Poisons And Poisonings

An adventurous spirit, Angelo Crippa often foraged for wild mushrooms in the hills above Santa Barbara. But the 82-year-old's lifelong hobby turned tragic when he mistakenly picked the wrong ones in a wooded park near Arroyo Burro Beach, sauteing them with a steak for what would be his last meal. Crippa died a week ago at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital, seven days after he ate a heaping plate of the deadly Amanita ocreata mushrooms, said his wife, Joan Crippa.

Veteran chef Yutaka Sasaki has a plan to remove the fear of eating one of the most poisonous fish on the planet: He wants to feed it to the emperor. The blowfish, known here as fugu, carries a deadly neurotoxin with no known antidote. An average-sized fugu is chock-full of the poison tetrodotoxin -- in its blood, liver and even its sex organs, Sasaki says. But he scoffs at the centuries-old ban on the Japanese monarch eating the delicacy, sought after by many Japanese as daring cuisine.

If you're looking for Russia's most notorious international outlaw, try his new office in parliament. Andrei Lugovoy, the prime suspect in the 2006 radioactive poisoning death of a former Russian spy in London, is a celebrated figure these days in the Russian capital. Not only has Moscow brushed aside extradition requests from Britain, this onetime bodyguard has just been elected to the marble halls of the Duma, the lower house of parliament. Lugovoy says he was framed.

"The Mentalist," "Red Brick and Ivy" episode, CBS, Dec. 16 The premise During a neuroscience symposium at the Stutzer Institute at Leyland State University, the featured speaker, Alex Nelson, is drinking from a water bottle when his vision becomes blurry, and he collapses and dies. The police determine that his water was laced with 10% hydrogen cyanide solution. Investigators suspect that animal activists have targeted Alex because he was an associate of Dr.

The poisoning death of Alexander Litvinenko in November caused by the radioactive isotope polonium-210 sparked a sharp interest in the exotic material, but the onetime Russian spy was not the first to swallow the lethal element. At the height of World War II, in an isolated medical ward at the University of Rochester in New York, Dr. Robert M. Fink gave water laced with polonium-210 to a terminal cancer patient and injected four others with the isotope.

Francesco de Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and his wife, Bianca Cappello, died in 1587 of arsenic poisoning and not malaria, as was claimed at the time, according to a new study by Italian researchers. Known as Francesco I, he ruled for 13 years before he died at age 46 at his villa at Poggio a Caiano, 11 days after falling ill. His second wife, Bianca, died the next day.

Four members of a Santa Cruz family who were poisoned eating wild mushrooms on New Year's Day have been released from the hospital, but two others remain in critical condition. The pair are so ill that they may require liver transplants, although doctors are doing what they can to stabilize their health since replacement organs are scarce, said Kevin McCormack, a spokesman for California Pacific Medical Center.

With an infusion of an extra $3 million this year, California's pesticide agency will beef up enforcement and revive axed programs to meet a new goal of eliminating all serious pesticide poisonings. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposed budget for the Department of Pesticide Regulation increased 5% this year to nearly $69 million, with the extra money coming from a crackdown on unpaid pesticide sales fees at big-box retailers, including Costco, Home Depot and Wal-Mart.

An exiled Russian billionaire said he would be willing to speak to Russian police investigating the death of former spy Alexander Litvinenko -- but only if they are first checked for weapons and poison. Boris Berezovsky, a fierce critic of the Kremlin, was a friend of Litvinenko, who died in November several weeks after falling ill with what was later determined to be radiation poisoning.

A criminal prosecution against a Central Valley nut farmer accused of poisoning a worker with methyl bromide unraveled this week after a defense investigation concluded that the toxic soil fumigant had not caused Arturo Becerra's ailments. The case against Ripon, Calif.-based Golden West Nuts, its co-owner, ranch manager and foreman, was the first criminal pesticide prosecution of a California company in 14 years, and was closely watched throughout the agricultural industry.