Relative Lethalities of Selected Natural and Synthetic Poisons
This charts out many well known natural and synthetic poisons in their lethality in relation to Sarin.
The “relative lethality” was determined as follows. Reported LD50 figures for the following combinations of experimental animal and route of administration were assembled from the cited literature: iv/mouse, ip/mouse, sc/mouse, iv/rat, sc/rat, iv/guinea–pig, iv/cat, iv/rabbit. Within each animal/administration–route set, each agent LD50 was converted into a lethality–index relative to sarin, assigning a reference value of 1000 to the sarin LD50 concerned. For example, the sc/mouse index for batrachotoxin is taken as 10 because its sc/mouse LD50 and that of sarin were around 0.002 and 0.2 mg/kg respectively. In this table, the agents are ranked according to their lowest lethality–index. Only in the case of the italicized synthetic poisons were animal parenteral LD50s unavailable. In these cases, respiratory LCt50s were used instead, except for white arsenic, where an oral LD50 was used. The respiratory LD50 of sarin in man is estimated to be about 1000 micrograms.