Chemical Agents of Opportunity for Terrorism: TICs & TIMs

Chemical Agents of Opportunity for Terrorism
Training Support Package
Participant Guide
Slide 29
Chemical Agents of Opportunity for Terrorism:
TICs & TIMs
Module Two - The Clinical Neurotoxicology of Chemical Terrorism
29
Four months later, on September 14, 2002 a snack shop owner in China poisoned food
in a competitor's snack shop with a rodenticide identified as Dushuqiang, resulting in 38
deaths. Although it has been banned for sale since the mid-1980s, it was still widely
available in China. Dushuqiang contains tetramine, sometimes known as TETS. TETS is
a little-known, often unrecognized, and highly lethal neurotoxic rodenticide that once was
used widely.
Following news reports of this incident, the New York City Poison Control Center
conducted additional laboratory testing of the product associated with the poisoning in
New York City in May 2002 and confirmed TETS in the product.
TETS is an odorless, tasteless, and water-soluble white crystalline powder that acts as a
-amino butyric acid (GABA) antagonist (China Center for Disease Control and
Prevention [CDC], unpublished data, 2002), TETS, like picrotoxin, binds
noncompetitively and irreversibly to the GABA receptor on the neuronal cell membrane
and blocks chloride channels. The most common routes of exposures are through
ingestion and inhalation (China CDC, unpublished data, 2002). TETS is not registered
by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for use in the United States, and its
importation, manufacture, and use in the United States are illegal.
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