Validation of qualitative test for phosphine gas in human tissues

Phosphine has been known to science since the birth of modern chemistry. WHO reports that the technical product usually has a foul odour, like "fishy" or "garlicky" because of the presence of substituted phosphines and diphosphine (P2H4). Many medico-legal autopsy cases have been reported positive for aluminium phosphide even though there was neither any suspicion of consuming aluminium phosphide nor any clinical findings, postmortem findings or circumstantial evidences. The present study was carried out to validate the qualitative test, presently applied in many laboratories for testing phosphine. It was observed that 65% of human tissues in saturated solution of common salt show positivity for phosphine gas on the first day of autopsy.