Opinion ID: 3047100
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Full Coca-Cola Bottles—Q1, Q2, and Q3

Text: The three full bottles of Coca-Cola were sent to the FBI Lab and labeled as samples Q1, Q2, and Q3. Donald Havekost, an analytical chemist with the Elemental Analysis Unit of the FBI Lab, was asked to analyze the contents of the full bottles Q1, Q2, and Q3 for the presence of heavy metal poisons, including arsenic, lead, and thallium. Havekost tested the samples using AES and found the swirling the distilled water/nitric acid mixture around in the bottle for about a minute, and then pouring the resulting “washing” into a sample bottle to be tested using AES and/or AAS. 12 The AES measures the intensity and wavelength of light emitted by a sample when it is heated, while the AAS measures the intensity and wavelength of light absorbed by the sample when it is heated. Each test then compares the light intensity and wavelength to that from a known standard. 19 “predominant element was thallium.” Havekost found none of the other heavy metals for which he tested. Once Havekost learned that thallium was present, he again performed an AES analysis, this time comparing the result with that from known thallium standards he prepared in the laboratory to determine the quantity of thallium present in the Coca-Cola. For the bottle labeled Q1, Havekost found 403.6 milligrams of thallium in the total volume of the bottle. For the bottle labeled Q2, Havekost found 915.3 milligrams of thallium. For the bottle labeled Q3, Havekost found 767.5 milligrams of thallium.