Thread: Pen The Killer

Are there any possibilities of content of the pen killing someone or threatening someone's life? Considering especially drawing with pen on he skin. We can imagine that someone has small wounds or sensitive skin or allergy.

Huh?

Poisoning via ink-pen? In ridiculously large quantities and in exceedingly odd circumstances, yes.

Ancient Romans did a lot of day to day writing on wax tablets using what amounts to a sharpened stick called a stylus. Wealthier folks would use a bronze or iron stylus rather than the cheap wood or bone ones. Not quite a pen but similar in purpose. Some historians claim that when Julius Caesar was assassinated on the senate floor his attackers stabbed him to death with their styli. It's a minority view, most historians assume his attackers used daggers or knives of some sort, concealed in their clothes (by long tradition weapons were prohibited in the senate). Still, there were apparently multiple attackers, and Caesar's health was failing, it's not impossible.

Poison pen letter?
I thought that was merely a metaphorical phrase.
James Bond poison pen:
James Bond-style weapons used by a would-be North Korean assassin revealed by intelligence officers | Mail Online
Failed North Korean Assassin Discovered With James Bond-Style Poison Pen

(Somedays I can not tell fact from fiction or fiction from fact.)

The names Guin, Pen Guin


Rare picture of Pen "The Killer" Guin

I'm sure such a thing would have documented at some point over the last couple of thousand years of the history of the tattoo.

Pencils are much more dangerous than pens. At least two separate cases (Lunetta, P. et al., 2002; Grimaldi, L. et al., 2005) of suicide via self-inflicted penetration with a pencil were reported, while at least one failed attempt was reported with a ball-pen (Phillips, J. et al., 2000).
Nonetheless, it must be noted that the first and the third case involved subjects with severe mental disorders.

To answer the question, I could not find traces of people dying from exposure to ink.

I once stabbed a bully with a pencil (in the butt) in primary school. He didn't die^1p but boy, did I get into trouble (regardless of the fact he had been beating the shit out of me every day for a week and I finally snapped -- it was worth it though the bullying stopped )

1. In fact he was barely scratched the point only just went through his clothes, went in about 1/4 " and snapped so I basically just poked him with a blunt stick...

I still have a tattoo in my hand from a pencil fight in grade school.

And I seriously doubt ink can kill anyhow, though there's always out outside and really really tine chance of dying of even a minor injury infection.

Regular ball point ink on the outside of skin is as nearly harmless as any thing can be. Rarely people have reactions to tattoo ink. Serious injury with pens is from the puncture wound not the ink.