The toxic chemical that authorities say a Boston University doctoral student may have ingested when she apparently committed suicide at her South End flat is cheap and available with just a few clicks of a mouse, according to a toxicologist who says sodium azide is in the “same class” as the cyanide suicide concoctions that have sparked similar haz-mat responses in recent years.

“It’s easy to obtain,” said Roger W. Giese, a professor of chemistry and biomedical science at Northeastern University. The chemical is used as a preservative in laboratories but could also be purchased online, he said. “It’s inexpensive, it’s water soluble. It’s salt, like sodium chloride. ... And it doesn’t take very much” to be lethal.

BU officials said they’re probing whether the 25-year-old woman, a third-year student in the medical school’s pharmacology program, had ingested a chemical from one of their laboratories. The woman on Monday night was taken to Boston Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead. Police said they found what appeared to be a suicide note and a relative told them she suffered from depression.

Twelve people were evacuated from a South End apartment building and four Boston police officers and an ambulance crew were taken to a hospital after a woman committed suicide Monday night inside an apartment by ingesting a toxic chemical, fire officials said.

Boston Deputy Fire Chief Steve Dunbar said at the hazmat scene that the woman ingested the chemical on the first floor of 676 Mass. Ave. at about 9 p.m. and was later pronounced dead at Boston Medical Center.

He said four police officers and the ambulance team of two EMS workers were being quarantined at BMC to determine whether they were affected by the substance.

Dunbar said a relative of the woman, whose name and age he did not know, reported that the victim told her she ingested a chemical and asked that her cats be taken care of.

The deputy fire chief said the victim appeared to be young, but he could not be more specific.

He said the woman is believed to have ingested sodium azide, a chemical used to make airbags. “But it can metabolize into some kind of cyanide,” Dunbar said, adding that the woman died about an hour or two after ingesting the substance.

Investigations are continuing into Friday night's chemical scare that led to the Emergency Department at the Calvary Mater Hospital being evacuated and decontaminated.

A 32-year-old Lambton man drank a quantity of the substance sodium azide and was taken by ambulance from Newcastle University to the Mater, where he later died.

Ambulance Officers union spokesman Peter Rumball says two paramedics were among several workers who had to be decontaminated.

"The Hazmat decontaminated them and they were allowed to go home," he said.

"The have since recovered but it just highlights the jobs of ambulance officers across the State, simply going to respond to someone that's ill they could become a victim themselves."

Mr Rumball says the chemical, which is extremely toxic, is used in bio-medical experiments and as an insecticide.

"It can be quite dangerous," he said.

"It can be lethal if it's ingested or absorbed.

"That's why the full decontamination process was put in place at the Mater Hospital to deal with that, to protect not only the patient but members of the nursing staff, doctors and the ambulance officers."

A University of Florida laboratory explosion last week caused chemical burns on a graduate student's face and lips, the skin to be torn from his fingertips, and glass to become embedded in his chest and abdomen, according to a police report released Wednesday.

Graduate student Khanh Ha, 27, was conducting research on cyclic peptides in the Sisler Hall laboratory of chemistry professor Alan Katritzky when the Jan. 11 accident happened. Ha told UF police that he was doing an experiment with sodium azide, a shock-sensitive compound, and an acid before the explosion.

He told police that he added water to the experiment just before the explosion, according to the report. Chemistry department chairman Daniel Talham said typically the mixture wouldn't be explosive when the chemicals are handled property, so an investigation into the incident is expected to add information on the cause.

"We don't really know what happened in this case," he said.

Sodium azide is known to be explosive when heated to high temperatures or when it comes in contact with certain metals, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Mixing the compound with strong acids produces hydrazoic acid, which also is explosive.

Sodium azide also was involved in an October explosion in Katritzky's laboratory that injured another graduate student. Following last week's explosion, work in the lab involving chemicals was suspended pending results of an investigation into the incident.

An experiment gone wrong last week left a student with chemical burns to his face and lip, glass embedded in his chest and abdomen, deep cuts to his right hand, two fingers tinted blue and a couple fingertips hanging by the skin.
Khanh Ha told University Police Department detective Hank Middleton he was conducting an experiment in Room 213 of Sisler Hall on Jan. 11 when an explosion occurred after he added water to compounds he was handling, according to a police report released Wednesday.
Ha, a 27-year-old chemistry graduate student, was working with two compounds: sodium azide and chlorine glycine GABA acid, according to police. Ha said he had experimented with both before. But when he added water, the compounds exploded.
Ha, who was working inside a protective enclosure called a fume hood, was taken across the hall by two other people in the lab, according to police. When officer Henri Belleville arrived, Ha was washing his hands.
As Belleville approached, he noticed Ha's lab coat had small holes burned in it. The coat was stained with blood, and there was a puddle of it pooling at Ha's feet, according to police.
Ha was wearing safety goggles, but Belleville said he wouldn't open his eyes. He wouldn't talk either. To answer questions, he only nodded or shook his head.
Ha is in stable condition.

The University of Florida has re-opened the floor of Sisler Hall where a chemical explosion injured a graduate student last week.

A contractor on Monday removed the remnants of the chemical involved in the explosion, sodium azide, said UF Environmental Health and Safety Director William Properzio. An extensive decontamination and cleaning lasting most of the day also were done, he said.

Sisler Hall was closed following the explosion but three of the hall's floors re-opened Friday. The second floor of the hall and UF chemistry professor Alan Katritzky's laboratory, where the explosion took place, were opened Tuesday as classes resumed following the Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday.

Several UF departments are reviewing lab safety policies after two students were injured in separate incidents in the last three months. The second put a graduate student in the hospital.
UF spokeswoman Janine Sikes said hazardous materials teams responded to six incidents — three explosions, two spills and one reported odor — on campus in the last year.
The chemical explosion on Wednesday in Sisler Hall that injured graduate student Khanh Ha, 27, and Gainesville Fire Rescue firefighter Andrew Marsh, 25, is still under investigation, she said.
The chemistry department and UF's Environmental Health and Safety division are working diligently to ensure students' safety in labs and to minimize the risk of accidents, Sikes said.
In October, an explosion caused by a set of chemical reactions surprised the department, said Daniel Talham, chair of the chemistry department.
Last week's explosion, which Talham said was caused by similar reactions, surprised the University Police Department.
"For our agency to respond to two similar incidents involving the same chemical in the same building in three months is fortunately not something that we routinely see," said UPD spokesman Maj. Brad Barber.
In both cases, the reactions involved sodium azide, but Talham said that particular chemical was not necessarily the culprit.
The director of Environmental Health and Safety, William Properzio, said sodium azide is routinely used in labs. He said UF has about 3,000 labs on campus.
Since the October explosion, EHS has worked with the chemistry department to ensure researchers follow safety procedures, he said.

What could possibly be good about not one but two explosions in 3 months, both with injuries,  in the same academic lab?  What could be good is the apparent progress the laboratory made between the two incidents.

In the more recent of two explosions in Alan Katritzky's lab in the chemistry department at the University of Florida (UF), on 12 January, "Preliminary investigation determined that appropriate safety procedures and protective equipment were in use, likely significantly mitigating the effects of the explosion," says UF chemistry department chair Daniel Talham, quoted by Jyllian Kemsley at Chemical & Engineering News.


Graduate student Khahn Ha, 27, who was working with sodium azide, sustained a "gash to his upper body, injuries to his hand and burns to his face" in the January explosion -- but avoided even worse harm because of his safety glasses, the Gainesville Sun reports. A firefighter wearing a face mask also received "minor chemical burns to his face and eyes" but is doing well, the Sun continues.

Three months earlier, an explosion in the same lab, involving the same chemical, injured student Mohamed Ibrahim, who was not wearing appropriate safety gear and suffered cuts to his face. Ha's mishap, troubling as it is, therefore seems to indicate that by the time the second explosion occurred safety was being taken more seriously in the Katritzky lab.

The University of Florida has suspended chemistry work in a laboratory where explosions injured graduate research assistants this week and about three months ago.

Paul D'Anieri, dean of the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, said such work in UF chemistry professor Alan Katritzky's lab is suspended indefinitely as procedures and research done there are reviewed.

William Properzio, UF's director of environmental health and safety, said use of the chemical involved in both the explosion this week and one in October also is being suspended.


"We're going to stop that now and may stop it forever, I don't know," Properzio said.

The second floor of Sisler Hall, where the laboratory is located, remained closed Friday, but the other three floors of the building were reopened to faculty and students for the first time since the blast.

Properzio said some of chemical involved in the explosion, sodium azide, remained in the area where the explosion happened.

An outside contractor is expected to remove the chemical Monday, he said, which coincides with UF's Martin Luther King Day holiday and would allow the building to reopen when classes resume Tuesday.

Properzio said the small amount of the substance means there is no risk for others to return in the meantime to the building's other floors, which house labs and offices.

An explosion at the University of Florida that injured a graduate student and firefighter Wednesday involved the same laboratory and chemical as a similar incident in October.

The student, 27-year-old Khanh Ha, was working with sodium azide in a Sisler Hall lab when the explosion happened. He suffered serious injuries to his face, hand and body. He remained hospitalized in stable condition Thursday, according to UF.

A firefighter who responded to the scene, Andrew Marsh, received minor chemical burns to his face and eyes but was reported by Gainesville Fire Rescue to be in good condition.

Sisler Hall was closed Thursday as UF's Environmental Health and Safety department investigated the incident. The hall houses labs and offices, so no classes were affected.

A chemical reactant explosion at Sisler Hall seriously injured a student and shut down traffic around 5:45 p.m. Wednesday, and authorities said the building will be closed all day today.
Gainesville Fire Rescue Department Chief Gene Prince said a student, whose name was not released, was working alone in a lab on the second floor "under a protective hood" when the explosion occurred.
Paramedics transported the student to Shands at UF in serious condition to be treated for burns.
Firefighter Andrew Marsh, 25, was one of the first to enter the building. He suffered minor burns to his eyes and face and was later released in good condition.
After the explosion, a GFR hazardous materials unit set up a makeshift bathing station in front of Sisler Hall where the team hosed people down outside the building. Police blocked off the surrounding traffic area, which created a backlog of about seven city buses waiting to pass the corner of Union Road and Buckman Drive.
According to GFR, one of the known agents involved in the research is sodium azide, a chemical found in some rocket propellants and car airbags.

NEW BEDFORD — A faculty member and two lab technicians were taken to the hospital Friday afternoon following an apparent chemical reaction at UMass Dartmouth's School for Marine Sciences and Technology, university and fire officials said.

All three were treated and released. The incident happened at about 3 p.m. in a laboratory at the South End campus, and the building was evacuated, UMD spokesman John Hoey said.

A glass container shattered, apparently due to a chemical reaction, cutting one of the technicians on her arm. The faculty member may have inhaled some of the fumes. All three were taken to the hospital by their colleagues, Hoey said.

State hazardous materials personnel, police, and firefighters responded to the scene. The chemicals believed to be involved in the incident are vanadium penpoxide, sodium azide and acetic acid, according to the Fire Department.

The incident remains under investigation, Hoey said.