Levels of paraquat in fatal intoxications

We describe here fatal levels of paraquat in plasma of victims due to the i ngestion of the herbicide, paraquat, and the relationship between those lev els and survival times after ingestion. We determined paraquat levels in pl asma, of 106 paraquat poisoning cases in Korea between June 1992 and Decemb er 1996 using a visible spectrophotometric method based on the alkali-dithi onite: reaction. Among 55 cases with known survival times, plasma paraquat levels of victims who died within one day of ingestion ranged from 2.3 to 6 36.6 mu g/ml (average 127.6 mu g/ml) while those of the victims who died be tween 1 similar to 4 days ranged from 0.9 to 25.1 mu g/ml (average 7.0 mu g /ml) Since preparations containing 24.5% paraquat dichloride are still used in Korea, our data for Korean victims who died within one day were 8.5 tim es higher than these in Baselt and Cravey's report for the same survival ti mes. Our data also suggest that victims in whom a plasma paraquat concentra tion of more than 30 mu g/ml was detected are likely to have died within 24 h after ingestion.