How Did Tylenol Kill a Child?

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On September 29th of 1982, seven people in the Chicago area took Tylenol that had been laced with cyanide. Each capsule contained at least three times the minimum dosage to kill somebody. Even if the doctors knew what they had had ingested, there was no chance of saving them. It is a violent, horrific death.

This year’s fear of rainbow fentanyl in kids’ trick-or-treat bags is just the latest unfounded Halloween candy freakout. But the yearly panic has its roots in a very real crisis: the 1982 Tylenol murders.

This episode was produced by Avishay Artsy, edited by Matt Collette, fact-checked by Laura Bullard with help from Jillian Weinberger, engineered by Efim Shapiro, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram.

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