Two 25-gram bottles, one each of potassium cyanide and one of sodium cyanide, have gone missing from a laboratory at Osaka Metropolitan University’s Graduate School of Engineering.
A laboratory worker discovered the bottles containing highly toxic substances were missing during an inventory check for toxins on May 2 around 1 p.m. The matter was only reported to the university management on Tuesday.
The compounds are fast-acting poisons; a dose between 200 and 300 milligrams of either is considered fatal for an adult. If each bottle were completely full, it would contain enough chemicals to cause the deaths of at least 80 people. The university is unsure how many of the substances are left in the missing bottles.
