Ricin is a proteinaceous toxin from the castor bean. When castor beans are processed to produce castor oil, the waste product, or “mash,” contains the ricin toxin. The toxin can then be purified from the mash. Eating castor beans can also be deadly as the ricin doesn’t have to be purified.
How much ricin does it take to make a person ill or kill them? An extremely small amount—roughly three milligrams is enough to be deadly, according to the US Centers for Disease Control. Ricin works by interfering with ribosomal function. Ribosomes are the subcellular components that make proteins in all types of cells. Since proteins are the functional and structural components of cells, cells start to lose their functionality and eventually die.
Accidental exposure to ricin is extremely unlikely: it generally has to be intentional, such as in the 2001 and 2013 episodes of ricin being sent through the U.S. Postal Service. If you are exposed to ricin, the symptoms occur within 6–12 hours. Typical symptoms include nausea, vomiting, and abdominal pain. Symptoms progress to include dehydration and internal organ failures. If inhaled, the toxin can cause respiratory symptoms first.
Numerous methods are currently used to identify ricin toxin. Usually, an antigen-specific assay for screening samples is used, and then presumptive positive samples are re-screened with a confirmatory test. When multiple toxins are suspected, many initial screenings of the samples have to be performed.
Several research facilities have used Luminex Technology to identify ricin toxin in food and other samples. The U.S. FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, for instance, used xMAP® Technology to detect abrin, ricin, botulinim and Staphylococcus enterotoxins toxins in food. The Russian Academy of Sciences also used xMAP Technology to identify Staphylococcal enterotoxins, cholera toxin, ricin, botulinim toxin, and heat labile toxin of E. coli. Several government agencies of China utilized xMAP Technology to detect Bacillus anthracis (anthrax) spores, Yersinia pestis, SARS-CoV, Staphylococcal enterotoxin B (SEB) and ricin from powder samples.
