More tests needed on powder in Texas dorm room

AUSTIN, Texas — More tests are needed to determine if a chunky white powder found in a University of Texas dormitory room is the deadly poison ricin, the FBI said on Saturday.

An initial test of the powder, which was found by a student on Thursday night in a roll of coins, indicated the substance was ricin but local officials said subsequent tests were negative.

A spokesman for the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force in Austin said FBI specialists in chemical weapons had taken the powder back to Washington for further tests.

"The field testing is that it was ricin," said FBI Special Agent Rene Salinas. "We don’t know what intensity it was."

Definitive test results may come as early as Sunday, he said.

In reports on the Austin American-Statesmen newspaper Web site and broadcast on KEYE-TV, local officials said the powder had been tested three times and only the first test was positive

for ricin, which is considered a potential chemical weapon of mass destruction.

The FBI does not think the powder is part of an attack, Salinas said. Rhonda Weldon, spokeswoman for the university police department, also said the incident was not associated with any threats against the school.

"It’s definitely not a terrorist act," Salinas said.

Ricin has figured in at least one recent terrorist plot. In 2005, an al Qaeda-trained Algerian man, Kamel Bourgass, was convicted for plotting to spread ricin throughout streets in Britain.

The white powder found at the University of Texas was in a paper-wrapped roll of coins that a student was using to do her laundry in coin-operated washing machines. It spilled on to her dorm room desk when she opened the paper tube holding the coins, said Theresa Spalding, medical director of university health services.

After the initial test on the powder indicated ricin, the student’s dormitory was evacuated and her room and the laundry room remained sealed off Saturday, the American-Statesman said.

The roll of coins had been given to the student by her mother, Spalding said. Salinas declined to say if the investigation had determined where the student’s mother got the coins.

Neither the student nor her roommate were suffering symptoms of ricin exposure, Spalding said.

Ricin is not deadly on contact with the skin and must be eaten, inhaled or injected to cause harm, Spalding said.

Ricin is a by-product of castor bean oil production. Toxicologists say it can be made easily in an ordinary kitchen.

Once a person has been exposed to ricin, the poison can prevent cells from making necessary proteins, causing the cells to die and eventually harming the whole body.