[From medicolegal toxicology to forensic toxicology]

The importance of forensic toxicology has been increasing until now, because of the increasing numbers of toxic substances and poisoning incidents. In Japan, a special translational word "houi-chudoku-gaku" has been used for the forensic toxicology especially in the field of legal medicine. The Japanese word, however, does not seem appropriate for translation of forensic toxicology, because it covers medicine, pharmacy and police sciences interdisciplinary. In 1980, Emeritus Prof. Hidetoshi Yoshimura created an appropriate word "hochudoku-gaku" for translation of forensic toxicology. In 1982, Prof. Yoshimura and his friends established the Japanese Association of Forensic Toxicology, consisting of people from legal medicine, pharmacy and police institutes. This Association enabled lively discussions among different fields and greatly contributed to advances of forensic toxicology in Japan. We started studies of forensic toxicology using gas chromatography (GC)/mass spectrometry (MS) in 1979. Until now, we delt with solid-phase extraction (1987-1994), surface ionization GC (1989-1997), negative ion chemical ionization MS (1981-now), solid-phase microextraction (1994-now), cryogenic oven trapping GC (1997-now), surface ionization organic MS (1998-now) and high-performance liquid chromatography/tandem MS (1998-now). In this review, the author presents some details of solid-phase microextraction, negative ion chemical ionization MS, cryogenic oven trapping GC and surface ionization organic MS. Unprecedented poisoning terrorism by use of sarin took place in Matsumoto and Tokyo in 1994 and 1995, respectively. On July 25, 1998, a curry poisoning incident using arsenious acid occurred in Wakayama, resulting in the death of 4 people and injury of 63 people. Since then, more than 30 imitative poisoning cases have been reported by mass communication within 1 year. In spite of the above continuing poisoning cases, almost no effective measures have been taken by the administration of our country and local governments. Many serious problems concerning poisoning and drug abuse are accumulating in Japan. In this review, the problems are also made manifest, and some proposals are presented to solve the problems.