What's your poison? Why sparkling cyanide shouldn't be your weapon of choice

As a chemist and crime fiction expert, I beg you to pause before poisoning the Christmas pudding. Apart from anything else, it's not easy to pull off ...

I talk and write about poison, murder and crime fiction. Many people have asked me whether I worry about people using the information I provide to go out and commit crimes. I have certainly thought carefully about what information I give out and how much detail to go into in terms of obtaining and preparing poisons. But anyone using my lectures as a step-by-step guide on how to poison someone will come unstuck very quickly. They will have to do a considerable amount of independent research to fill in the gaps even before they prepare and administer their chosen compound. You can't just lash out in the heat of an argument and poison someone. The longer it takes someone to achieve this, the more time they have to consider what they are doing and change their mind. This is perhaps one of the reasons why, thankfully, so few murders are committed using toxic compounds.

Poisoning is a lengthy and involved process and there are much "easier" ways of killing people. Statistics show that most murderers go for alternative options, such as stabbing, shooting or hitting. However, there are a very small number of individuals who have a psychological or neurological quirk that means they are prepared to do their homework and see the process through to its fatal conclusion. Of course, laws exist to make poisoning as difficult as possible, and forensic science has developed to a level that means poisoners are very unlikely to get away with it. That's why, to give you some idea of how difficult it is to poison someone, I've outlined some of the considerations that need to go into the process.