THE TOXIC OIL SYNDROME

Hundreds died and thousands were poisoned by rapeseed oil adulterated with aniline and sold illegally in Spain in 1981. The clinical manifes tations, now known as the toxic oil syndrome, include pulmonary hypert ension and. right ventricular hypertrophy plus widespread vascular and neural lesions in other organs. Many of die late deaths ended with a scleroderma-like illness. Because scleroderma involves the heart, an e xamination was made of die small and large coronary arteries, the neur al structures, and the conduction system from 11 victims dying with th e toxic oil syndrome. Dense fibrosis, atrionodal junctional hemorrhage s, and cystic degeneration of the sinus nodes were present. Small and large coronary arteries exhibited focal fibromuscular dysplasia and a proliferative cystic myointimal degeneration. This latter abnormality was associated with sloughing of the inner wall and embolization of th e detached fragment downstream in the same coronary artery. Every hear t had many degenerative lesions within nerves, ganglia, and the corona ry chemoreceptor Based upon observations by others with experimental f eeding of rapeseed oil containing either high or low erucic acid, it i s suggested that this oil must remain a major suspected cause of the t oxic oil syndrome, particularly in conjunction with some as yet unexpl ained facilitative influence by oleoanilids. If this is so, it is impo rtant to reexamine the widely recommended use of any rapeseed oil prod uct as a suitable food for humans or animals.