Sudden Death from Glue-Sniffing

This case dealswith an 18 year-old young male who suddenly died while amusing himself by glue-sniffing together with a friend in a very narrow toilet beneath a stairway in the company where he worked. Therefore, the purepose of elucidating the cause of death, gas chromatographic analyses were carried out on the laquer thinner which was discovered at the acene and on the variety of tissues of the cadaver. As a result, five ingredients (acetone, ethyl acetate, n-butanol, toluene, and n-butyl acetate) were identified from the lacquer thinner and three ingredients (acetone, n-butanol, and toluene) from the body tissues, respectively. In addition, the detected concentrations of toluene fpr each tissue sample were 2.84μl/g in the adipose tissue, 0.64μl/g in the subcutaneous fatty tissue, 014μl/g in the liver, 0.051μl/g in the lungs, 0.1μl/ml in the heart blood, 0.11μl/g in the brain, 0.1μl/ml in the gastric fluid, and 0.1μl/ml in the urine. The concentrations of hippuric acid and o-cresol in the urine, which are extensively used as the indexes of exposure to toluene vapor, were 10.2μl/ml and 0.102μl/ml, respectively.

Death

While

Glue-sniffing