Sato Y., Matsumura S., Hayashi K., Takagi T., Ueno A., Shoji T., Kajiwara M., Sudo T., Watanabe T., Kashiwade H., Mukai T.^*, Endo T.^*

Department of Legal Medicine, Kyorin University School of Medicine 6-20-2, Shinkawa, Mitaka-shi, Tokyo 181, Japan
^* Department of Forensic Medicine, Tokyo Medical College 6-1-1, Shinjuku, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 160, Japan

In recent years, the phosphorus-containing amino acid type herbicides became used as safe herbicides compared to paraquat. The increase in use of phosphorus-containing amino acid type herbicides has brought about an increase of poisoning cases by this herbicide. In this paper, a case involving consumption of the phosphorus-containing amino acid type herbicide Touchdown^® is presented.
Case history: A 58 year-old man was found by his wife on the floor in the corridor of their home. She requested an ambulance immediately but when the first aid members arrived, the man was already dead. A bottle Touchdown^® was found near the man.
Autopsy Findings: The post-mortem hypostasis was very dark bluish red on the back. The stomach contained 90 g of dark greenish brown fluid material.
Toxicological Analysis: A sample of Touchdown^® and the stomach content were extracted in chloroform/isopropanol (3:1) and analyzed by GC/MS (DB-5 15 m x 0.53 mm i.d., 70-250° C 15° C/min). The Touchdown^® sample and the stomach contents showed approximately the same chromatographic pattern. Glyphosate (N-(phosphonomethyl)glycine) concentration of the blood, urine and stomach contents were determined using HPLC. Conditions of HPLC analysis were as follows: LC-10A equipped with UV detector (Shimadzu), mobile phase: 6.5 mM KH₂PO₄ - H₃PO₄ (pH 1.9) containing 5% methanol, column: anion-exchange column (Partisil-l0 SAX, 250 mm x 4.6 mm i.d.), flow rate: 2.0 ml/min, wavelength: 200 nm. The concentration of glyphosate in the blood, urine and stomach contents were 0.30 mg/ml, 1.03 mg/ml and 92.6 mg/ml, respectively. These results indicate that the man had consumed Touchdown^®.