Possible Chemical Assisted Suicide, Ontario County, NY

Possible Chemical Assisted Suicide, Ontario County, NY:
News just being posted on a couple of local media sites (WHAM 1180 and Rochester D and C) indicating that a person has been found dead in a car with five-gallon buckets of chemicals in the back seat and a sign in the window warning of "toxic gas". Residents within a half-mile radius have been evacuated...

We've written about this in the blog and talked quite a bit about it on the podcast...this trend of using over-the-counter chemicals to create what I call "Consumer-Level Hazardous Materials Events" is a grave threat to responders and the public. In cases of chemical assisted suicide, also known as detergent suicide, a mix of several simple household materials combine to create Hydrogen Sulfide...a blood agent similar and potentially more potent than cyanide. I've listed the Podcast and Blog entries related to this topic (We've been following these situations since early 2008 and have quite a collection of information).

If you'd like to see my notes on this topic, click here for my site and scroll to the Training File at the bottom of the page. If you have trouble with any of these files, please email me or call 585-672-7844.

Listen to Mitigation Journal Podcast (free) editions #114 , #104 , #72 , #59
Read the Mitigation Journal Blog postings: More Chemical Suicide (5/31/09), Chemical Suicide in Cars (3/3/09) and Suicide by Blood Agent (4/28/08)