First known was to use Prussian blue, which is a solid ion exchange material, which absorbs thallium. Up to 20 g per day of Prussian blue is fed by mouth to the person, and it passes through their digestive system and comes out in the stool. Hemodialysis and hemoperfusion are also used to remove thallium from the blood stream. At later stage of the treatment additional potassium is used to mobilize thallium from the tissue. Notable cases
There are numerous recorded cases of fatal thallium poisoning. Because of its use for murder, thallium has gained the nicknames "The Poisoners Poison" and "Inheritance Powder" (alongside arsenic). Australias "Thallium Craze"
In Australia, in the early 1950s, there was a notable spate of cases of murder or attempted murder by thallium poisoning. At this time, due to the chronic rat infestation problems in overcrowded inner-city neighbourhoods (notably in Sydney), and thalliums effectiveness as a rat poison, it was still readily available over the counter in New South Wales, where thallium sulphate was marketed as a commercial rat bait, under the brand Thall-rat . In September 1952 Yvonne Gladys Fletcher, a housewife and mother of two from the inner Sydney suburb of Newtown, was charged and tried for the murders of both her first husband, Desmond Butler (who died in 1948), and her abusive second husband, Bertrand "Bluey" Fletcher, a rat-bait layer, from whom she had obtained the thallium poison that she used to kill him earlier that year.
The investigations results have never been released to Zhu Lings parents or the general public. However, Tsinghua University declined to issue Sun Weis B.S. certificate and refused to provide her with the documentation needed to get a passport or visa in 1997. In 2018 the victims hair has been examined by the University of Maryland geologist Richard Ash using laser ablation ICP-MS mass spectrometry. He was able to confirm the timeline and pattern of poisoning. In 1999, Norwegian Terje Wiik was sentenced to 21 years imprisonment for poisoning his girlfriend with thallium. In June 2004, 25 Russian soldiers earned Honorable Mentions in the Darwin Awards after becoming ill from thallium exposure when they found a can of mysterious white powder in a rubbish dump on their base at Khabarovsk in the Russian Far East. Oblivious to the danger of misusing an unidentified white powder from a military dump site, the conscripts added it to tobacco, and used it as a substitute for talcum powder on their feet. In 2005, a 17 year-old girl in Izunokuni, Shizuoka, Japan admitted to attempting to murder her mother by lacing her tea with thallium, causing a national scandal. In February 2007, two Americans, Marina and Yana Kovalevsky, a mother and daughter, visiting Russia were hospitalized for thallium poisoning. Both had emigrated from the Soviet Union to the United States in 1991 and had made several trips to Russia since then.