Chem Lab: Heath Ledger Toxicology Results

Heath Ledger really did have a smorgasbord of drugs in his bodily fluids when he died just over two weeks ago in a New York apartment.

Shortly after the news broke, several science bloggers launched into rather macabre speculation about how the young actor died.

Kyle Finchsigmate's assessment was spot on:

So, this is The Chem Blog and not Variety and I don’t care too much about Ledger’s death, but it’s curious that people jumped to drug overdose without asking anyone if it was really easy to OD on any of these drugs. The answer is that no, it’s painfully difficult to have a fatal OD on any of those drugs.

According to a story by the Associated Press:

The cause of death was “acute intoxication by the combined effects of oxycodone, hydrocodone, diazepam, temazepam, alprazolam and doxylamine,” spokeswoman Ellen Borakove said in a statement.

How does the New York City medical examiner know that? They probably used gas or liquid chromatography mass spectrometry.

In other words, they took samples of Ledger's blood, urine, and maybe even his vitreous humour, and injected them into a machine which separates out each chemical and identifies them individually.