H-1003.1
SUBSTITUTE HOUSE BILL 1209
State of Washington
69th Legislature
2025 Regular Session
By House Consumer Protection & Business (originally sponsored by Representatives Mena, Walen, Reed, Ryu, Berry, Alvarado, Macri, Farivar, Doglio, Pollet, Ormsby, Salahuddin, and Hill)
READ FIRST TIME 01/31/25.
AN ACT Relating to protecting public health and safety by regulating the transfer of sodium nitrite; adding a new chapter to Title 69 RCW; prescribing penalties; and declaring an emergency.
BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF WASHINGTON:
NEW SECTION. Sec. 1. (1) The sale of sodium nitrite is a matter of statewide and national concern as there are increasing reports about the extreme health risks of ingestion of sodium nitrite, particularly by people attempting suicide. Sodium nitrite has been promoted online as an effective method to complete suicide as it is readily available and fast acting, and there is a false perception that it provides a painless asymptomatic course prior to death.
(2) Sodium nitrite is commercially available for use as a food preservative, as a curing agent, and for certain limited industrial and medical uses. It can be purchased easily and without restriction from multiple online and brick-and-mortar retail vendors. The national poison data system showed an annual increase in the number of reported exposures to sodium nitrite from 2017 to 2020. In 2021, the national poison data system annual report revealed 16 fatalities across all age cohorts related to sodium nitrite, data that likely underreports actual occurrences. Nationally, 222 deaths were linked to sodium nitrite in 2022 by a single private laboratory. Victims of sodium nitrite ingestion become cyanotic and short of breath within minutes due to methemoglobinemia, which is a blood disorder resulting from an abnormal increase in the hemoglobin methemoglobin. The reversing agent of methylene blue can be ineffective and difficult to administer in an acutely ill patient and is not widely available, even in emergency departments.