice <a href="http://www.rhodium.ws/chemistry/lsd-buzz.html" target="_blank">syntheses</a>.

<small>[ March 23, 2003, 04:08 AM: Message edited by: Ezekiel Kane ]</small>

[80r15]

I was planning on setting up a lab, synthesizing it myself, then finding some large scale drug dealer to sell it too... While im fantisizing, I might as well dream i have an apache.... :)

[zeocrash]

aaah 80r15
i was begining to think your detestable smartass self had vanished.
anyway, back to the ricin.
i was thinking that the acetone would make the ricin either more absorbable, or more dispersable

[VX]

A solution of ricin could be used to 'paint' or otherwise coat random objects such as solid food, knives, etc. The item to be coated with ricin would be dipped into a ricin solution, and then allowed to dry. The result would be a fine ricin coating.

80r15, if you did do that, you will be killed by the currant main supplier of LSD within days.

[Ezekiel Kane]

I don't know about THAT...first off, I doubt he would produce it rapidly enough to be noticed by the competition at first. Second, the dealers value money more than friends - if you could give them a better deal, they'd certainly protect their assets. Then again the DEA reports that there are less than a dozen acid cooks synthesizing the vast majority of the nation's acid. It makes you think - there's probably a reason for that...

[Boob Raider]

Fellas ..... Ricin is a protein and is a huge molecule. Ricin is NOT soluble in acetone. There is also an alkaloid present in castor beans called Ricinine (LD50 - 15-20mg/kg IIRC) which is responsible for the toxicity of the acetone fraction. The acetone fraction also removes fats/oils/lipids from the pulp inturn concentrating the ricin content to ~8-10%. Ricin is extremely cytotoxic and interferes with eukaryotic RNA synthesis. LD50 ~3ug/kg IIRC. If I were you .... I would stay the fuck away from that stuff. There are a # of routes one can poison oneself. A couple of ugs can induce acute pulmonary edema (lungs start flooding with fluid) if inhaled. If somehow it enters the bloodstream ... they are royally fucked and can't unfuck themselves as there is no antidote. It takes about 48hrs to die during which period one suffers high Hyperthermia (body temp is ~40-42*C) body pains/aches etc and a shit load of other undesired stuff.
Ricin is detoxified by 5% NaOCl soln, ~80*C temp, etc
Hope I provided enough info to make someone think really hard before attempting anything to do with ricin and similar stuff :rolleyes: .
I believe treatment of the (acetone untreated) pulp with a cellulase (in its approptiate buffer) and then with Triton X-100 (polyethylene glycol aka PEG with other salts etc added can be bought) will cause cell lysis. The Triton X-100 will dissolve the lipid bilayer proteins/cellular proteins and Ricin (1ml of Triton X-100/ 100mg tissue). Centrifuge, collect supernatant and I think addition of Isopropanol will cause proteins to ppt also 70% trichloroacetic acid (1pt TCA/4pts protein soln). Further purification is complicated as it requires weird chromatography columns.
Hope this was useful. :p

[Sarevok]

Ricin is greatly common around here. I could adquire some beans, but I am a maladroit and I won't try to extract ricin from the beans.

Originally posted by Ezekiel Kane
Add a teaspoon of sodium hydroxide to two ounes of hot water, stir, and let cool. Add 2 oz castor beans to the mixture and allow to soak for an hour. Pour off the water and remove the outer husks from the beans with tweezers. Put what's left of the beans in a blender along with 4 oz of acetone for every ounce of beans used. Blend until it becomes milky, and allow to sit in an airtight glass jar for three days. Shake the jar, and filter off all of the liquid, saving the pulp. Allow to dry as long as necessary, and if it doesn't dry into a nice powder, add more acetone and filter again.

According to the US Patent 3,060,165 (http://cloud.prohosting.com/itwas009/P_3,060,165.zip), your process is wrong. But I did not tried neither. If someone wishes to try, I think it's better to follow the process of the patent.

[Charlie Workman]

Sarevok is right. What you get from that is de-oiled seed pulp. It's a first step, but definitely not the pure article. Kurt Saxon touted this as ricin in the "Weaponeer", a periodical he published in the mid 80's. John Minnery sent him a copy of the patent mentioned, which is the U.S. Army process. He then revamped the process based on this information. It was found that you could extract the ricin using concentrated sodium chloride solution and precipitate it with magnesium sulphate. A pretty pure product resulted.

[Nihilist]

I think the ethanol would be to help the absorption process, because of the membrane structure of your cells, the outer wall is permeable to ethanol, lipids, fats etc.

[Sarevok]

"Ricin is common around here" -- I meant Ricinus, the plant, not ricin, the protein.

I collected some thoughts about extracting ricin from castor beans using a method similar to the patent's, but simplier:

Information I found [Source]

- Castor beans can be cracked using lye and pliers [nbk2000.pdf, page 199]
- Acetone dissolves castor oil from the castor beans, without removing the ricin [nbk2000.pdf, page 199]
- Ricin is water soluble [US Patent #3060165, column 1, lines 69,70]
- Ricin can be extracted from the de-oiled crushed castor beans using water with a pH of 3-4,5 [US Patent #3060165, column 1, lines 51,52]
- Soda water has a pH of about 4 [Química na Abordagem do Cotidiano, my general chemistry book]

One could do this:

1. Soak the castor beans in aqueous lye solution and crack the beans using a plier [nbk2000.pdf]. The ricin is on the beans.
2. Use water-free acetone to dissolve the castor oil from the beans and filter that. The ricin is still on the beans because it isn't acetone soluble.
3. Agitate the de-oiled beans using soda water (has pH about 4, which is between the required pH range of 3-4,5). The ricin is now on the water, because its water soluble.
4. Filter that, discard the solid. Ricin is still on the water, without much castor oil or other shit.

Would this work? The water from stage 4 would have any ricin? Or this is just a waste of time? If it works, the water would probably be lethal if ingested or injected, wouldn't it?

I think it would be much safer than the original method, because one would not handle the pure solid ricin.

[vulture]

- Soda water has a pH of about 4

What exactly do they refer to as soda? Soda usually is Na2CO3, which is a base and has a pH of about 10 in concentrated solution.

[streety]

I think he means carbonated water. Water with pressurised CO2 dissolved in it.

[atomophile]

With all this talk of which solvents/processes will do the job of removing the ricin, there is one important aspect still missing. Even if the solvent works, there will be at least some degradation of the protein, I believe from disulfide rupture. I've read that incorporation of mercaptoethanol can prevent this.
Also a loss of water occurs, there are several H2O molecules that are not part of the protein molecule but must be left. Sort of like water of crystalization.

[Sarevok]

Streety is right about what I meant with "soda water". According to the Babylon Translator (www.babylon.com): Soda water - water charged under pressure with carbon dioxide gas.

I know a sodium carbonate solution is basic, since NaOH is a strong base and H2CO3 is a weak acid, as I know 1+1=2... :mad:

Sorry for the misinterpretation.

Edit: It is "Sprudelwasser" or "Sodawasser" in german, "Seltz" in italian, "spuitwater" in dutch and "de l'eau de Seltz" in french. I think belgians speak some of the above, right?

[charger]

I have some experience with the raw castor bean. These are not always fatal if eaten. A friend of mine, who isn't the brightest of people, ate about 8 beans and chewed them well. The only side effect was a weekend with a sick stomach