A thallium dealer, whose product was used by a university student to poison three of his classmates in East China's Jiangsu Province, was arrested late last month in Guangzhou, the China Radio International reported yesterday.

The poisoning took place on May 31 at Xuhai College, part of China University of Mining & Technology, in Xuzhou.

A student surnamed Chang confessed to police in June that he used 250 g of thallium, bought via the Internet from a man in Sichuan Province, to poison his classmates.

The supplier, surnamed Chen, fled his home in Sichuan to Guangzhou after learning from news reports that his product had been used in the campus poisoning.

The 29-year-old told police he worked for a chemical factory in Sichuan between 2001 and 2004. Last year, his girlfriend gave him 700 g of thallium, she said she received from an overseas company she found on the Internet, the report said.

Chen later learned how to make compounds from the thallium and began selling the poison.

Chang earlier told police that his hatred for his peers escalated after being constantly alienated and ignored by them during leisure breaks. He said that on the night of May 31, he invited the three to the school dining hall and clandestinely poured thallium liquid into their bowls.

The case is currently under investigation.

Death by thallium poisoning is known to be slow and painful.

The country's first recorded case of thallium poisoning also happened on a college campus and remains unsolved to this day.

The victim, Zhu Ling, who was studying chemistry at Tsinghua University, first fell ill in December 1994. Her condition soon became serious, but doctors could not formulate a diagnosis.

By the time they discovered Zhu had been poisoned with thallium, her central nervous system had already been badly damaged.

Today, the 34-year-old is completely paralyzed and has lost almost all of her eyesight and mental capacity.

China Daily

(China Daily 07/12/2007 page4)