How worried should we be about Ricin?

The raided flat was above shops in Wood Green

Breakfast's main story this morning is the discovery of a small amount of the highly toxic biological agent Ricin in a North London flat.

This morning, anti-terrorist police are continuing to question six men, understood to be Algerians.

Breakfast brought you the latest news throughout the programme, live from Scotland Yard and Wood Green in North London where the discovery was made

At 6.40am, we talked to terrorism expert Andy Oppenheimer from Jane's Terrorism and Security Monitor

click here to watch Breakfast's interview in full with Andy Oppenheimer

We asked the BBC's security expert Frank Gardner to assess the risk posed by Ricin. His assessment: not a weapon of mass destruction but a very potent weapon in the terrorist's psychological

click here to watch our interview with Frank Gardner

At 7.40am, we found out about the risk to the public, from Dr Sue Atkinson, who's in charge of public health in London.

click here to watch our interview in full with Sue Atkinson

At 8.10am, we talked to Dr Annie McGuire, who's been involved in rehearsing what might happen in the event of an attack.

click here to watch our interview in full

Click here to go straight to Breakfast's e-mail form

News of the arrests in Wood Green is being followed closely in the US, which has lived for more than a year with the threat of a biological attack, in the form of anthrax

click here to watch Ian Pannell's report from Washington

click here to go straight to Breakfast's Your Say page

Further details from BBC News Online

The security services are attempting to work out how much of the deadly substance ricin was made at a north London flat raided by police.

Experts are battling to establish whether any of the poison is in the hands of terrorists.

Officers from Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist branch are continuing to question six men - understood to be Algerians - arrested after the raid in Wood Green.

Ricin poison

Tiny amount can kill

No known antidote

Causes gastroenteritis, vomiting and seizures

More details on ricin poisoning

Only small traces of ricin were found in the operation - launched after a tip-off - but doctors have been told to be extra vigilant for signs of the poison.

Castor oil beans - from which ricin is made - and equipment and containers for crushing the beans were found at the flat, where one of the men was arrested.

Tony Blair said the arrests showed the continued threat of international terrorism was "present and real and with us now and its potential is huge".

All of the men were arrested on Sunday morning and are in their late teens, 20s and 30s.

Analysis: A significant find
Click here for full story

Forensic analysis should reveal whether the ricin was made at the flat, although officers believe this to be the case.

Because of the difficulty of deploying ricin, it is not believed to be an obvious choice for a weapon of mass destruction.

With ingestion or injection necessary, it is a poison more associated with assassination, most notably in the 1978 murder of the Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov.

The KGB were suspected to be behind the killing, initiated on London's Waterloo Bridge using a poison tipped umbrella.

Security services are also trying to discover what links those behind the manufacture of the ricin have with al-Qaeda or other terror groups, and whether other chemicals have been made.

It is thought whoever made the poison did not have the capability to make a bomb, but they could have aimed to create panic by trying to kill small numbers of people.

Ricin is considered a potential biowarfare or bioterrorist agent and is on the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention's "B" list of agents - considered a moderate threat.

It is relatively easy to manufacture in small amounts but would be considered an unusual agent to use for a mass attack as it must be ingested or injected to take effect.

Large quantities were reportedly found in caves in Afghanistan.

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