Milk supplies at risk from terrorist toxin

Terrorists could poison more than 500,000 people, and more than half would die, by putting as little as 10 grams of botulinum toxin in a milk truck. That is the conclusion of a scientific risk analysis which was pulled from publication at the last minute by US government officials in May 2005, but has now been published.

 

"People think the three top bioterrorism threats are smallpox, anthrax and botulinum in milk," says Larry Wein of Stanford University in California, US, an author of the study. "But botulinum has received relatively little attention."

 

He and colleague Yifan Liu calculated how many people would be poisoned if terrorists put botulinum, the most toxic substance known, into a tank truck of milk on its way to a pasteurising plant.

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