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Cyanide: just a tenth of a gram causes agonising death

  Cyanide - the compound which unconfirmed reports suggest would have been used in the Tube attack - is one of the most lethal substances. Even tiny amounts of less than 0.1 grams can leave victims to die a quick but agonising death.

The gas has been used in warfare, to administer the death penalty in California and to control pests.

In 1995, a Japanese doomsday cult tried to release it on to the Tokyo underground, but the plot was foiled. Earlier that year the same group killed 12 people with sarin nerve gas.

Iraq used cyanide in its attack on the Kurdish village of Halabja in 1988. Five thousand people died and many were discovered sitting exactly where they were when the gas hit, their systems paralysed from within.

Professor Patrick Vallance, director of the Centre for Clinical Pharmacology who drew up guidelines on cyanide poisoning after September 11, said: ' Cyanide gets into the body's cells and stops them being able to use oxygen properly. But it is quite difficult to get enough cyanide into the right place.

'It is extremely toxic but it is not always a terribly effective poison. As one of the classic poisons of detective fiction, along with strychnine and arsenic, it is more effective when used against a single victim.'

Experts agree that it is most deadly when ingested or inhaled in high concentrations, especially in an enclosed environment-such as Tube trains. Sufferers will first feel nausea, then dizziness, confusion, loss of co-ordination, rapid deep breathing and gasping, followed by muscle spasms and loss of consciousness.

Most people cannot smell cyanide until levels become too high to be safe. Then it can smell like bitter almonds. Even several years after exposure to low levels of cyanide, it can cause birth defects and nerve damage affecting hearing, vision and muscle co-ordination.

Cyanide gas can be found in industrial emissions and car exhaust, cigarette smoke and certain papers and plastics as they burn. It is used in metal cleaning operations and as an industrial bug killer.

The 1995 attempt by the Aum Supreme Truth Cult to release cyanide on the Tokyo subway was thwarted, but earlier that year the same doomsday cult killed 12 and injured more than 5,000 on the Tokyo underground by using the nerve gas sarin without warning.

A London Underground spokeswoman would not comment on the latest reports, but asked passengers to be vigilant. She said: 'Over the past 30 years we have been exposed, like the rest of London, to the threats of terrorism. All our staff are well trained to look out for the unusual.

'We have closed-circuit TV and more than three million passengers a day looking out for the unusual as well. 'We ask them, if they do see anything suspicious, to immediately tell our staff.'