Blood carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide concentrations in the fatalities of fire and non-fire associated civil aviation accidents, 1991–1998

Prevalence of Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors in Pilot Fatalities of Civil Aviation Accidents, 1990-2001

“…The submitted pilot fatality biological samples are routinely analyzed for the presence of combustion gases (carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide), alcohol/ volatiles, and drugs (11)(12)(13)(14)43). All of these foreign substances (analytes) in the samples are analyzed according to established standard laboratory procedures, including screening and confi rmatory/quantitative analyses (14).…”

Distribution of cyanide in heart blood, peripheral blood and gastric contents in 21 cyanide related fatalities

“…The acute toxic effects of an ingestion or inhalation of cyanide from suicide or homicide attempts [4][5][6][7][8], or of inhalation of combustion gas in a fire [9,10] are generated by the process whereby cyanides transferred through the blood and then bound to ferric iron of cytochrome oxidase inhibit electron transport and disrupt cells in their use of oxygen, resulting in hypoxia and physiological function suppression [11,12]. This is an intracellular poison by cyanide intoxication, which occurs because most of the cyanides in blood are concentrated in the red blood cells and bound to methemoglobin.…”

Headspace GC-MS Detection of Carbon Monoxide in Decomposed Blood and Hepatic Tissues

“…These methods include UV and FTIR spectrophotometry [1][2][3], CO-oximetry [2,4], and Capillary Electrophoresis (CE) [5,6]. Although gas chromatographic techniques are more suitable for forensic materials [3,7,8], they are complicated, time-consuming and require larger samples when compared with CO-oximetry and GC/MS.…”