Hydrogen sulfide poisoning in forensic pathology and toxicology: mechanism and metabolites quantification analysis

Abstract

Historically, hydrogen sulfide (H₂S) poisoning has extremely high and irreparable mortality. Currently, the identification of H₂S poisoning needs to combine with the case scene analysis in forensic medicine. The anatomy of the deceased seldom had obvious features. There are also a few reports about H₂S poisoning in detail. As a result, we give a comprehensive analysis of the related knowledge on the forensic aspect of H₂S poisoning. Furthermore, we provide the analytical methods of H₂S and its metabolite–which may assist in H₂S poisoning identification.

Keywords:

• Hydrogen sulfide
• thiosulfate
• analytic method
• poisoning
• forensic medicine

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Figdraw (software for drawing figures). The authors also want to thank the anonymous reviewers selected by the editor. The reviewers gave us many valuable suggestions that guided us in revising the content of this article.

Declaration of interest

The authors report no conflict of interest. The manuscript was provided solely by the authors, and the authors’ affiliations are as shown on the first page. Yiwu Zhou is a forensic specialist and is familiar with the research of forensic pathology and toxicology. He gives this article clear guidance. The other authors have made different contributions to this manuscript and all authors have been responsible for the content of this paper. There is no funding supporting the preparation of this work. In the past five years, the authors have never been involved in any legal or regulatory activities related this paper.