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CYANIDE*

Characteristics
Sources of Exposure
Health Impacts
Impacts on Children
Recommendations

Holly Dygert

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Characteristics

Cyanide can exist as a gas, liquid or white crystal powder. It is usually found joined with other chemicals to form compounds. Examples of simple cyanide compounds are hydrogen cyanide, sodium cyanide and potassium cyanide. Certain bacteria, fungi, and algae can produce cyanide, and cyanide is found in a number of foods and plants. In certain plant foods, including almonds, millet sprouts, lima beans, soy, spinach, bamboo shoots, and cassava roots (which are a major source of food in tropical countries), cyanides occur naturally as part of sugars or other naturally-occurring compounds. However, the edible parts of plants that are eaten in the United States, including tapioca which is made from cassava roots, contain relatively low amounts of cyanide.

 

Hydrogen cyanide is a colorless gas with a faint, bitter, almond like odor. Sodium cyanide and potassium cyanide are both white solids with a bitter, almond-like odor in damp air. Cyanide and hydrogen cyanide are used in electroplating, metallurgy, organic chemicals production, photographic developing, manufacture of plastics, fumigation of ships, and some mining processes.
 

 

 

Sources of Exposure

 

  • Breathing air, drinking water, touching soil, or eating foods that contain cyanide.

  • Smoking cigarettes and breathing smoke-filled air during fires are major sources of cyanide exposure.

  • Breathing air near a hazardous waste site containing cyanide.

  • Eating foods naturally containing cyanide compounds, such as tapioca (made from cassava roots), lima beans, and almonds. However, the portions of these plants that are eaten in the United States contain relatively low amounts of cyanide.

  • Cyanide in water does not build up in the bodies of fish.

 

Effects on Health
 

You are not likely to be exposed to large enough amounts of cyanide in the environment to cause adverse health effects. The severity of the harmful effects following cyanide exposure depends in part on the form of cyanide, such as hydrogen cyanide gas or cyanide salts. Exposure to high levels of cyanide for a short time harms the brain and heart and can even cause coma and death. Workers who inhaled low levels of hydrogen cyanide over a period of years had breathing difficulties, chest pain, vomiting, blood changes, headaches, and enlargement of the thyroid gland.
Some of the first indications of cyanide poisoning are rapid, deep breathing and shortness of breath, followed by convulsions (seizures) and loss of consciousness. These symptoms can occur rapidly, depending on the amount eaten. The health effects of large amounts of cyanide are similar, whether you eat, drink, or breathe it; cyanide uptake into the body through the skin is slower than these other means of exposure. Skin contact with hydrogen cyanide or cyanide salts can irritate and produce sores. There are no reports that cyanide can cause cancer in people or animals.
 

Effects on Children
Effects reported in exposed children are like those seen in exposed adults. Children who ate large quantities of apricot pits, which naturally contain cyanide as part of complex sugars, had rapid breathing, low blood pressure, headaches, and coma, and some died. Cyanide has not been reported to directly cause birth defects in people. However, among people in the tropics who eat cassava root, children have been born with thyroid disease because of the mothers' exposure to cyanide and thiocyanate during pregnancy. Birth defects occurred in rats that ate cassava root diets, and harmful effects on the reproductive system occurred in rats and mice that drank water containing sodium cyanide.
 

Recommendations
EPA regulates the levels of cyanide that are allowable in drinking water. The highest level of cyanide allowed in drinking water is 0.2 parts cyanide per 1 million parts of water (0.2 ppm). The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has set a limit for hydrogen cyanide and most cyanide salts of 10 parts cyanide per 1 million parts of air (10 ppm) in the workplace.
 

* Compiled by Elizabeth Limbrick of the New Jersey Institute of Technology, Technical Assistance to Brownfield Communities program.  Source: Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR). 2006.

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