The teenager accused of stabbing three girls to death in Southport now faces two further charges.<\/p>\n
Axel Rudakubana, 18, from Lancashire, faces one charge of the “production of a biological toxin, namely ricin, contrary to Section 1 of the Biological Weapons Act 1974”.<\/p>\n
He also faces a terror charge of possession of information “likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism, contrary to Section 58 of the Terrorism Act 2000”.<\/p>\n
This came after police said they found ricin and an al Qaeda training manual<\/strong>, during a search of his home.<\/p>\n He had already been charged with three counts of murder and 10 counts of attempted murder following the mass stabbing<\/strong> at a Taylor Swift-themed dance workshop in July.<\/p>\n What is ricin?<\/strong><\/p>\n Ricin is found naturally in castor beans.<\/p>\n When the beans are processed to make castor oil, it leaves a mash that contains the toxin.<\/p>\n It’s classed as a biological substance because of its origin, but it doesn’t spread from person to person like a virus or bacteria.<\/p>\n But like a chemical, it can cause cross-contamination, for example through contact on clothing.<\/p>\n The UK Health Security Agency says there is no evidence that any member of the public, or the emergency services, was exposed to the ricin allegedly found at Rudakubana’s home.<\/p>\n Anybody who had been exposed would have developed the first symptoms within 24 hours or so.<\/p>\n If it’s inhaled it causes progressive breathing difficulties, ultimately causing respiratory failure and death.<\/p>\n If it’s ingested it initially causes diarrhoea and vomiting that can be severe enough to result in dehydration.<\/p>\n Days later the body’s organs begin to shut down, possibly causing death.<\/p>\n Skin contact causes irritation, but isn’t itself serious. The risk is that people who pick it up on their fingers, for example, then ingest it.<\/p>\n Roughly 2-6% of cases of ingestion result in death.<\/p>\n The fatality rate from inhalation is unknown.<\/p>\n No information has been given by police on what form the ricin was found in.<\/p>\n But in previous cases, it has been processed as a powder, mist, pellet or dissolved in water or acid.<\/p>\n In 1978, the Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov was assassinated in London by an operative, thought to be from the Bulgarian secret service, who used an umbrella to inject a pellet of ricin under his skin.<\/p>\n In 2013, letters tainted with ricin were sent to President Obama, the New York mayor, and others.<\/p>\n On that occasion, nobody came to harm.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The teenager accused of stabbing three girls to death in Southport now faces two further…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9582,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9581"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9581\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}