Situations of poisoning and analytical toxicology in Japan

Unprecedented poisoning terrorism by use of sarin took place in Japan in 1994 and 1995. On July 25, 1998, a curry poisoning incident in Wakayama occurred resulting in the death of four people and injury of 63 people. Since then, more than 30 imitative poisoning cases have been reported by mass communication within 1 year. In this brief review, we present some details of a series of poisoning cases and measures taken by the Japanese Government and non-government groups. In addition some research projects on analytical toxicology being conducted in our laboratories are also introduced; gas chromatography (GC) with cryogenic oven trapping for volatile organic compounds, and GC/surface ionization organic mass spectrometry for tertiary amino compounds are described especially as new techniques for biological samples.