Oct 26, 2009 6:08 pm US/Eastern
Experts: Harvard Med School Poisoning Intentional
BOSTON (WBZ) ―
Several experts suspectÂ
coffee that sickened six scientists at Harvard Medical School was intentionally poisoned.
One of the researchers poisoned by the tainted coffee says it came from a single-serve espresso machine in a common area on the eighth floor of the Harvard Medical School New Research Building. "It tasted weird. It had a metallic taste...I felt a sudden drop in blood pressure. I was feeling like I was going to faint," says Matteo Iannacone, adding he and his colleagues were told last week that toxicology tests showed the coffee contained
sodium azide, a preservative used in labs that is potentially deadly.
A Harvard Medical School spokesman says university police are trying to determine whether the coffee was intentionally or accidentally tainted.
David Benjamin, PhD, a Chestnut Hill toxicologist, says it appears to him to have been intentional. "You would have to take the chemical and add the chemical to the reservoir in the coffee maker," says Benjamin who consults in legal cases. "It's a remote possibility that it's accidental," he says.
It happened August 26, but was not made public until last week. "It's definitely disturbing to think that somebody might have put something into the coffee," says Iannacone who explains he and his poisoned colleagues went to the hospital, but only one was kept overnight and they are all fine now.
Why did it take so long to publicize the incident? Harvard Medical School spokesman David Cameron says, "It had to do with the amount of time it took to isolate the chemical," which, he says, is a "laborious process."
"It's pretty scary that it took such a long time for people to get notified...It's almost ridiculous how long it took," says Tariq Warsi, PhD, a post doctoral fellow in systems biology.
But, Dr. Henry Wu, an instructor at the medical school disagrees. "I think they did it quite quickly, to be honest. I mean, we have a very stringent system where, if anything goes wrong, it's immediately take care of."
Iannacone agrees it's unlikely the poisoning was accidental but says he has no idea who did it or why.
Another Harvard Medical School post doctoral fellow says the chemical does not leave certain areas...it would never find its way into a coffee maker, "that's crazy," he says.
However, the Centers for Disease Control says accidents involving the chemical have happened in lab settings.
In one case, sodium azide was poured into a drain where it exploded when it contacted metal and the toxic gas was inhaled.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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