Essay On Forensic Toxicology

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Forensic toxicology is a branch of forensic science concerned with the study of toxic substances or poisons; toxicology is the study of the toxic or harmful effects of chemicals. It is concerned with how toxins act, when their harmful effects occur, and what the symptoms and treatments are for poisoning. It also involves the identification of the substances involved (Interdisciplinary).
Forensic toxicologists have faced numerous challenges throughout the 1800’s and are still facing some of these challenges today. In Gettler’s and Norris’s time of being head of forensics in New York, they faced problems within toxicology study, and some out of toxicology. One of their main problems was metabolizing a poison and determining the lethal dose.
Metabolizing of a poison was an early problem for Norris and Gettler, especially when working with cyanide, one of the many poisons they analyzed. When inhaled, …show more content…

Forensic toxicologists employ a large number of analytical techniques to determine the drugs or poisons relevant to an investigation; the capacity of a laboratory to conduct routine toxicological analysis varies depending upon equipment, technical capability and analyst experience. When needed, there are specialty toxicology labs that can test for almost any potential toxin or metabolite in almost every kind of post-mortem sample. A laboratory should be accredited to perform the analytical work and must be subject to regular inspections. This will ensure that laboratories can reproduce accurate and reliable results for investigations. All laboratory tests conform to standard operating procedures, results are confirmed to meet standards, and reported results are peer reviewed by a second toxicologist before being released. Even so, we still use methods that Gettler used in his

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