tag:theconversation.com,2011:/africa/topics/sarin-7420/articlesSarin – The Conversation2022-04-12T18:53:05Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1805342022-04-12T18:53:05Z2022-04-12T18:53:05ZRussia isn’t likely to use chemical weapons in Ukraine – unless Putin grows desperate<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457741/original/file-20220412-36930-p0rmfb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ukrainians walk in the besieged city of Mariupol, where there are reports of a possible chemical attack. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/residents-walk-near-a-damaged-building-in-mariupol-april-10-2022-picture-id1239925917?s=2048x2048">Victor/Xinhua via Getty Images)</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Reports emerged from Ukraine on April 11, 2022, alleging that Russia had <a href="https://www.marketwatch.com/story/mariupol-mayor-says-10-000-civilians-have-been-killed-in-russian-siege-as-new-reports-circulate-of-chemical-weapons-use-01649713619">used a drone</a> to drop an unknown chemical agent in the besieged southern city of Mariupol. </p>
<p>There has been no official confirmation of these reports as of April 12. But the <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/11/pentagon-monitoring-reports-of-possible-russian-chemical-weapons-attack-in-mariupol.html">Pentagon has said</a> the news reflects U.S. concern about Russia’s “potential to use a variety of riot control agents, including tear gas mixed with chemical agents, in Ukraine.”</p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.dhs.gov/publication/chemical-attack-fact-sheet">chemical weapon</a> can be any chemical that is used to harm people, including to injure or kill them. Many substances have been used as chemical weapons. Nerve agents are the deadliest, because they require a smaller dose to be fatal.</p>
<p>As an <a href="https://nonproliferation.org/experts/jeffrey-knopf/">expert</a> who has studied the use of chemical weapons <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09636412.2020.1859130">in Syria’s civil war</a>, I have thought since Russia first attacked Ukraine that the likelihood of Russia using chemical weapons there is low. Russia has little political or military motivation to use them and would face strong international rebuke and possible military consequences for this kind of attack. </p>
<p>But as recent reports might indicate, Russian use remains a possibility under certain circumstances. This is particularly true if Russian President Vladimir Putin believes chemical weapons are the only way to break a stalemate in a key battle zone.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457736/original/file-20220412-54572-a27ze0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A row of dead children, covered in white cloth, is shown, as adults look over them" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457736/original/file-20220412-54572-a27ze0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457736/original/file-20220412-54572-a27ze0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457736/original/file-20220412-54572-a27ze0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457736/original/file-20220412-54572-a27ze0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457736/original/file-20220412-54572-a27ze0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457736/original/file-20220412-54572-a27ze0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457736/original/file-20220412-54572-a27ze0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">More than 1,400 people, including children, were killed in a chemical weapons attack in Ghouta, Syria, in 2013.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/mother-and-father-weep-over-their-childs-body-who-was-killed-in-a-picture-id524299852?s=2048x2048">NurPhoto/Corbis via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Chemical weapons in Syria</h2>
<p>The ongoing <a href="https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/civil-war-syria">Syrian civil war</a> offers the most recent example of widespread chemical weapons attacks on civilians.</p>
<p>There have been reports of <a href="https://www.gppi.net/media/GPPi_Schneider_Luetkefend_2019_Nowhere_to_Hide_Web.pdf">more than 300</a> chemical attacks in Syria since the war began in 2012. A joint team from the United Nations and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons investigated some of the larger attacks, and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/world/middleeast/syria-assad-chemical-weapons.html">conclusively attributed </a>several to the Assad regime. </p>
<p>Russia, an ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/linda-thomas-greenfield-bashar-assad-russia-chemical-weapons-damascus-ecc424a46e17b0b39c5e5cf029851733">continued supporting</a> the Syrian government despite these attacks. </p>
<p>The Assad regime used chemical weapons on its own people because it <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09636412.2020.1859130">feared what would happen if it lost</a> the war. Assad would lose power if rebel parties defeated him. Assad and his associates also worried they could be killed.</p>
<p>In August 2012, President Obama warned Syria against chemical weapon use, stating it would be “<a href="https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2012/08/20/remarks-president-white-house-press-corps">a red line</a>” for the U.S. </p>
<p>By the end of 2012, <a href="https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/Timeline-of-Syrian-Chemical-Weapons-Activity">reports</a> began to emerge of the Syrian military’s carrying out chemical attacks.</p>
<p>In August 2013, Syrian forces carried out the largest chemical attack of the war. They fired rockets containing the nerve agent sarin <a href="https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2013/08/30/government-asseSsment-syrian-government-s-use-chemical-weapons-august-21">into Ghouta</a>, a Damascus suburb, killing an estimated <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nearly-1500-killed-in-syrian-chemical-weapons-attack-us-says/2013/08/30/b2864662-1196-11e3-85b6-d27422650fd5_story.html">1,400 people</a>, including children.</p>
<p>Russia increased its support for Assad after these strikes. </p>
<p>Russia did, however, work with the U.S. to persuade a reluctant Assad in 2013 to sign the <a href="https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/cwcglance">Chemical Weapons Convention</a>, an international treaty that outlaws both possession and use of such weapons. <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10736700.2020.1766226">Putin feared</a> that without this deal, a possible U.S. military response could grow into an effort to prompt regime change in Damascus and make Russia lose its closest ally in the Middle East. </p>
<p>The deal led to <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/598586/red-line-by-joby-warrick/">destruction of more</a> than 1,300 tons of Syrian chemical agents by early 2016. It also persuaded the Obama administration to refrain from military action in Syria.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, in 2014, <a href="https://www.gppi.net/media/GPPi_Schneider_Luetkefend_2019_Nowhere_to_Hide_Web.pdf">Syria resumed attacks</a> using chlorine, which can be deadly. Syria later also returned to occasional use of sarin.</p>
<p>Russian forces never used chemical weapons themselves, but they did conduct massive airstrikes – similar to the ones used on multiple cities in Ukraine – that <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/12/01/russia/syria-war-crimes-month-bombing-aleppo">destroyed significant portions</a> of the Syrian city of Aleppo in 2016.</p>
<h2>Political rationale</h2>
<p>Chemical weapons were first <a href="https://www.un.org/disarmament/wmd/chemical/">used in World War I</a> by nearly all major combatants. Opposing armies <a href="https://www.sciencehistory.org/distillations/a-brief-history-of-chemical-war">used mustard gas,</a> chlorine and phosgene as part of battlefield operations. </p>
<p>In the Syrian war, chemical weapons were part of a counterinsurgency campaign by Assad to hurt rebel forces and their civilian supporters. </p>
<p>Syria had two clear objectives for using chemical weapons. </p>
<p>First, most attacks served a <a href="https://www.gppi.net/media/GPPi_Schneider_Luetkefend_2019_Nowhere_to_Hide_Web.pdf">psychological purpose</a>. They were intended to terrify civilian populations so they would stop hiding rebel forces in their communities. Second, some of the larger attacks aimed to drive rebel forces out of areas they controlled. </p>
<p>These chemical attacks were <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09636412.2018.1483640">not necessarily effective</a> at reaching this military goal.</p>
<p>Instead, they were largely a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09636412.2020.1859130">function of desperation</a>. Assad escalated chemical attacks when his army began to run short on manpower and conventional munitions – especially in areas where his regime was losing control.</p>
<h2>Russia and chemical weapons</h2>
<p>Russia is believed <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/03/19/russia-chemical-weapons-ukraine/">to possess chemical weapons</a> despite having signed the <a href="https://www.opcw.org/about-us/member-states/russian-federation">Chemical Weapons Convention</a>. </p>
<p>Russia has twice been accused of using chemical weapons in attempted political assassinations. </p>
<p>In 2018, Russia poisoned a former Russian double agent living in the U.K., <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/21/world/europe/skripal-arrest.html">Sergei Skripal</a>, and his daughter with Novichok, a nerve agent developed by the Soviet Union in the final years of the Cold War. </p>
<p>The Skripals survived, but two other people who accidentally came in contact with the Novichok died as a result. </p>
<p>In 2020, Russia also attempted to poison opposition leader <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/03/1086012">Alexei Navalny</a> with Novichok. Navalny was hospitalized and almost died, but he ultimately recovered. </p>
<p>Russia has <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/International/russian-denial-secret-nerve-agent-program-seemingly-contradicted/story?id=53882997">never admitted possessing</a> Novichok. But the two assassination attempts show that Russia likely retains elements of a chemical weapons program.</p>
<p>There are other examples of Russia’s using chemicals in law enforcement operations that turned deadly. In October 2002, after Chechen militants held more than 900 people in a <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-20067384">Moscow theater</a> hostage, Russian security services pumped a gas into the theater. </p>
<p>The potency of the gas killed more than 100 of the hostages. Russia never revealed the gas it used, but experts believe it was a form of the <a href="https://www.history.com/news/opioid-chemical-weapons-moscow-theater-hostage-crisis">opioid fentanyl</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457738/original/file-20220412-37987-7atn7s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is pictured sitting in a hospital bed, surrounded by women in scrubs and face masks." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457738/original/file-20220412-37987-7atn7s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457738/original/file-20220412-37987-7atn7s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457738/original/file-20220412-37987-7atn7s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457738/original/file-20220412-37987-7atn7s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=597&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457738/original/file-20220412-37987-7atn7s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457738/original/file-20220412-37987-7atn7s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457738/original/file-20220412-37987-7atn7s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was hospitalized in 2020 after he was allegedly poisoned by the Russian government, but has since recovered.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/photo-shared-on-russian-opposition-leader-alexey-navalnys-instagram-picture-id1228522858?s=2048x2048">Alexei Navalny Instagram Account / Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Implications for Ukraine</h2>
<p>It is clear that Putin would have no moral issue with using chemical weapons. But at the moment, Russia likely feels no pressing need to use them.</p>
<p>The conditions that motivated the Assad regime – a shortage of conventional forces and fear of being overthrown – do not apply to Russia’s situation in Ukraine. </p>
<p>Although Russian forces face <a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/russians-confront-costs-casualties-war/31795043.html">rising casualty numbers</a> in Ukraine, Russia still has the military capacity to continue fighting at a conventional level. And because the war is not taking place inside Russia, Putin is not at risk of being toppled by Ukrainian forces if they win the conflict.</p>
<p>Russia’s ability to terrorize civilians – a major goal of chemical weapons use – might also be limited. </p>
<p>A chemical attack may not have the intended psychological effect of demoralizing civilians. Putin appears to have <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/04/11/putin-misjudged-ukraine-hubris-isolation/">misjudged Ukrainian civilians’</a> fortitude. Ukrainians would likely want to keep fighting even if Russia used chemical weapons against them. </p>
<p>This situation could change if the Russian military is on the brink of a decisive defeat. Then, desperation might lead Putin to consider a chemical option. </p>
<p>Although the risk of chemical weapon use, and especially large-scale use, remains low, it does remain possible.</p>
<p>[<em>The Conversation’s Politics + Society editors pick need-to-know stories.</em> <a href="https://memberservices.theconversation.com/newsletters/?nl=politics&source=inline-politics-need-to-know">Sign up for Politics Weekly</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/180534/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jeffrey W. Knopf received past funding for research on Syria from the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency.</span></em></p>There are unconfirmed reports that Russia has used chemical weapons in Ukraine. Syria’s recent chemical weapons use offers context for understanding this tactic. Chemical weapons terrify civilians.Jeffrey William Knopf, Professor and Program Chair Nonproliferation and Terrorism Studies, MiddleburyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1095352019-01-09T16:07:54Z2019-01-09T16:07:54ZPhosphorus: 350 years after its discovery, this vital element is running out<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253010/original/file-20190109-32154-fj6vwv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Old flame. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/match-fire-macro-photo-306131402?src=oZ_qKTTK4soG0dEl-woPeA-5-53">Petro Guliaiev</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s time to buy a lot of candles. And if we light them with matches, it will only be possible because of the anniversary in question. It’s happy 350th birthday to the discovery of phosphorus, an element that is essential for life as we know it. </p>
<p>The story of how the 15th element on <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-periodic-table-is-150-but-it-could-have-looked-very-different-106899">the periodic table</a> was discovered stands as one of the great accidents of human endeavour – the chemist’s equivalent, perhaps, of Columbus setting out for India only to find the Americas by mistake. In the case of phosphorus, the explorer was Hennig Brand, a 17th-century alchemist and merchant from Hamburg, Germany. </p>
<p>Brand had been trying to achieve one of the great goals of alchemy, to make the philosopher’s stone. Alchemists thought this was the elixir of life, capable of transforming lead into gold. But where to find this legendary substance? </p>
<p>Brand was convinced that the answer was human urine, for two good reasons. First, gold and urine were a similar colour. Second, urine came from the human body, which was regarded by alchemists as a work of perfection.</p>
<h2>The discovery</h2>
<p>The actual process that Brand set up in 1669 was remarkable. One would struggle to repeat it in a garden shed nowadays – unless you had neighbours who were willing to tolerate extremely bad smells. Brand concentrated large amounts of human urine and left it to ferment. He then heated the residues, performing dry distillation, as depicted below in the 1795 Joseph Wright painting, the Alchemist in Search of the Philosopher’s Stone.</p>
<p>Brand was left with a white waxy solid which glowed in the dark even in a closed bottle, and combusted spontaneously with a very bright white flame when exposed to air. Intrigued by these properties, he named it phosphorus because this meant “light bearer” in Greek. He attempted many times to use the substance to transform lead into gold, but to no avail. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253008/original/file-20190109-32127-4t7kf8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253008/original/file-20190109-32127-4t7kf8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253008/original/file-20190109-32127-4t7kf8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=575&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253008/original/file-20190109-32127-4t7kf8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=575&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253008/original/file-20190109-32127-4t7kf8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=575&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253008/original/file-20190109-32127-4t7kf8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=722&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253008/original/file-20190109-32127-4t7kf8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=722&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253008/original/file-20190109-32127-4t7kf8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=722&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A piss before drying.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Wright_of_Derby#/media/File:Joseph_Wright_of_Derby_The_Alchemist.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Presumably disappointed, Brand may well have thought he had instead found one of the other great postulations of alchemy, pure phlogiston. Alchemy had a spiritual framework rooted mainly in ancient Greek philosophy, which stipulated that all matter is formed of four elements, or qualities – air, earth, fire and water. When heat and light were generated during combustion, alchemists thought it was because of phlogiston, a fire-like element which was contained within combustible objects and released when they burned. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-periodic-table-is-150-but-it-could-have-looked-very-different-106899">The periodic table is 150 – but it could have looked very different</a>
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<p>The theory of phlogiston was not debunked until the 1770s, when Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier <a href="https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/education/whatischemistry/landmarks/lavoisier.html">showed that</a> combustion is a reaction with a gas – oxygen. More than a century after that, it became possible to transmute one metal into another – but using a nuclear reactor rather than a philosopher’s stone. Economically, however, the process has never made sense as only tiny amounts of noble metals like gold can be made in this way. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253016/original/file-20190109-32133-nxz042.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253016/original/file-20190109-32133-nxz042.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253016/original/file-20190109-32133-nxz042.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=811&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253016/original/file-20190109-32133-nxz042.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=811&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253016/original/file-20190109-32133-nxz042.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=811&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253016/original/file-20190109-32133-nxz042.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1019&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253016/original/file-20190109-32133-nxz042.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1019&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253016/original/file-20190109-32133-nxz042.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1019&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Advert from 1889.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Goodall's Illustrated Household Almanac</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>On the other hand, the discovery of phosphorus opened up a dazzling new chapter in what became modern chemistry. Some 50 years after Brand’s discovery, Johann Thomas Hensing, a professor of medicine at the University of Giessen in central Germany, <a href="http://annals.org/aim/article-abstract/697146/hensing-1719-account-first-chemical-examination-brain-discovery-phosphorus-therein">showed that</a> phosphorus was also present in the human brain (it would be <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=5ufh9rM5ko0C&pg=PA2&lpg=PA2&dq=1779++pyromorphite+J.G.+Gahn.&source=bl&ots=7TZEESAvxk&sig=lM_HYaTd3tQbQjOMXsHc4-r4mpY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiK-4L7guHfAhVcShUIHYenAfsQ6AEwDHoECAcQAQ#v=onepage&q=1779%20%20pyromorphite%20J.G.%20Gahn.&f=false">decades later</a> before it was shown that there were also minerals containing phosphorus). </p>
<p>Early medicines containing elemental phosphorus started being sold, perhaps on the thinking that “if it is in your brain, it must be good for you”. This turned out to be seriously flawed, however, since white phosphorus is in fact very toxic – a fatal dose is only 1mg per kilogram of body mass. Patients <a href="https://eic.rsc.org/feature/the-medicinal-history-of-phosphorus/2020257.article">ended up</a> being poisoned as a result. </p>
<h2>Bringer of life and death</h2>
<p>Nonetheless, phosphorus is biologically vital. The average human body <a href="https://sciencenotes.org/elements-in-the-human-body-and-what-they-do/">contains</a> about 0.5kg of phosphorus, most of it in the form of phosphate to make bones and teeth strong. Phosphorus also crucially holds together DNA and RNA molecules – the backbone of these long chain-like structures contains two phosphate groups per pair of nucleic bases. Without phosphorus, it is hard to imagine any kind of life at all.</p>
<p>Foods rich in phosphorus <a href="https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/foods-high-in-phosphorus">include</a> various meats, seafood, lentils, beans, nuts and seeds. At the other end of the spectrum, white phosphorus <a href="https://accesspharmacy.mhmedical.com/content.aspx?sectionid=65101623&bookid=1163">was long</a> used in rat poison. Even more extreme, chemical warfare agents Sarin and VX are phosphorus compounds. Sarin, for example, is <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20070808094319/http://library.thinkquest.org/27393/dreamwvr/agents/sarin1.htm">21 times</a> more deadly than potassium cyanide. It’s a great example of how elements occurring in different forms can have both very different appearances and biological effects. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253021/original/file-20190109-32130-1v8y98s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253021/original/file-20190109-32130-1v8y98s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/253021/original/file-20190109-32130-1v8y98s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253021/original/file-20190109-32130-1v8y98s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253021/original/file-20190109-32130-1v8y98s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253021/original/file-20190109-32130-1v8y98s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253021/original/file-20190109-32130-1v8y98s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/253021/original/file-20190109-32130-1v8y98s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">All the above nerve agents with a ‘P’ contain phosphorus.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/chemical-weapons-structures-sarin-tabun-soman-288359330?src=CjByk0QXC8htiSGelsRGlQ-1-21">fotosotof</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Phosphorus has many other positive traits. Together with nitrogen, phosphates form the basis of the fertilisers used widely in agriculture. There is no substitute for phosphorus in this role; it cannot be replaced by any other element in plants. </p>
<p>This raises an important problem. Supplies of phosphate rock – the only major phosphorus ore – are limited. So much so that phosphorus has been listed among the “endangered elements” where there is a risk to future supply. The problem is that the phosphorus used as fertiliser ends up dissolved in rivers and oceans as soluble phosphate, eventually becoming sediment. Currently there is no economically viable way of recovering it, and <a href="http://www.rsc.org/images/endangered%20elements%20-%20critical%20thinking_tcm18-196054.pdf">scientists predict</a> a shortage within about 30 to 40 years. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/well-all-be-worse-off-when-the-helium-balloon-pops-14124">We'll all be worse off when the helium balloon pops</a>
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<p>This points to the need to develop phosphorus recycling, ideally at the point before it becomes highly diluted in our water streams. So how could this be done? Humans <a href="http://www.rsc.org/images/endangered%20elements%20-%20critical%20thinking_tcm18-196054.pdf">consume</a> 3m tons more phosphorus than they need each year, which is eventually excreted as urine and faeces. Recycling phosphorus from human waste might not sound a very uplifting endeavour, but it will be a golden egg for whoever finds a way to do it. </p>
<p>This raises an interesting point. It is tempting to look with amusement at the way Brand found phosphorus in buckets of urine. It may turn out that with the hindsight of 350 years, he was actually focusing on exactly the best place after all.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/109535/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Petr Kilian receives funding from EPSRC. </span></em></p>Originally found in a bucket of urine by an alchemist searching for the elixir of life, the race is on to find a way to rescue Element 15 from permanent exile in our rivers and streams.Petr Kilian, Senior Lecturer, Chemistry, University of St AndrewsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1070092018-11-16T04:09:48Z2018-11-16T04:09:48ZIt’s the right time to review the world’s chemical weapons convention<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/245730/original/file-20181115-194506-1nyxjmx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Chemical weapons in civilian attacks;: Novichok decontamination work in the area where Sergei and Yulia Skripal were found poisoned and unconscious in Salisbury, UK.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock/Amani A</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The chemical weapons convention (<a href="https://www.opcw.org/chemical-weapons-convention">CWC</a>) is one of the <a href="https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/cwcglance">most successful arms control treaties</a> in existence. It outlaws the production, stockpiling or research on offensive lethal chemical weapons. </p>
<p>Yet chemical weapons have recently featured in the news – such as the recent <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-05/what-we-know-about-how-a-uk-couple-were-poisoned-with-novichok/9942952">Novichok poisonings</a> in the UK – and the convention is facing <a href="https://theconversation.com/russian-spy-attack-shows-international-law-on-chemical-weapons-is-not-fit-for-purpose-93315">questions</a>.</p>
<p>The 193 signatory nations to the convention will assemble from November 19 this year at the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (<a href="https://www.opcw.org/">OPCW</a>) in The Hague <a href="https://www.opcw.org/calendar/csp-23-and-rc-4">for the latest periodic review of the chemical weapons convention</a>. </p>
<p>As reported today in <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/362/6416/753">Science</a>, this is an important opportunity to get some key things back on track. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-we-know-about-novichok-the-newby-nerve-agents-linked-to-russia-93264">What we know about Novichok, the 'newby' nerve agents linked to Russia</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The chemical weapons convention is a legacy of the end of the cold war. The collapse of the Soviet Union reinvigorated the long-dormant chemical weapons control process. This culminated with most nations signing and ratifying the chemical weapons convention, which came into force in 1997.</p>
<p>Each nation is responsible for the destruction of its own stockpile of weapons (either alone, or with the help of others), with compliance monitored by OPCW. So far about <a href="https://www.opcw.org/media-centre/opcw-numbers">96% of declared stocks of chemical weapon agents have been eliminated</a>, including <a href="https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2017-11/news/russia-destroys-last-chemical-weapons">all of Russia’s declared stockpile</a>.</p>
<h2>Fit for the mid-21st century?</h2>
<p>Most nations accept that chemical weapons are an anachronism, with only limited military value against an enemy of similar technological sophistication. </p>
<p>But there has been a rise in recent years in the use of chemical weapon agents against civilian populations, as in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/chemical-weapons-in-syria-who-what-where-when-why-17581">Syrian civil war</a>, and as tools of assassination, such as in the <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-vx-nerve-agent-and-how-does-it-work-73603">murder of Kim Jong-nam</a> and the <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-we-know-about-novichok-the-newby-nerve-agents-linked-to-russia-93264">attempted murder</a> of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury in the UK.</p>
<p>So are chemical weapons climbing out of the grave we thought we had consigned them to?</p>
<h2>What is a chemical weapon?</h2>
<p>It’s important to clear up a common misconception about the chemical weapons convention and how it handles lethal chemical agents. </p>
<p>Under the <a href="https://www.opcw.org/chemical-weapons-convention/articles/article-i">convention</a>, the use of the pharmacological effects (what the chemical does to the body) of any chemical to achieve a military outcome (death or permanent disability) makes that a chemical weapon. </p>
<p>This means that novel agents, such as the Novichok (or A-series) chemicals alleged to have been used against the Skripals, are illegal, not because of their structure but due to the attempt to use them to kill.</p>
<p>This definition can create some complexities. If we take as a given that many chemicals are potentially lethal – it’s the dose that makes the poison – how do you regulate compounds that are likely to be used as weapons?</p>
<p>How should these be distinguished from those that could be fatal, but aren’t typically applied for ill-purpose? For example, the anticancer drug <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0223523418303283?via%3Dihub">mustine</a> – also known as nitrogen mustard – is a schedule 1 weapon under the chemical weapons convention (under the codename HN2). </p>
<h2>Police action or short cut to new weapons?</h2>
<p>Riot control agents are those such as pepper spray, 2-chlorobenzalmalononitrile (better known, slightly erroneously, as CS-gas). These compounds are designed to cause the victim discomfort. But the effects dissipate soon after the victim is removed from exposure – similar to if you get <a href="https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/Capsaicin">capsaicin</a> in your eyes while cutting chillies, <a href="https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2011/08/use-milk-to-relieve-your-eyes-after-rubbing-them-with-pepper/">you can wash the compound away with lots of water or milk</a>. </p>
<p>These agents are only lightly regulated under the chemical weapons convention. Their use is allowed as part of normal law enforcement, but prohibited in war.</p>
<p>Different to these, incapacitating agents are defined as those that cause the victim to lose consciousness, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK201480/">or otherwise become systemically incapacitated</a> – but the effects of these are not reversible by removing exposure. </p>
<p>Examples include chemicals that cause massive sensory hallucinations and prevent the victim from recognising reality.</p>
<p>There is much debate about the ultimate safety of riot control agents, but in general they are <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1127513/">seen as safe unless incorrectly used</a>. On the other hand, a Russian incapacitating agent is believed to have <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jat/article/36/9/647/785132">caused many of the fatalities</a> during the 2002 Moscow theatre siege. </p>
<p>So how can these agents be legal, while the agent used in Salisbury is immediately considered illegal? What is an appropriate level of chemical force that should be acceptable when applied to a person as part of civilian policing? </p>
<p>What level of research into, or stockpiling of, such compounds would suggest the goal is no longer to develop countermeasures, but is part of an offensive chemical weapons program?</p>
<p>The CWC was written to outlaw these things, but has its success only <a href="https://theconversation.com/russian-spy-attack-shows-international-law-on-chemical-weapons-is-not-fit-for-purpose-93315">moved the goalposts</a>? These are open questions that the review should address.</p>
<h2>Responsibility of scientists</h2>
<p>Questions about how responsible a scientist is for the use of their work probably go to Fitz Haber and beyond. The <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/1918/haber/biographical/">1918 Nobel Prize winner</a> is generally considered the father of modern chemical warfare for his suggestion that the Imperial German Army use chlorine, the first lethal chemical weapon of World War I.</p>
<p>Today there are several questions about how scientists should interact with the world, using their knowledge to educate the public through the media, while avoiding drawing attention to possible misuses of that knowledge (or allowing their messages to be manipulated to cause panic).</p>
<p>Is it a greater good for society for me to explain that nitrogen mustard (from the example above) treats cancer, than the risk that someone will now try to steal some mustine from the oncology clinic to misuse it? </p>
<p>There is also the problem of dual use technologies. These are techniques that can equally be used develop a new pharmaceutical, or could be applied to develop a new nerve agent. </p>
<p>How much regulation of day-to-day research and commerce is acceptable to prevent those who would do us harm having access to materials and knowledge?</p>
<p>In the 20 years since the ratification of the CWC, we have made discoveries and improved access to technologies that may make it easier to create a truly effective improvised chemical weapon.</p>
<p>The chemical weapons convention has almost reached the initial goal of the signatories, the elimination of chemical weapons. Now the convention needs to move with the times, to prevent backsliding from the prevailing culture that considers chemical weapons to be unspeakably barbaric.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/107009/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Martin Boland has received funding from the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation and the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p>The use of chemical weapons has shifted from the battlefield to attacks on civilian targets. Time to rethink the convention that prohibits their use.Martin Boland, Senior Lecturer of Medicinal and Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Charles Darwin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/979802018-09-21T11:25:03Z2018-09-21T11:25:03ZGurus, gas attacks and pubic hair: the strange history of Japan’s new religions<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233280/original/file-20180823-149475-hsts93.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">"Stop the hair nudes!" A protest by Kofuku-no-Kagaku members against the showing of pubic hair in photographs displaying nudity.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ella Tennant</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>This summer, Japan <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/06/japan-executes-sarin-gas-attack-cult-leader-shoko-asahara-and-six-members-reports">finally executed</a> six long-imprisoned former members of the now-banned radical religious group Aum Shinrikyo. All of them had taken part in the group’s notorious 1995 sarin gas attacks on the Tokyo subway which killed 13 people and injured thousands more. Also executed was the group’s founder, Shoko Asahara.</p>
<p>Founded as a new religion in 1987, Aum Shinrikyo propagated teachings based on Asahara’s interpretation of Buddhism, Hinduism and the practice of esoteric yoga and meditation. At its height, it claimed a membership of 10,000 in and <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2645835">tens of thousands more abroad</a>. But while the sarin attacks were unprecedented and won the group global notoriety, Aum Shinrikyo itself was far from unique.</p>
<p>In the years leading up to the attacks, Japan’s religious landscape produced a wide range of groups pursuing radical social change. Although they presented themselves in very different ways, they all attracted followers seeking a more global awareness, and <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=m1CFCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA167&lpg=PA167&dq=tennant+E+far+eastern+economic+review&source=bl&ots=cY0N6t2Hua&sig=xVsPdYoWIrOFMEbagcVUz1g91Vg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiO_onZ1u_bAhVsDcAKHSghA-AQ6AEIXzAM#v=onepage&q=tennant%20E%20far%20eastern%20economic%20review&f=false">offered a sense of identity</a> to people feeling disorientated in a rapidly changing society. At the time, I was conducting research and fieldwork in Tokyo, which put me in a position to observe and document not just the gas attacks but the social context in which they occurred.</p>
<p>One group that appeared at around the same time as Aum Shinrikyo was Kofuku-no-Kagaku, which began life as a publishing company that churned out books supposedly penned by its founder, <a href="https://okawabooks.com/">Ryuho Okawa</a>. In 1990, Okawa declared himself first the reincarnation of Buddha, then a supreme divinity by the name of El Cantare. By the mid 1990s, the group was legally a religion in Japan and claimed a membership of <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/30234459?refreqid=robotstxt-sitemaps:dbdb03fb661598c4bd3b773897e223e2&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">8.25m people</a>,rapidly increasing with overseas proselytisation.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224787/original/file-20180625-19385-vc6slx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224787/original/file-20180625-19385-vc6slx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224787/original/file-20180625-19385-vc6slx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224787/original/file-20180625-19385-vc6slx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224787/original/file-20180625-19385-vc6slx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224787/original/file-20180625-19385-vc6slx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224787/original/file-20180625-19385-vc6slx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Media Ethics’ representatives of Kofuku-no-Kagaku: actress Tomoko Ogawa, writer Tamio Kageyama, publicist Kujo Ogawa and journalist Junko Tanaka, November 1994.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ella Tennant</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Kofuku-no-Kagaku presented itself as an “innovative” religion, with a fresh and dynamic public image. With a constantly changing cosmology based on social Darwinism and hints of Japanese nationalism, its message and approach matched the ebullient, competitive mood of the bubble economy. Whereas Aum Shinrikyo seemed to appeal to graduates from top universities, Kofuku-no-Kagaku attracted successful writers, journalists, <a href="https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2017/04/06/films/talent-gets-religious/">actors</a>, and “professionals” who had returned from overseas and experienced a form of cultural malaise.</p>
<p>It staged media campaigns and spectacular events to attract new members and retain those already “committed” within a tight <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/12389/the-sacred-canopy-by-peter-l-berger/9780385073059/">plausibility structure</a>. In other words, by repeatedly exposing its members to social events, reading materials, meetings and other activities, it constantly reinforced the credibility of its teachings. Fully dedicated members were often rewarded with a job in the corporation’s plush offices in central Tokyo.</p>
<h2>Protecting society</h2>
<p>Kofuku-no-Kagaku’s moment in the international spotlight came when it <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-18561825">block-booked a Ugandan stadium</a> for a religious rally, which meant local athletes had nowhere to practice to qualify for the Olympics. But in Japan itself, its large-scale protests attracted <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Religious-Violence-Contemporary-Japan-Monographs/dp/0700711090">only limited media coverage</a>. That can partly be attributed to its “abrasive attitude” to criticism and its five-year court battle against Kodansha, a major Japanese publishing company that had dared to publish an article in one of its magazines which was seen as insulting to Okawa.</p>
<p>The group’s <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=m1CFCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA167&lpg=PA167&dq=prophet+motive+ella+tennant&source=bl&ots=cY0N6uWNwb&sig=nvZG2AKaAva9wFqKMPAEplQBYpM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwic8Ny64O_bAhXHA8AKHdKTB1MQ6AEIKTAA#v=onepage&q=prophet%20motive%20ella%20tennant&f=false">most eye-catching demonstration at home</a> came in 1994, when a horde of protesters walked from Shibuya to Yoyogi Park in central Tokyo on a November day displaying placards and shouting “stop the hair nudes!”</p>
<p>At the time, pornographic magazines were on sale in many Japanese corner shops, and people would openly read them on crowded trains; some regular newspapers also had a column dedicated to an erotic model or activity. Most of these publications covered up pubic hair with a black square, but more and more magazines were flouting this convention. “Stop the Hair Nudes” was staged to draw the public’s attention to this supposed indecency, and to win Kofuku-no-Kagaku credit for taking a moral stand.</p>
<p>For some protesters, the fact that a number of publishing companies were no longer covering up pubic hair seemed to cause more outrage than the pornography itself. As one protester explained to me: “I wanted to join in the demo to protect Japanese society from being corrupted … as a parent I don’t like society to be corrupted for children.”</p>
<p>Starting in March 1995, Kofuku-no-Kagaku began openly criticising Aum Shinrikyo, stating that as “representatives of religiosity in Japan”, members had a duty to speak out. The group took to the streets of central Tokyo, cruising around in vans with loudspeakers blasting criticism of Aum Shinrikyo and demanding the police investigate its activities. In a lecture I attended in 1994, Okawa himself claimed to know the whereabouts of the Sakamotos, a missing family allegedly abducted by Aum Shinrikyo in 1989. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224788/original/file-20180625-19399-mpas7f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224788/original/file-20180625-19399-mpas7f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224788/original/file-20180625-19399-mpas7f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224788/original/file-20180625-19399-mpas7f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224788/original/file-20180625-19399-mpas7f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224788/original/file-20180625-19399-mpas7f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224788/original/file-20180625-19399-mpas7f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224788/original/file-20180625-19399-mpas7f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Kofuku-no-Kagaku members on their way to protest outside Aum Shinrikyo’s Tokyo headquarters, two days before the sarin attack.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ella Tennant</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And just two days before the sarin attack in 1995, I witnessed a demonstration by Kofuku-no-Kagaku members outside Aum Shinrikyo’s Tokyo headquarters. While hardly reported in the press, the protest was seen by some observers as open provocation. An anonymous report in the Japan Times the day after the attack even suggested that the incident may have been orchestrated by one “rival” religious group in an attempt to discredit the other – but with little concrete evidence to support this claim, there was no follow-up.</p>
<h2>New life</h2>
<p>Times have changed since those strange days. While Aum Shinrikyo disbanded after the sarin attack, many of its members quickly reformed under a new name, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-35975069">Aleph</a>. Even after <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-43395483">this summer’s executions</a>, more evidence is emerging of the group’s links to the use of the gas and <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-35975069">other suspicious activities</a>.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Kofuku-no-Kagaku – which now operates under the snappy new English name Happy Science – appears to have assimilated into the mainstream. It now operates “temples”, retreats, overseas branches, and schools. It even boasts a political party, the <a href="http://happy-science.org/">Happiness Realisation Party</a>, founded in 2009. Its platform promises to “offer concrete and proactive solutions to the current issues such as military threats from North Korea and China, and the long term economic recession”. It has yet to be voted into parliament.</p>
<p>In the aftermath of the events of 1995, the government was forced to reexamine and tighten up <a href="https://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/human/civil_rep4/article15_18.html#a18">existing</a> <a href="https://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/human/civil_rep4/article20_22.html#a20">legislation</a>, which until then meant that virtually any group with a leader, a doctrine and a membership could claim to be a religion. As a result, such groups benefited from tax breaks, and were essentially left to their own devices.</p>
<p>Founding a religion in Japan is far more difficult now than it was before 1995. But as in the case of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-should-indonesia-deal-with-emerging-religious-cults-54464">Branch Davidian sect led by David Koresh</a> in Waco, Texas, full immersion in a particular vision of society still works. It impels followers to set about making their particular vision a reality – and helps them justify the unjustifiable.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/97980/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ella Tennant received funding from the University of Hong Kong to conduct the research referred to in this article. </span></em></p>From a sarin attack on a city subway to the rebirth of Buddha to protest marches against indecent magazines, Japan’s religious movements have covered a lot of ground.Ella Tennant, Keele UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1002362018-08-21T10:32:54Z2018-08-21T10:32:54ZNew antidote could prevent brain damage after chemical weapons attack<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/232163/original/file-20180815-2897-c5t7y5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An old gas mask lies abandoned on the ground.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/old-gas-mask-lies-on-road-139159520?src=P4yEo8YqAnNwEu1Nf6764w-1-2">By Khamidulin Sergey / shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Terror on a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1995/03/20/world/poison-gas-fills-tokyo-subway-six-die-and-hundreds-are-hurt.html">Tokyo subway, 1995</a>; attacks on Syrian civilians, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/13/world/middleeast/un-confirms-repeated-chemical-arms-use-in-syria.html">2013</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/06/world/middleeast/chemical-attack-syria.html">2017</a>; <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/02/world/asia/kim-jong-nam-trial-north-korea.html">assassinations in an airport in Kuala Lumpur</a>, 2017; <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/01/world/europe/russia-sergei-skripal-uk-spy-poisoning.html">attempted assassination in London, 2018</a>. Tremors, foaming at the mouth, seizures, respiratory shutdown, sometimes death. What do these events have in common? Poisoning via a nerve agent – a chemical warfare substance that disrupts communication between the nervous system and muscles and organs.</p>
<p>A major concern for survivors of nerve agent poisoning is the potential for permanent brain damage caused by seizures. Because the brain cannot easily repair such damage, there is a critical need for an antidote that can enter the brain and reverse the early biochemicial effects before harm occurs. Current antidotes, such as 2-PAM, the only FDA-approved reactivator drug in the U.S., cannot do this because it is unable to cross the blood-brain barrier, a layer of cells between the blood and the brain which prevents many chemicals, such as some drugs, from moving from the blood into the brain. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.cvm.msstate.edu/academics/center-for-environmental-health-sciences/faculty-staff/27-faculty-bio/faculty-basic-sciences/113-janice-e-chambers">I am a toxicologist</a> in the <a href="http://www.cvm.msstate.edu/academics/center-for-environmental-health-sciences">Center for Environmental Health Sciences</a> in the College of Veterinary Medicine at Mississippi State University (MSU) where I initially worked on toxic responses in laboratory animals to organophosphate insecticides, a widely used class of crop protection chemicals. Organophosphate insecticides have a similar mechanism of action to nerve agents, but are much less toxic and are only approved by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for uses that are not going to be harmful to humans or the ecosystem. </p>
<p>For the past eight years, my team has been developing antidotes that improve survival rates after nerve agent exposure, and we’ve shown the potential of our new molecules to enter the brain in tests with animals. If approved, these antidotes would give more confidence to both warfighters and civilians that not only could their lives be saved but also their brain function could be preserved.</p>
<h2>From insecticides to chemical warfare</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/232164/original/file-20180815-2903-8p7sw3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/232164/original/file-20180815-2903-8p7sw3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232164/original/file-20180815-2903-8p7sw3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232164/original/file-20180815-2903-8p7sw3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232164/original/file-20180815-2903-8p7sw3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232164/original/file-20180815-2903-8p7sw3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232164/original/file-20180815-2903-8p7sw3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Salisbury, UK – July 6, 2018: An army officer searches a hostel in the city center, as investigations continue after local residents Charlie Rowley and Dawn Sturgess fall ill from a nerve agent poisoning.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/salisbury-uk-july-6-2018-army-1128913277?src=qW_pNJIt5WG_guzG6ZZceA-1-3">By 1000 Words / shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Because pesticides are so important to successful agriculture, my group was initially interested in toxic responses to organophosphate insecticides (OPs). My lab focused on the more biological effects, while my husband, Howard Chambers, synthesized chemicals useful to study the toxic effects of these insecticides. </p>
<p>OPs were originally developed as insecticides in Germany prior to World War II. This agricultural effort was co-opted by the Nazis to create the first nerve agents: tabun and sarin. Although these agents were not used during World War II and were banned by the <a href="https://www.opcw.org/chemical-weapons-convention/">Chemical Weapons Convention of 1997</a>, they have been used occasionally in conflicts such as in the Iran-Iraq war. </p>
<p>However, scientists in some countries have continued to design even more dangerous OP compounds. The <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-novichok-a-neurotoxicologist-explains-99736">Novichok agents</a>, suspected of being used in the attempted poisoning of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, for example, are estimated to be between eight and 10 times more potent than VX, one of the most toxic of the traditional nerve agents. These highly toxic chemicals are a danger not only to the military but also to civilians who may be exposed during terrorist attacks, by assassins or rogue governments. </p>
<p>In 2010, the direction of my research changed course when one of my former Ph.D. students, who then worked in the Department of Defense’s <a href="http://www.dtra.mil">Defense Threat Reduction Agency</a> (DTRA), returned to MSU for a visit and mentioned that one of the military’s most pressing needs in warfighter defense was a brain-penetrating AChE reactivator. During that conversation in a local sandwich shop, Howard pulled out his ever-present mechanical pencil and sketched out an oxime – a molecule that could “grab” the nerve agent and remove it from its target – that he thought would be able to cross the blood-brain barrier. The blood-brain barrier is an almost impenetrable layer of cells that make up the brain capillaries that prevent many foreign chemicals from entering the brain, particularly if they are electrically charged. </p>
<p>The former student was impressed and encouraged us to apply for funding from DTRA for synthesizing and testing a platform of novel oximes, based on the structure on that napkin. The oximes that we have invented in our lab are positively charged, like <a href="https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/csem/csem.asp?csem=11&po=23">2-PAM</a>, but are less water soluble, which may prevent the brain’s transporters from exporting them out of the brain once they enter. After initial successes, we are now supported by the National Institutes of Health’s CounterACT program, whose goal is protecting civilians from terrorist attacks or chemical accidents.</p>
<h2>Nerve agent effects</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/232716/original/file-20180820-30578-40tjtb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/232716/original/file-20180820-30578-40tjtb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=343&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232716/original/file-20180820-30578-40tjtb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=343&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232716/original/file-20180820-30578-40tjtb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=343&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232716/original/file-20180820-30578-40tjtb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232716/original/file-20180820-30578-40tjtb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232716/original/file-20180820-30578-40tjtb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">This image from an AP video posted on Sept. 18, 2013, shows a volunteer adjusting a gas mask and protective suit on a student during a classroom exercise on responding to a chemical weapons attack in Aleppo, Syria. The drills came amid continued diplomatic wrangling over how to collect Syria’s arsenal of chemical and biological agents to prevent any repeat of the Aug. 21 attack outside Damascus that, according to the U.S., was carried out by Syrian regime and killed more than 1,400 people, including at least 400 children.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Mideast-Syria/0b42825ffbd741aeb8a639be957c54f7/18/0">AP Photo via AP video</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Nerve agents like sarin, VX and Novichok are organophosphate chemicals, and they wreak havoc by inhibiting a critical enzyme in the nervous system called acetylcholinesterase (AChE). What AChE does for a living, so to speak, is to rapidly degrade acetylcholine (ACh), an important chemical that mediates precise and rapid information flow within the brain and to muscles and glands. When AChE is inhibited, acetylcholine builds up and leads to inappropriate and massive stimulation within the nervous system, resulting in life-threatening symptoms: paralysis of the respiratory muscles, narrowing of the trachea and excessive mucus production throughout the respiratory tract so that air cannot pass through. This causes the foaming at the mouth that we see in news coverage of chemical attacks. Death usually results from respiratory failure. The incredible potency of the nerve agents makes them among the most poisonous synthetic chemicals ever produced.</p>
<p>In survivors, prolonged and repeated seizures caused by high quantities of ACh in the brain can cause permanent brain damage. </p>
<p>The antidote for OP poisoning has traditionally included artificial respiration and injections of the drug atropine, which helps the victim to keep breathing. In the U.S., medics also use an oxime reactivator – called 2-PAM – which restores AChE activity by removing the nerve agent; and benzodiazepine is used to suppress seizures. </p>
<p>The most effective oxime reactivators have a positive charge. But the blood-brain barrier which exists between brain cells and blood capillaries does a good job of blocking these charged chemicals from infiltrating the brain, either by preventing entry or escorting them out once they enter. Therefore, 2-PAM and other approved oximes do not reach high enough levels in the brain to reverse the deadly grasp of OP nerve agent.</p>
<h2>A promising new antidote</h2>
<p>To protect people from nerve agent poisoning, we need a brain-penetrating molecule to reverse the AChE inhibition. Our lab group and several others worldwide are attempting to create such an antidote that restores AChE activity in the brain following severe OP poisoning.</p>
<p>To date, <a href="http://doi.org/10.1016/tox.2015.12.001">several of our oxime drugs have been as good as or more effective than 2-PAM</a> for increasing 24-hour survival for animals exposed to lethal doses of OPs, using highly relevant mimics of two nerve agents sarin and VX, as well as an insecticidal chemical in a laboratory animal model. </p>
<p>We have <a href="http://doi.org/10.1016/j.cbi.2012.10.017">convincing</a> <a href="http://doi.org/10.1016/j.cbi.2016.07.004">evidence</a> that our oximes can get through the blood-brain barrier and enter the brain after OP exposure, and that our laboratory animals show more normal activity of AChE with our novel oximes but not with 2-PAM. Our animals also <a href="http://doi.org/10.1016/tox.2015.12.001">recovered more quickly</a> from seizure-like behavior with our oxime antidote compared to 2-PAM. <a href="http://doi.org/10.1080/01480545.2018.1461902">Our lead oxime seems likely to remain in the brain</a>, and it has prevented some damage to brain structures, while 2-PAM did not – a finding we describe in an upcoming publication.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/232766/original/file-20180820-30608-re9z8z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/232766/original/file-20180820-30608-re9z8z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/232766/original/file-20180820-30608-re9z8z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232766/original/file-20180820-30608-re9z8z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232766/original/file-20180820-30608-re9z8z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232766/original/file-20180820-30608-re9z8z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=683&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232766/original/file-20180820-30608-re9z8z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=683&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/232766/original/file-20180820-30608-re9z8z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=683&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Normal action: A neuron releases ACh which activates its receptor (orange) on receiving cell – a neuron, muscle or gland – triggering the movement of a muscle, the release of a hormone or some type of behavior (yellow arrow). The ACh is then split into its two components by AChE (green) to prevent it from overstimulating the system. OP poisoning: The OP nerve agent (red) binds to AChE and prevents AChE from breaking down ACh, which then builds up, activating more of its receptors which leads to seizures, breathing trouble and brain damage. Oxime antidote: Oxime (light blue) binds to OP, pulling it off AChE, and restores AChE’s action, allowing the receiving cell to return to normal level of activity.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Janice Chambers</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This oxime platform has been patented by MSU and licensed by Defender Pharmaceuticals. Sadly, my long-term collaborator, Howard, passed away in December 2016; my team continues to pursue the research needed to develop his novel oximes into antidotes.</p>
<p>What value could these novel oximes bring to the arsenal of chemical weapon antidotes? Either alone, or in combination with 2-PAM, they could contribute to survival and, uniquely, they could reduce or prevent the brain damage caused by the prolonged seizures induced by OPs. </p>
<p>In other words, with our novel antidotes we could save lives and save brains.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/100236/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Janice Chambers is an author of a US patent owned by Mississippi State University on these oxime antidotes, and the oxime platform is licensed by Defender Pharmaceuticals. She has received funding on this oxime antidote research from the DoD's Defense Threat Reduction Agency and currently has funding from the National Institutes of Health's CounterACT program. </span></em></p>Five years after the first chemical weapons attacks in Syria that killed more than 1,400 people, a team at MSU may have solved the problem of getting nerve agent antidotes inside the brain.Janice Chambers, Professor, College of Veterinary Medicine; Director, Center for Environmental Health Sciences, Mississippi State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/997362018-07-13T10:24:16Z2018-07-13T10:24:16ZWhat is Novichok? A neurotoxicologist explains<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227215/original/file-20180711-27036-1oeop88.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In this file photo taken on on Oct. 4, 1987, a Soviet army officer presents ammunition rigged with chemical agents during a visit by Western diplomats and journalists to a chemical weapons research facility in Shikhany, Saratov region, Russia. The facility in Shikhany led the efforts to develop Soviet chemical weapons, including Novichok-class nerve agents. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Russia-Novichok-Secrets/21fcb9c50f5a49cf8c06117c36b52feb/91/0">John Thor Dahlburg/ AP Photo</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The German government has announced that toxicology tests proved that the Russian opposition leader <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54002880">Aleksei Navalny was poisoned with Novichok</a>, the same nerve agent used to <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/skripal-poisoning-salisbury-attack-yulia-russia-novichok-putin-a8807191.html">poison former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter</a> two years ago. Novichok, or “newcomer” in Russian, refers not to a single chemical but rather a group of related molecules designed for only one purpose: to kill. </p>
<p>Soviet scientists applied that nickname to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-045043-8.00005-2">extremely toxic “nerve poisons”</a> developed between the 1970s and 1990s. </p>
<p>I am a neurotoxicologist. Since 1980 I have studied how environmental chemicals and toxins can disrupt or block chemical signaling in the nervous system, leading to temporary and sometimes permanent health problems. Our work has explored the role of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuro.2009.07.010">environmental chemicals</a> in diseases such as <a href="http://doi.org/10.1124/jpet.110.174466">ALS</a> and the autoimmune disease Lambert-Eaton syndrome. I and my team have also focused on neuromuscular signaling, which is a target of Novichok.</p>
<p>Novichok kills by disrupting communication between nerves and muscles or nerves in the brain. They work within minutes by paralyzing the muscles responsible for breathing, and stopping the heart. Seizures also occur. However, in some cases, if the dose is insufficient, death may be delayed or prevented but the victim continues to suffer from seizures, neuromuscular weakness, liver failure and other damage. </p>
<p>To be clear, much of what is known about Novichok is conjecture. It is based on the limited information provided by two Russian chemists: one a defector and the other who accidentally poisoned himself with a Novichok compound and died, though not immediately. It is his delayed clinical symptoms which have been the basis for understanding about what can happen when death isn’t immediate. </p>
<p>Novichok was implicated in the poisoning of two couples in Great Britain, causing the death of one woman in 2018. The chemical structures of Novichok agents are not known for sure, but they bind more tightly and rapidly to their enzyme target, called acetylcholinesterase, found in nerves and muscle cells than other nerve poisons such as sarin or tabun. This causes death within minutes by making normal nerve-muscle, nerve-gland and nerve-heart function impossible. </p>
<p>The deaths have been attributed to Russia, either the country’s intelligence service or a rogue who obtained them illegally. Russia vehemently denies either involvement in the poisonings or development of the Novichok chemicals.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227219/original/file-20180711-27030-1gf3i9c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/227219/original/file-20180711-27030-1gf3i9c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227219/original/file-20180711-27030-1gf3i9c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227219/original/file-20180711-27030-1gf3i9c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227219/original/file-20180711-27030-1gf3i9c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227219/original/file-20180711-27030-1gf3i9c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/227219/original/file-20180711-27030-1gf3i9c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">British police are scouring sections of Salisbury and Amesbury in southwest England, searching for a container feared to be contaminated with Novichok.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Britain-Poisoning-Probe/8f963000907944fc8462ff2246b871e0/16/0">Matt Dunham/AP Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>How long these chemical stay active is unknown, largely because they were developed illegally and in secret by Soviet and later Russian chemists as part of a program entitled “Foliant” designed to skirt the guidelines of the Chemical Weapons Convention signed with the United States, and to elude detection by weapons inspectors, according to <a href="https://www.congress.gov/congressional-record/1997/4/24/senate-section/article/s3570-2">a classified Pentagon report originally made public by The Washington Times</a>. <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-44794441">An article from the BBC</a> speculates that the agent used in the Wiltshire poisonings in Britain could remain active for as long as 50 years. </p>
<p>Several factors make Novichok especially sinister. </p>
<p>First, the chemicals are reported by Soviet chemists to be the most potent agents ever made, with potency between 6-10 times higher than VX, the chemical used to kill the half brother of Kim Jong Un; or sarin, the prototypical poisonous nerve gas the Iraqi government allegedly used in 1989, and which was used by Syria last April. Thus extremely low doses, powder or liquid, the exact concentration of which remains unknown, are lethal. </p>
<p>More disturbing, especially for those living near the poisonings in Britain, is that the Novichok agents were designed to be undetectable by NATO chemical warfare detection methods, and to circumvent any NATO protective gear. This would allow them to be used with impunity by the Soviet Union (or Russia) against NATO troops. Professor Gary Stephens, quoted in the BBC News, concurred that the Novichok agents would be extremely difficult to detect. It would be equally difficult to clean up, because exactly which of the Novichok chemicals was used cannot be definitively determined.</p>
<p>Though Novichok agents have never yet been used on a battlefield, their sole purpose is for chemical warfare. Their mission: kill rapidly, silently and undetectably. Apparently, as seen in Britain, these chemists succeeded in their mission. </p>
<p><em>This story was updated to reflect the news about Aleksei Navalny.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/99736/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>William Atchison receives funding from the National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences of the National Institutes of Health of the USA.</span></em></p>Novichok are a set of molecules that are some of the most deadly nerve agents ever developed. They are almost impossible to detect and clean up.William Atchison, Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology, Michigan State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/957382018-05-23T09:54:39Z2018-05-23T09:54:39ZHow chemical weapons became taboo – and why they still are<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/220004/original/file-20180522-51091-1ik37l9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">German troops near the front in 1915.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-R52907,_Mannschaft_mit_Gasmasken_am_Fla-MG.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The world has witnessed two very different chemical weapons attacks in the last two months: in March, the assassination attempt against <a href="https://theconversation.com/sergei-skripal-and-the-long-history-of-assassination-attempts-abroad-93021">Sergei Skripal</a> in the British town of Salisbury, and then the Assad regime’s latest <a href="https://theconversation.com/syrias-latest-chemical-massacre-demands-a-global-response-94668">chemical strike</a> in Syria. The <a href="https://theconversation.com/novichok-the-deadly-story-behind-the-nerve-agent-in-sergei-skripal-spy-attack-93562">weapons</a> used in both cases are prohibited under international law, and their use indicates the breaking of a “taboo” which has provoked a swift and forceful response from the international community. </p>
<p>But why is this taboo still so powerful? After all, the Skripal poisoning was an assassination attempt, not a mass casualty attack, and fatalities in chemical attacks make up only a small proportion of the towering death toll in Syria’s calamitous eight-year-old civil war. Why does the use of chemical weapons provoke such a profound international reaction – and when did these weapons become “special”? </p>
<p>Chemicals have been used in various forms for centuries. They are not just deadly, but often invisible; they stand out due to the means in which they cause harm, the sheer scale on which they can be used, and their potential to cause long-term destruction and suffering.</p>
<p>Along with biological and nuclear weapons, chemical weapons have been labelled weapons of mass destruction (WMD) since 1946. The three types of WMD are perceived as a single distinct category of weapons by virtue of their ability to create lasting and indiscriminate harm. Labelling them as distinctively appalling has proved an effective device to galvanise international action to prevent their future use and proliferation.</p>
<p>But if this principle has held true for WMD in general, it was a new, modern opprobrium attached to chemical weapons that paved the way for the powerful stigma now attached to other weapons. Chemical warfare first began to attract a special moral condemnation during <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/chemical-weapons-warfare-remembrance-day-poison-mustard-gas-first-world-war-ypres-isis-a7005416.html">World War I</a>, when the world saw the horrendous effects of battlefield gas attacks. Immediately, chemical warfare was singled out as something new and different that demanded action.</p>
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<span class="caption">Soldiers drill in their gas masks during World War I.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:StateLibQld_2_202023_Soldiers_drill_in_their_gas_masks_during_World_War_I.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
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<p>Between the two wars, <a href="http://digital.library.northwestern.edu/league/le000313.pdf">scientific research</a> identified that chemical and bacteriological weapons had the potential to cause irreversible destruction on a scale not previously seen. At the time, mass-casualty bacteriological weapons (later termed biological weapons) remained largely hypothetical, but the potential use of pathogens as weapons was nonetheless deeply feared.</p>
<p>Both chemical and biological weapons can be used to target populations beyond the battlefield, thus highlighting their indiscriminate nature. Governments feared that technological innovation could lead to even more deadly methods of warfare. They were prohibited in 1925 by the <a href="https://www.un.org/disarmament/wmd/bio/1925-geneva-protocol/">Geneva Protocol</a>, specifically the “Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or Other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare”.</p>
<h2>Never again?</h2>
<p>When nuclear weapons arrived on the world stage with the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, their horrendous effects were publicised around the world. Suddenly, millions of people were living in fear of mass casualty weapons.</p>
<p>Throughout the cold war years, the fear that nuclear war might <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FjgBBQFmGs">lead to the end of humankind</a> provoked international action to prevent their further development and use. But even though the nuclear threat was the dominant theme of the cold war, chemical and biological weapons never lost their stigma; it seems the fear of nuclear weapons in fact reinforced the fear of chemical and biological weapons.</p>
<p>In the 1980s, it became clear that the international proscription of chemical weapons had not succeeded. The world was subjected to nightmarish images from the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War of people suffering from the effects of mustard gas, sarin and tabun. When Iraq used gas to massacre thousands of civilians at <a href="https://theconversation.com/haunted-by-the-smell-of-apples-28-years-on-kurds-weep-over-halabja-massacre-55979">Halabja</a> in 1988, the ensuing horror and moral outrage spurred the creation of the 1992 <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-century-after-wwi-gas-attacks-scientists-must-unite-against-chemical-weapons-40521">Convention on the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons</a>. And once again, the norm that all WMD are different from other weapons was reinforced.</p>
<p>This is the history behind the international reaction towards the chemical attacks of recent months and years. Since the first gas attacks in Europe during World War I, every use of chemical weapons has immediately met with outrage – but it’s also tested the durability of the stigma these weapons bear. Of the three weapons categorised as WMD, chemical weapons are the most accessible. Should attacks become normalised as just another feature of warfare, there is the possibility that the stigma keeping their use in check will start to fade.</p>
<p>And should technological innovation produce some new category of weapon with the potential to create destruction over and above that of existing WMD, then perhaps the chemical warfare stigma will be eclipsed. But for the time being, the WMD we’ve come to fear remain in a class of their own – and that’s where they belong.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/95738/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Patricia Shamai does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The spectacle of thousands of soldiers gassed to death in France announced to the world that a new class of weapons had arrived.Patricia Shamai, Senior Lecturer in International Relations, University of PortsmouthLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/946682018-04-09T13:22:18Z2018-04-09T13:22:18ZSyria’s latest chemical massacre demands a global response<p>Seven years into its catastrophic conflict, Syria has witnessed <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/08/syria-aid-workers-tell-of-apocalyptic-scenes-douma-alleged-chemical-attack">yet another major chemical strike</a>. This time the target was the rebel-held city of Douma in Eastern Ghouta, just outside Damascus. The death toll currently stands at <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-43686157">around 70</a> – making the attack as deadly as the infamous sarin strike at <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-39500947">Khan Sheikhoun</a> almost exactly a year ago to the day. It is thought the number of confirmed fatalities could <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-attack/trump-says-big-price-to-pay-for-syria-chemical-attack-idUSKBN1HE0RR">rise to 150</a>.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/who-are-syrias-white-helmets-and-why-are-they-so-controversial-66580">White Helmets</a> have reported that most of the victims were women and children. A <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/middle-east/syria-chemical-attack-most-of-them-were-going-to-die-1.3454861">local journalist</a> said the scene “was like judgement day … the situation, the fear, and the destruction are indescribable”.</p>
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<p>Like previous incidents, the attack has been widely blamed on Bashar al-Assad’s government. The agent used has not been confirmed. Witnesses say they smelled chlorine, but the sheer level of destruction suggests that something more lethal may have been used as well. There are allegations that the regime used a <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/syria-chemical-weapons-attack-latest-sarin-douma-eastern-ghouta-nerve-agent-chlorine-russia-us-uk-a8294741.html">sarin barrel bomb</a>.</p>
<p>Whatever the precise details, no-one should be surprised by what has happened. Horrified, yes – but Assad has <a href="https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/Timeline-of-Syrian-Chemical-Weapons-Activity">repeatedly used</a> chemical weapons in the civil conflict since 2012, and clearly he is not inclined to stop.</p>
<p>As per usual, the incident has attracted condemnation from Assad’s enemies around the world. US President Donald Trump <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/982966315467116544?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet">tweeted</a> that there will be a “big price” to pay for the attack, and derided Assad as an “animal”. The European Union <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-gouta-eu/eu-calls-for-response-to-yet-another-chemical-attack-in-syria-idUSKBN1HF0PQ">called</a> for “an immediate response by the international community”. <a href="http://www.monitor.co.ug/News/World/Pope-Francis-condemns-use-chemical-weapons-Syria/688340-4378246-d6vaqtz/index.html">Pope Francis</a> weighed in too: “Nothing, nothing can justify the use of such devices of extermination against defenceless people and populations.”</p>
<p>Tough talk indeed. But whether or not this turns into decisive action is another story. After all, we have been here many times before.</p>
<h2>Enough is enough</h2>
<p>This isn’t to say the world hasn’t responded at all. After Khan Shaykhun last year, for example, Trump ordered <a href="https://theconversation.com/trump-strikes-in-syria-illegal-ineffective-and-dangerous-75936">missile strikes</a> against a Syrian airbase with 59 Tomahawk missiles. His reference to a “big price” suggests there could be a similar move in the offing. Asked how the US might respond to the latest attack, White House homeland security adviser <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-syria-bossert/white-house-official-says-wont-take-anything-off-the-table-in-response-to-syria-attack-idUSKBN1HF0IN">Tom Bossert</a> was asked whether a US response was coming and replied, “I wouldn’t take anything off the table”.</p>
<p>But previous measures, including Trump’s missile strikes, have achieved little. Many at the United Nations have worked hard to bring Assad and his allies to account, but they have been stymied by Russia’s Security Council veto. Former US president, Barack Obama, succeeded in getting Assad to the negotiating table and – together with the support of Russia – he <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/10/russia-un-syrian-chemical-weapons">agreed to accede Syria</a> to the <a href="https://www.opcw.org/chemical-weapons-convention/">Chemical Weapons Convention</a>, the main international agreement that bans and eliminates chemical arms. But Assad still continues to use chemical arms.</p>
<p>Even if these moves have limited the scale of the Syrian government’s chemical attacks, they have continued. Trump and his administration have repeatedly said Trump will <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/daily-press-briefing-press-secretary-sean-spicer-041017/">observe the red line</a> against chemical warfare set by his Obama – but the line is still being crossed, again and again and again.</p>
<p>As well as the big attacks that make headlines, Assad has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/24/syria-regime-accused-of-using-chlorine-bombs-on-civilians">repeatedly overseen smaller chlorine strikes</a>. In 2017, Trump was asked in an interview about Assad’s use of chlorine – and <a href="https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/DCPD-201700615/pdf/DCPD-201700615.pdf">Trump didn’t even know</a> that Assad was still using chemical weapons. This doesn’t suggest the president is treating this as a priority. The world is acting, but it isn’t doing enough.</p>
<h2>Securing the future</h2>
<p>Failing to act decisively now could set off a domino effect. Allowing anyone to carry out chemical strikes with impunity sends a dangerous message. If Assad is not held to his account for his actions, why should anyone else stop short of chemical violence for fear of the world’s wrath? </p>
<p>Punishing violators in itself reinforces, supports and promotes the convention’s ideals. Leaving them unpunished weakens the norm that chemical warfare is wrong – and failing to make an example of Assad threatens the entire weapons control regime. Some <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/04/07/after-syria-is-there-still-a-taboo-against-the-use-of-chemical-weapons/?utm_term=.5f74b9469573">argue</a> that violations will not necessarily bring down the Chemical Weapons Convention, but their arguments assume that those who do violate it will be punished somehow. </p>
<p>The world’s progress in controlling chemical weapons should not be underestimated, and the admittedly limited measures such as Trump’s missile strikes that have been taken against Assad deserve credit. Still, it’s incumbent on all those with the power to intervene to ask themselves how many times we have to see horrific and traumatic images of chemical warfare before stronger action is taken.</p>
<p>It’s very easy to sit in front of a computer and type this. It’s hardly an easy problem to solve, especially while Russia continues to support Assad’s government and its forces. But there are severe implications if Assad is not stopped.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Bentley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Nothing the world has done has stopped Bashar al-Assad’s regime from using chemical weapons – but it’s imperative to keep trying.Michelle Bentley, Senior Lecturer in International Relations, Royal Holloway University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/908902018-03-22T14:07:05Z2018-03-22T14:07:05ZAum Shinrikyo subway sarin attack: Japanese cult members await execution two decades on<p>I was at a school camp when the now-defunct doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Tokyo-subway-attack-of-1995">attacked morning commuters on Tokyo subway lines</a> with sarin gas. It was the spring of 1995 and 13 people were killed and more than 6,000 injured. I remember being asked by my teacher to ring my parents in case they were caught up in the attack. Luckily, my father escaped, but only by ten minutes or so. The thought that he could have been a victim left a lasting impression on me. </p>
<p>I remember watching hours of television reports about the attack. The whole nation was glued to the story, and to revelations that the attack was carried out by a cult. Founded by Shoko Asahara – real name: Chizuo Matsumoto – Aum Shinrikyo <a href="https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/03/14/national/history/cult-attraction-aum-shinrikyos-power-persuasion/">believed</a> that the world would come to an end in 1997. It was soon established that its members had murdered an anti-Aum lawyer and his family back in 1989, and had carried out other sarin attacks, including a <a href="https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/06/21/national/history/matsumoto-aums-sarin-guinea-pig/#.WrOcAJO5thE">1994 attack in Matsumoto</a> that killed eight people and injured more than 500.</p>
<p>Now, nearly two decades later, Aum Shinrikyo is back in the news again. In January 2018, Japan’s supreme court <a href="https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/01/21/national/crime-legal/aum-trials-asahara-accomplices-can-finally-hanged/">upheld the life sentence</a> of an Aum member Katsuya Takahashi, the last Aum member to be tried for the attack. The same month, Japan’s Ministry of Justice also transferred some cult members who’ve been sentenced to death to various detention centres where executions can be carried out. The executions could come at any time, and won’t be announced until they’re concluded. The prisoners themselves will only be notified of their executions on the day.</p>
<p>One might wonder why it took so long to conclude the Aum trials. But the cult’s founder was just one of 190 people who were prosecuted for various crimes committed by the cult, and three members who were on the run, including Takahashi, were only arrested in 2011. The Japanese Ministry of Justice does not normally execute prisoners on death row if an accomplice’s case is still pending. With the last Aum member’s trial completed, the slated executions can now take place.</p>
<p>Almost all of the 13 death row inmates awaiting execution are requesting retrials, but their chances don’t look good. Two unrelated <a href="https://www.news24.com/World/News/japan-executes-two-murderers-including-teenage-killer-20171219">executions</a> were carried out in December 2017 even though the prisoners concerned had retrial requests still pending. </p>
<h2>In the waiting line</h2>
<p>It’s not unusual for Japanese death row inmates to spend decades awaiting execution; Asahara himself has been on death row for 14 years. Some die in solitary confinement, where death row prisoners are kept, without formally being executed. As I have written elsewhere, long years spent on death row – referred to as the <a href="http://ohrh.law.ox.ac.uk/killing-time-a-comment-on-the-case-of-brandon-astor/">death row phenomenon</a> – are also a feature of the US criminal justice system. The trials and appeals meant to minimise the possibility of wrongful execution often result in prisoners being on death row for a extended time.</p>
<p>But in Japan, this isn’t the only reason executions are delayed. The decision of whom to execute next is not made public. International and domestic law prohibit the execution of such people.</p>
<p>Yet while Asahara’s mental health is <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1440-1819.2006.01454.x">reported</a> to be extremely poor, the Ministry of Justice has maintained that he is fit enough to be put to death. The ministry seems downright determined to see him executed. As one senior justice official was <a href="https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/01/21/national/crime-legal/aum-trials-asahara-accomplices-can-finally-hanged/#.WmsL1iOcbUJ">quoted</a>: “We cannot leave someone who committed such heinous crimes to die from disease.”</p>
<p>What will the executions tell us about Japan’s attitude to justice today?</p>
<h2>Turning harsh</h2>
<p>Since the Tokyo attack, Japan’s punitive criminal justice system has increasingly revolved around fear and retribution. While Japan’s annual murder rate has steadily decreased since the attack, dropping below 1,000 in 2013, people’s fear of crime has increased, and victims’ rights groups have gained enormous power. The public has duly become <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/12057523/Japan-hangs-first-man-convicted-by-jury-as-Tokyo-claims-death-penalty-is-popular.html">ever more involved in the criminal justice process</a>. Judges started to sentence more prisoners to death after the attack; justice for the victims, it seemed, demanded nothing less than a capital sentence.</p>
<p>These trends are not unique to Japan. The UK also went through a period of being “<a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/governing-through-crime-9780195181081?cc=gb&lang=en&">governed through crime</a>” where politicians take advantage of the pubic’s fear of crime and promote punitive policies which often result in increased imprisonment rates. The 1993 murder of toddler <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-james-bulger-case-should-not-set-the-age-of-criminal-responsibility-91342">James Bulger</a> by two ten-year-olds spurred a similar “punitive turn”. As the public expected the justice system to punish the 10-year-old defendants, sentencing generally became harsher, and the prison population expanded. </p>
<p>But unlike the UK, when the punitive culture emerged in Japan, the country was still an executing state. With limited financial support provided for them by the criminal justice system, a death sentence functions as a symbol of justice for victims’ families in Japan. </p>
<p>But it’s a signal to the rest of the world as well. Executing Aum members would prove that Japan still accepts not just symbolic death sentences, but the death penalty in practice. With the UN’s <a href="http://www.moj.go.jp/ENGLISH/m_hisho10_00002.html">14th Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice</a> to be held in Tokyo in 2020, the international community will be keeping a close eye on how the Japanese government deals with the 13 Aum death row inmates and their sentences. Bearing in mind that more than <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2017/04/death-penalty-2016-facts-and-figures/">two-thirds of the countries in the world have abolished the death penalty in law or practice</a>, these 13 executions would further alienate it from the worldwide trend against the death penalty.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/90890/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mai Sato receives funding from European Commission and the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office. </span></em></p>The 1995 Tokyo sarin attack helped make Japanese criminal justice dramatically more punitive.Mai Sato, Lecturer in Criminal Law and Criminology, University of ReadingLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/930792018-03-08T15:55:07Z2018-03-08T15:55:07ZNerve agents: what are they and how do they work?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/209555/original/file-20180308-30972-109kday.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Investigators next to a police tent in Salisbury near to where Sergei Skripal was found critically ill.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source"> Steve Parsons/PA Wire/PA Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-43326734">are in a critical condition</a> in a hospital in Salisbury, UK, following exposure to an unknown nerve agent. Several locations in the city have been cordoned off and decontaminated since the pair were found unconscious on a park bench on March 5. But what are nerve agents exactly and how do they affect the body?</p>
<p>The first nerve agents were invented by accident in the 1930s when researchers were trying to make <a href="https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/perspective/nerve-gas-simon-cotton.aspx">cheaper and better alternatives to nicotine</a> as insecticides. In their search, German scientists made two organic compounds containing phosphorus that were very effective at killing insect pests. However, they soon discovered that, even in minuscule amounts, the substances caused distressing symptoms in humans exposed to them.</p>
<p>The two substances – too toxic to be used as commercial insecticides in agriculture – became known as <a href="https://emergency.cdc.gov/agent/tabun/basics/facts.asp">tabun</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarin">sarin</a>. The research was handed over to the Wehrmacht (the Nazi armed forces), which evaluated them as weapons and began constructing <a href="https://cen.acs.org/articles/94/i41/Nazi-origins-deadly-nerve-gases.html">plants to manufacture them</a>. The sarin plant was not operational by the time the Third Reich collapsed, but fell in to the hands of Soviet forces that overran Poland and Germany.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/209559/original/file-20180308-30972-19a54oj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/209559/original/file-20180308-30972-19a54oj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=294&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209559/original/file-20180308-30972-19a54oj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=294&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209559/original/file-20180308-30972-19a54oj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=294&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209559/original/file-20180308-30972-19a54oj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=370&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209559/original/file-20180308-30972-19a54oj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=370&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209559/original/file-20180308-30972-19a54oj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=370&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Structure of sarin.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Yikrazuul/wikipedia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Pesticide research continued after the war and the <a href="https://www.chemistryworld.com/podcasts/vx/6241.article">molecule known as VX</a> was first made in an Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) laboratory in the UK in 1952. It again proved too toxic to be used in agriculture and it was passed to the UK’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2004/may/06/science.research">Porton Down Chemical Weapons Research Centre</a>, and subsequently to the US government, when the UK renounced chemical weapons. Its destructive power became clear on March 13, 1968. Somehow, the substance escaped from the army’s chemical weapons proving ground and <a href="https://www.damninteresting.com/the-sheep-%20incident/">killed over 3,000 sheep</a> grazing 27 miles away in the Skull Valley area of Utah. </p>
<p>Since then, other nerve agents have been developed, but much less is known about them, although they are thought to work in broadly the same way. Unlike street drugs, nerve agents cannot be made in your kitchen or garden shed, on account of their toxicity, even in tiny amounts. Synthesis of nerve agents requires a specialist laboratory, with fume cupboards. </p>
<h2>Known cases</h2>
<p>Nerve agents were not thought to have been deployed until the 1980s. Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi forces are understood to have used sarin during the Iran-Iraq war, notably against Kurdish citizens in <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2016/03/remembering-halabja-chemical-attack-160316061221074.html">Halabja in March 1988</a>, leaving an estimated 5,000 dead. </p>
<p>On March 20, 1995, members of the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo cult used umbrellas with sharpened tips to puncture plastic bags and boxes containing sarin <a href="http://time.com/3742241/tokyo-subway-attack-1995/">while they were travelling on the Tokyo subway system</a>. Fortunately, the sarin used was impure, otherwise the casualty list would have been much longer. As it was, 13 people died and several thousands got sick.</p>
<p>Although there were claims that VX was used during the Iran-Iraq war, until recently, the only known human fatality caused by VX occurred when two members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult used VX to assassinate a former member of their sect in Osaka in 1994. </p>
<p>Two young women, an Indonesian and a Malaysian, are currently on trial in Malaysia, charged with killing Kim Jong-nam, the half brother of Kim Jong-un, North Korea’s leader, allegedly by <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/07/us-says-north-korea-assassinated-kim-jong-nam-with-chemical-weapon">smearing VX nerve agent across his face</a> in an airport in Kuala Lumpur. </p>
<h2>Effects on the body</h2>
<p>Nerve agents can be absorbed through inhalation or skin contact. In fact, when the Nazis were building their first nerve agent plant, workers wearing protective suits died in agony when nerve agent got through gaps in their suits.</p>
<p>Unlike traditional poisons, nerve agents don’t need to be added to food and drink to be effective. They are quite volatile, colourless liquids (except VX, said to resemble engine oil). The concentration in the vapour at room temperature is lethal. The symptoms of poisoning come on quickly, and include chest tightening, difficulty in breathing, and very likely asphyxiation. Associated symptoms include vomiting and massive incontinence. Victims of the Tokyo subway attack were reported to be bringing up blood. Kim Jong-nam died in less than 20 minutes. Eventually, you die either through asphyxiation or cardiac arrest.</p>
<p>The chemicals work by disrupting the central nervous system. The body uses a molecule called <a href="https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/acetylcholine">acetylcholine</a> to send messages between cells – when an acetylcholine molecule “arrives”, it causes an electrical impulse to be sent. The body constantly has to remove those acetylcholine molecules from the receptors, otherwise there would be a dangerous build-up. It uses an enzyme called <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/acetylcholinesterase">acetylcholinesterase</a> (AChE) to do that. However, a nerve agent stops acetylcholinesterase from doing its job.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/209548/original/file-20180308-30989-2sqcfq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/209548/original/file-20180308-30989-2sqcfq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209548/original/file-20180308-30989-2sqcfq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209548/original/file-20180308-30989-2sqcfq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209548/original/file-20180308-30989-2sqcfq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209548/original/file-20180308-30989-2sqcfq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/209548/original/file-20180308-30989-2sqcfq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The park bench where the two victims were found has been sealed with a forensic tent.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA-EFE</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Antidotes do exist, one being <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atropine">atropine</a>, but have to be administered quickly, otherwise the effect of the nerve agent cannot be reversed. Some antidotes can be administered as prophylactics to troops about to go into battle, if there is a risk of nerve agents being employed. This is obviously a real problem in a civilian situation, where there is no expectation of encountering these chemicals.</p>
<p>We do not yet know which kind of nerve agent poisoned Skripal. While they all work in similar way, different approaches may be needed for decontamination. To decontaminate streets and other hard surfaces, you can use water to flush it out – making sure to use enough to properly dilute the chemical. This works well for the more volatile sarin, which tends to evaporate easily or slowly get broken down by moisture. However, other substances, such as VX, are less volatile and reactive. In this case, bleach and alkali can be used to break the molecules down. In a situation where we don’t know which has been used, a mix of water and bleach may be the best approach.</p>
<p>As more details emerge from the case, we’ll know more about the precise substance used and how it should be tackled. Either way, nerve agents are horrendously lethal and chemical warfare is an obscene use of chemicals.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/novichok-the-deadly-story-behind-the-nerve-agent-93562">Novichok: the deadly story behind the nerve agent</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/93079/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Simon Cotton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Nerve agents were discovered by accident in the 1930s.Simon Cotton, Senior Lecturer in Chemistry, University of BirminghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/804932017-07-05T14:16:17Z2017-07-05T14:16:17ZKey players in Syria swap denials and accusations as evidence of sarin use piles up<p>The <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-39500947">Khan Sheikhoun attack</a> of April 4 2017, which killed dozens and injured hundreds, drew a response in the form of targeted US missile strikes on a Syrian airbase. As far as the West is concerned, it was clearly just the latest in a long line of chemical weapon attacks <a href="http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/04/07/syrias-chemical-weapons-kill-chain-assad-sarin/">authorised by the Syrian president</a>, Bashar al-Assad; a recent <a href="http://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/en/country-files/syria/events/article/chemical-attack-in-syria-national-evaluation-presented-by-jean-marc-ayrault">French intelligence report</a> lists seven sarin attacks which it either presumes or is confident were ordered by the regime – this in addition to some 22 incidents of chlorine use. </p>
<p>All this is broadly in keeping with public statements and declassified reports released by other Western states. From a Western perspective, the Assad regime has for years now played cat-and-mouse with the international community, using chemical weapons to kill, terrorise, demoralise and displace both militants and civilians. He has attempted to employ such weapons below the threshold that would trigger greater Western intervention, or the threshold which might lead Russia or another ally to withdraw vital support. </p>
<p>These thresholds are neither clear nor stationary – and Damascus has hedged its bets time and time again on the benefits of use. This included the use of chemical weapons at, and in the run up to, the <a href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2013/09/10/attacks-ghouta/analysis-alleged-use-chemical-weapons-syria">2013 Ghouta attack</a>. It was also reflected in Assad’s decision to <a href="http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/08/23/u-s-and-europe-say-assad-may-have-kept-some-chemical-weapons/">secretly retain</a> sarin stockpiles when it was forced to <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-23876085">give up</a> its chemical weapons in the aftermath of the Ghouta massacre. From this perspective, the persistent use of chlorine by the regime also fits the pattern. </p>
<p>The Syrian and Russian governments have consistently publicly denied that the Syrian government has ever employed chemical weapons, either before or after it <a href="https://www.armscontrol.org/files/Panel2.1_Anelli_TuckerConference.pdf">declared</a> and destroyed some 1,000 tonnes of chemical agents and decommissioned some 27 production facilities. But, more than that, Russian and Syrian officials still challenge the Western narrative by questioning whether the attacks in question were staged, carried out by rebels or – as in the latest case – a consequence of rebel groups stockpiling sarin supplies of their own. They argue that pinning chemical weapon use on Assad is a Western tactic to undermine his regime – and to leverage public support for Western intervention. </p>
<p>These sorts of denials, accusations and counter-accusations are a long-established feature of chemical warfare, where the facts and meaning of individual attacks become flashpoints in the broader narrative battles. Indeed, while the players have changed, the games being played now look much like the propoganganda wars over Iraq’s war crimes during the Iran-Iraq War – in particular the notorious 1988 chemical massacre at <a href="https://theconversation.com/haunted-by-the-smell-of-apples-28-years-on-kurds-weep-over-halabja-massacre-55979">Halabja</a>. </p>
<h2>Framed and reframed</h2>
<p>The parallels are ironic and tragic. In the late 1980s, it was the West which stood accused of giving tacit support to Saddam’s chemical weapon programme, and <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/17/opinion/halabja-america-didnt-seem-to-mind-poison-gas.html">allowing atrocities which could have been prevented</a> in the service of its fierce opposition to Iran. The Iranian media, meanwhile, was particularly eager to draw attention to what Iraq was doing on the ground, but its obvious tactical stakes in the conflict <a href="http://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/politics-general-interest/poisonous-affair-america-iraq-and-gassing-halabja">damaged the credibility</a> of early reports about chemical war crimes.</p>
<p>While war crimes are routinely denied by their perpetrators, chemical weapons are unique. There is a highly developed international apparatus in place to investigate and attribute their use – and the intense scrutiny that follows a chemical attack means there’s a much greater public expectation that action will be taken against culprits. In the Syrian case, this particular dynamic has given chemical weapons a special symbolic weight. </p>
<p>The West’s insistence on publicly attributing attacks to the Assad regime effectively implicates Russia, the government’s principal supporter. This is deeply resented in Moscow. US <a href="https://theconversation.com/trump-strikes-in-syria-illegal-ineffective-and-dangerous-75936">missile strikes</a> after Khan Sheikhoun, strategically inconsequential though they were, will only have driven home the impression that the US and its allies are cynically using the chemical weapons issue for both domestic and diplomatic leverage.</p>
<p>In response, Russia is trying to frame this Western activism as a challenge to the independence of UN organisations and investigations. It has questioned the methods employed by a recent UN-OPCW joint investigation that <a href="http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=s/2016/738">concluded</a> the Syrian Air Force had used chlorine as a weapon. Unsurprising then that Russian officials are <a href="http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2017/04/19/518617/Syria-Lavrov-Syria-OPCW-probes-British-citizens">publicly dismissive</a> of the latest UN investigation into the Khan Sheikhoun attack.</p>
<p>While that investigation’s latest report demonstrates beyond any doubt that sarin was employed as a weapon, it does not explicitly deal with the question of attribution. Nonetheless, its findings cast further doubt on the claims made by Syrian and Russian officials in the wake of the attack that a <a href="https://www.rt.com/news/383522-syria-idlib-warehouse-strike-chemical/">rebel chemical stockpile stockpile was hit</a>, instead identifying the source of the sarin cloud as a crater some distance from the supposed stockpile. A joint UN-OPCW investigation into the attack is already underway; it has a remit to attribute the attack.</p>
<h2>Real and surreal</h2>
<p>Russia will continue to publicly voice reservations about the investigation’s attribution of responsibility; it will keep trying to derail, discredit or delay the process, citing concerns about the investigators’s methods. It will also keep pushing the idea that Western actions threaten to undermine the chemical weapon prohibition regime – something which nobody wants to happen.</p>
<p>What is at stake in these arguments is both bigger and smaller than the question of Syrian chemical weapons. At a human level, while real people have been killed by real weapons, the heightened attention paid to this particular issue has at once made the war feel almost surreal to Western populations. While most people surely agree that those who commit atrocities must be punished, they are rightly sceptical of the claims which different sides make in times of war. </p>
<p>Cynicism increasingly dominates, with the international response to the use of these weapons discussed as a dismal pantomime, a sad display of the hubris, futility and hypocrisy of seeking to enforce moral limits on warfare. All sides in this conflict invoke grand ideas of justice, sovereignty, national security, peace and international institution-building. </p>
<p>Once the dust settles, it will be clearer what sacrifices have actually been made in the name of these causes. But for now, the point is to ensure that leaders don’t ignore or forget these ongoing war crimes, whoever commits them. In particular, the UN-OPCW investigation needs as much support as it can get as it seeks to formally attribute the attack. So do <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/04/world/middleeast/syria-war-crimes-prosecution-united-nations.html">broader ongoing enquiries</a> into Syrian atrocities, as well as more grassroots movements and documentation programmes investigating this conflict’s myriad heinous crimes.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/80493/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brett Edwards is currently in receipt of no funding and discloses no conflicts. </span></em></p>Denial and obfuscation have always been a part of chemical warfare.Brett Edwards, Lecturer in Security and Public Policy, University of BathLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/760122017-04-11T06:27:49Z2017-04-11T06:27:49ZWhat we know about the April 4 chemical attack in Syria<p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-latest-suspected-chemical-attack-in-syria-brings-destruction-and-deception-75718">April 4, 2017 chemical attack</a> on the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun in Syria led to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/04/syria-chemical-attack-idlib-province">at least 70 deaths and more than 100 people requiring medical attention</a>, prompting an outcry from the international community. It led to the <a href="https://theconversation.com/with-syria-missile-strikes-trump-turns-from-non-intervention-to-waging-war-75917">April 7 US bombing</a> of the Shayrat air base. </p>
<p>It is alleged that sarin was used in the Khan Sheikhoun attack. This particular chemical became famous in 1995 with the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-should-we-remember-violence-lessons-from-the-tokyo-sarin-attack-39101">Tokyo subway attack</a>, launched by members of the cult movement Aum Shinrikyo.</p>
<h2>Was it sarin?</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.opcw.org/protection/types-of-chemical-agent/nerve-agents/">Sarin</a> is an organophosphorus compound and was first synthesised in 1938 in Germany as part of a pesticide research program. </p>
<p>Sarin is a moderately volatile substance – that is, it readily forms a gas – which can be taken up by inhalation or skin contact. It is an inhibitor of the enzyme acetylcholinesterase, which is critical in regulating nerve function. </p>
<p>When exposed to a low dose of a <a href="https://www.opcw.org/protection/types-of-chemical-agent/nerve-agents/">nerve agent such as sarin</a>, people experience increased production of saliva, a running nose and a feeling of pressure on the chest. The pupils of the eye becomes contracted, so-called “pin-point” pupils.</p>
<p>Pin point pupils, which have been recorded in video footage of the Khan Sheikhoun attack, are a characteristic consequence of acetylcholinesterase inhibitors like sarin. This clinical sign is quite different from the irritating effects of chlorine and mustard gas.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.opcw.org/protection/types-of-chemical-agent/nerve-agents/">Medium to higher dose exposure to sarin and other nerve agents</a> can result in difficulty in breathing and coughing, abdominal cramps and vomiting, and sometimes involuntary discharge of urine and faeces. Increased saliva production, running eyes and sweating may occur, as well as muscular weakness, tremors or convulsions. Loss of consciousness, and death due to respiratory failure may be seen at higher doses. </p>
<p>Survivors of the Tokyo subway sarin attack recovered reasonably well but experienced some clinically detectable <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/articles/16962140/">neurological effects</a>, and <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ana.21024/abstract">some evidence of brain changes</a>. </p>
<p>Although sarin use is suspected in Khan Sheikhoun, there are many organophosphorus insecticides that would exert the same effect (in sufficient quantity). It is possible that an organophosphate pesticide or a simple organophosphate (not normally classified as a chemical weapon) was used in this attack.</p>
<p>The production of sarin requires special facilities and is expensive, perhaps running into the tens of millions of dollars. <a href="https://www.opcw.org/protection/types-of-chemical-agent/nerve-agents/">Similar chemicals, such as tabun</a>, are less expensive to make. </p>
<h2>Will we ever know what was used?</h2>
<p>In order to establish the identity of the substances used in Khan Sheikhoun, a combination of information needs to be gathered and assessed. In particular the results of chemical tests on wipe samples, soil and clothing samples must be determined and verified. </p>
<p>The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (<a href="https://www.opcw.org/">OPCW</a>) Fact Finding Team would be the most authoritative source to reveal the nature of the chemical(s) used, and we will await their report. However, in the past these reports have been <a href="http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=S/2017/45">inconclusive</a> owing to the time taken to gather chemical samples, limits of detection, specificity and the presence of mixtures. </p>
<p>The conflict in Syria involves the government military forces, the rebels, ISIS and the Kurds. It is sometimes hard to know where the chemicals might be coming from (for example, from neighbouring countries), or whether they have been produced or sourced locally.</p>
<h2>Local history of chemical attacks</h2>
<p>This experience in Syria may lead to improved medical responses in the case of future attacks. But in the absence of detailed knowledge of the substances involved, the treatment of casualties is unlikely to be optimal. </p>
<p>With so many individual chemical substances, and improvised mixtures, only generic decontamination and treatment procedures can be used. However, it may be feasible to have chemical specialists attached to hospitals collecting and storing specimens for subsequent analysis.</p>
<p>Sadly, the use of chemicals in Khan Sheikhoun is not an isolated incident. After all, a <a href="http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=S/2017/45">recent report</a> of the OPCW Fact Finding Mission for the period December 2015 to November 20, 2016, recorded 65 potential incidents of the use of chemical weapons reported in open sources. </p>
<p>The use of chemical weapons has a long history in the region. On <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/march/16/newsid_4304000/4304853.stm">March 16, 1988</a>, Iraq dropped bombs containing multiple toxic chemicals on the Kurdish city of Halabja, killing thousands.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/76012/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dino Pisaniello receives or has received funding from Australian Research Council, Safe Work Australia, Safe Work SA, Australian Department of Health, Defence Science and Technology Group and indirectly through the US Department of Defence. He has received funding in the past from the mining industry. He is on a committee in the Department of Veterans Affairs relating to veterans health. </span></em></p>The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons Fact Finding Team has not yet revealed the nature of the chemicals used in Khan Sheikhoun.Dino Pisaniello, Professor of Public Health , University of AdelaideLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/759862017-04-11T01:52:07Z2017-04-11T01:52:07ZEnzymes versus nerve agents: Designing antidotes for chemical weapons<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164543/original/image-20170408-7394-159yw03.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=134%2C0%2C1547%2C871&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Enzymes, the catalysts of biology, can engulf and break down hundreds of nerve agent molecules per second.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Image: Pymol. PDB 4E3T rcsb.org</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A chemical weapons attack that killed <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-39500947">more than 80 people</a>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/04/world/middleeast/syria-gas-attack.html">including children</a>, triggered the Trump administration’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/07/world/middleeast/syria-attack-trump.html?_r=0">recent missile strikes</a> against the Syrian government. The use of illegal nerve agents – apparently by the Assad regime – violated <a href="https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/customary-ihl/eng/docs/v1_rul_rule74">international law</a>; President Trump said he was <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/04/06/statement-president-trump-syria">moved to act by images</a> of the victims’ horrible deaths.</p>
<p>But there’s another path to mitigate the danger of chemical weapons. This route lies within the domains of science – the very same science that produced chemical weapons in the first place. Researchers in the U.S. and around the world, including here at the University of Washington’s <a href="http://www.ipd.uw.edu">Institute for Protein Design</a>, are developing the tools needed to quickly and safely destroy nerve agents – both in storage facilities and in the human body.</p>
<p>Nerve agents, a class of synthetic phosphorous-containing compounds, are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/jat/28.5.372">among the most toxic substances known</a>. Brief exposure to the most potent variants can lead to death within minutes. Once nerve agents enter the body, they irreversibly inhibit a vitally important enzyme called acetylcholinesterase. Its normal job within the nervous system is to help brain and muscle communicate. When a nerve agent shuts down this enzyme, classes of neurons throughout the central and peripheral nervous systems quickly get overstimulated, leading to <a href="https://www.opcw.org/about-chemical-weapons/types-of-chemical-agent/nerve-agents/#c4118">profuse sweating, convulsions and an excruciating death by asphyxiation</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164556/original/image-20170408-29390-75dm34.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164556/original/image-20170408-29390-75dm34.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164556/original/image-20170408-29390-75dm34.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164556/original/image-20170408-29390-75dm34.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164556/original/image-20170408-29390-75dm34.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164556/original/image-20170408-29390-75dm34.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164556/original/image-20170408-29390-75dm34.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164556/original/image-20170408-29390-75dm34.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">U.S. Marine Corps specialists performing decontamination procedures.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._Marine_Corps_chemical,_biological,_radiological_and_nuclear_(CBRN)_defense_specialists_with_Marine_Wing_Headquarters_Squadron_(MWHS)_3,_3rd_Marine_Aircraft_Wing,_perform_decontamination_procedures_during_130430-M-EF955-271.jpg">Sgt. Keonaona Paulo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Chemical weapons are often associated with wars of the previous century – mustard gas in WWI, Zyklon B in WWII. But the worst variety, nerve agents, were <a href="http://cen.acs.org/articles/94/i41/Nazi-origins-deadly-nerve-gases.html">never deployed in the world wars</a>, though Nazi scientists developed the first generation of these compounds. Gerhard Schrader, the so-called <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2710.2008.00972.x/full">father of nerve agents</a>, didn’t begin life as a Nazi scientist – he was developing new pesticides to combat world hunger when he accidentally synthesized the first organophosphorus nerve agent. Later, he led the research team that produced sarin, or GB, the most toxic of the all the so-called G-series nerve agents. The U.S. government stated with <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/04/06/press-briefing-secretary-state-rex-tillerson-and-national-security">“very high confidence” that sarin was used</a> in the recent attack near Idlib, Syria.</p>
<p>Beginning in 2013, teams from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons went to Syria and, with help from the Danish, Norwegian, Russian, Chinese and <a href="https://www.defense.gov/News/Article/Article/602835">U.S. government</a>, <a href="https://www.opcw.org/news/article/destruction-of-syrian-chemical-weapons-completed/">destroyed all declared stockpiles</a> of Syrian chemical weapons. It seems that either not all of Assad’s stockpiles were in fact <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/07/world/middleeast/werent-syrias-chemical-weapons-destroyed-its-complicated.html?_r=0">declared and destroyed, or that new nerve agents arrived</a> in Syria – either via the black market or chemical synthesis – in the intervening years. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164553/original/image-20170408-7394-1opyv30.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164553/original/image-20170408-7394-1opyv30.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164553/original/image-20170408-7394-1opyv30.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164553/original/image-20170408-7394-1opyv30.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164553/original/image-20170408-7394-1opyv30.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164553/original/image-20170408-7394-1opyv30.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164553/original/image-20170408-7394-1opyv30.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164553/original/image-20170408-7394-1opyv30.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Empty sarin containers at Pine Bluff Arsenal.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Empty_sarin_containers_at_Pine_Bluff_Arsenal.jpg">U.S. Army</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Clearing chemical weapons</h2>
<p>Twenty-first-century chemists, biochemists and computer scientists are working right now to sap chemical weapons of their horrifying power by designing counter agents that safely and efficiently destroy them. </p>
<p>Sarin sitting in a container – as opposed to in a human body – is relatively easy to destroy. The simplest method is to add a soluble base and heat the mixture to near-boiling temperatures. After several hours, the vast majority – more than 99.9 percent – of the deadly compound can be broken apart by a process called hydrolysis. This is how <a href="https://www.hdiac.org/node/1936">trained specialists</a> dispose of chemical weapons like sarin. </p>
<p>Nerve agents that make their way inside the body are a different story. For starters, you clearly cannot add a near-boiling base to a person. And because nerve agents kill so quickly, any treatment that takes hours to work is a nonstarter.</p>
<p>There are chemical interventions for warding off death after exposure to certain chemical weapons. Unfortunately, these interventions are costly, difficult to dose properly and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1742-7843.2011.00678.x">are themselves quite toxic</a>. The chemical antidotes pralidoxime and the cheaper atropine <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ct-syria-gas-attack-assad-sarin-chlorine-edit-0405-jm-20170404-story.html">were deployed</a> after recent attacks in Syria, but <a href="http://time.com/4727073/idlib-chemical-attack-sarin-gas-pralidoxime/">doctors in the area worry</a> their dwindling supplies offer little protection against possible future attacks. </p>
<p>For a medical intervention to work after nerve gas exposure, it has to work fast. If a first responder administers a sarin-destroying molecule, each therapeutic molecule must be capable of breaking down through hydrolysis <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.3109/10242429709003196">hundreds of nerve agent molecules per second</a>, one after another. </p>
<p>Enzymes, the genetically encoded catalysts of biology, are up for such a task. Famous enzymes include lactase, which breaks down milk sugars in those who are lactose tolerant. Another known as RuBisCO is vital to the process of carbon fixation in plants. The most efficient enzymes in your body can perform <a href="http://www.vivo.colostate.edu/hbooks/molecules/carbonic_anhydrase.html">a million reactions per second</a>, and do so under chemically mild conditions. </p>
<p>Aside from their astonishing speed, enzymes often display an equally impressive selectivity. That is, they react with only a small number of structurally similar compounds and leave all other compounds alone. Selectivity is useful in the context of the chemical soup that is the cell but problematic when it comes to xenobiotics: those compounds which are foreign to one’s biology. Man-made organophosphates such as sarin are xenobiotics. There are no enzymes that hydrolyze them well – or so we thought.</p>
<p>When farmers spray pesticides, much of it ends up on the ground. Soil bacteria living nearby are challenged by high doses of these potent foreign chemicals. It turns out that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1752-4571.2010.00175.x">efficient detoxifying enzymes have recently evolved</a> inside some of these microbes as a result.</p>
<p>Scientists have identified and isolated a small number of these enzymes and tested them on a range of nasty compounds, including nerve agents, which are structurally similar to some pesticides. A select few did indeed show hydrolytic activity.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164558/original/image-20170408-29399-hwdml4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164558/original/image-20170408-29399-hwdml4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164558/original/image-20170408-29399-hwdml4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164558/original/image-20170408-29399-hwdml4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164558/original/image-20170408-29399-hwdml4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164558/original/image-20170408-29399-hwdml4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164558/original/image-20170408-29399-hwdml4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164558/original/image-20170408-29399-hwdml4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Scientists are using computers to design a new generation of proteins to solve 21st-century problems.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">UW Institute for Protein Design</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Improving on the discovery</h2>
<p>Researchers have taken these naturally occurring enzymes as raw material. Then, using <a href="http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/cb4004892">computer modeling and controlled evolution in the lab</a>, we’ve bolstered the efficiency of the originally found anti-nerve agent enzymes. Enzymes that initially showed only modest activity have been turned into potential therapeutics against VX – a chemical cousin of sarin and the most toxic nerve agent of all.</p>
<p>In a proof-of-concept study conducted jointly by researchers in Germany and Israel in late 2014, guinea pigs under anesthesia were exposed to lethal doses of VX, followed by optimized VX-destroying proteins. Low doses of the protein drug, even after a 15-minute delay, resulted in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.toxlet.2014.09.003">survival of all animals</a> and only moderate toxicity.</p>
<p>Despite these promising advances, no enzyme yet exists which is efficient enough for lifesaving use in people. Scientists are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/nchembio.777">refining these microscopic machines</a>, and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/nature19946">new paradigms in computer-aided protein engineering</a> are unlocking the door to this and other applications of biomolecular design. We may be only a few years away from developing the kind of therapeutics that would make chemical weapons a worry of the past. </p>
<p>As the world grieves over the latest attacks in Syria, it is worth keeping in mind the awesome and often complex power of science. In trying to combat hunger, one might accidentally invent liquid death. In studying soil microbes, one might discover a tool to prevent atrocities.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/75986/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ian Haydon works at the Institute for Protein Design and receives funding from the National Science Foundation.</span></em></p>Scientists invented chemical weapons; some are now working to destroy them. New biomolecular design techniques let researchers design proteins that can destroy nerve agents in bodies.Ian Haydon, Doctoral Student in Biochemistry, University of WashingtonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/736022017-02-24T07:40:18Z2017-02-24T07:40:18ZMalaysia says Kim Jong-nam was killed with a chemical weapon – here’s what you need to know<p>A preliminary report from Malaysian authorities has found that Kim Jong-nam, the half-brother of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/23/world/asia/kim-jong-nam-vx-nerve-agent-.html?emc=edit_na_20170223&nl=breaking-news&nlid=64524812&ref=cta">killed by the banned nerve agent VX</a>. </p>
<p>He died on his way to hospital from Kuala Lumpur airport on February 13 2017. It’s claimed that two women, <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/kim-jong-nam-murder-second-woman-arrested/">who have now been detained</a>, rubbed the chemical <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/23/world/asia/kim-jong-nam-vx-nerve-agent-.html?emc=edit_na_20170223&nl=breaking-news&nlid=64524812&ref=cta">on his face</a>.</p>
<p>We asked a pharmacologist to explain what the nerve agent involved is and how it works; and an expert in international law to examine the implications of an assassination using a banned chemical weapon on foreign soil.</p>
<h2>What is VX nerve agent?</h2>
<p>Chemical warfare weapons act on the nervous system (hence the name <a href="https://www.opcw.org/about-chemical-weapons/types-of-chemical-agent/nerve-agents/">nerve agents</a>), typically the nerves that control breathing. They act on the cholinergic nerves generally, which control the diaphragm. </p>
<p>The VX nerve agent <a href="http://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/motm/vx/vxc/modeof.htm">inhibits the enzyme acetylcholinesterase</a>, which breaks down the neurotransmitter acetylcholine secreted by the cholinergic nerves. <a href="http://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/motm/vx/vxc/modeof.htm">This results in more acetylcholine</a>, which overstimulates the tissues, resulting in respiratory paralysis and death.</p>
<p>It is similar to but more powerful than sarin gas, which was used in the <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/tokyo-sarin-gas-anniversary-victims-families-gather-20-years-after-deathcults-attack-10124217.html">Tokyo subway attacks in 1995</a>.</p>
<p>Only very little of a nerve agent is needed to kill someone, and it works very fast. The <a href="https://www.opcw.org/about-chemical-weapons/types-of-chemical-agent/nerve-agents/#c4118">speed of death depends on mode of delivery</a>. A nerve agent works faster if it goes directly to the respiratory system, but 10 milligrams on the skin will kill you.</p>
<p>Originally developed from a class of organophosphate pesticides that were abandoned as too toxic, the by British and US military agencies <a href="http://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/webprojects2006/Macgee/Web%20Project/nerve_gas.htm">subsequently developed the VX nerve agent</a> as a chemical warfare weapon.</p>
<p>Various governments stockpiled it as a chemical weapon, but stocks are being destroyed worldwide as <a href="https://www.opcw.org/chemical-weapons-convention/">part of the Chemical Weapons Convention</a>. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/24/kim-jong-nam-north-korea-killed-chemical-weapon-nerve-agent-mass-destruction-malaysian-police?CMP=soc_568">Saddam Hussein was thought to have used the toxin and it’s suspected Syria may have stockpiles</a>, but the former USSR and the US are the only countries that have admitted to having VX or similar nerve agents. American stores were <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/23/world/asia/kim-jong-nam-vx-nerve-agent-.html?emc=edit_na_20170223&nl=breaking-news&nlid=64524812&ref=cta">all destroyed by 2012</a>.</p>
<p>There’s no clear evidence of it being used militarily, but Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo used it to <a href="http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/03/14/national/history/cult-attraction-aum-shinrikyos-power-persuasion/">attack people in Osaka in December 1994</a> (as opposed to their sarin gas attacks on the Tokyo subway).</p>
<h2>What does international law say?</h2>
<p>The VX nerve agent is banned under international law because it’s a chemical weapon as <a href="https://www.opcw.org/chemical-weapons-convention/">defined in the Chemical Weapons Conventions</a>. Such weapons were banned under international law for a number of reasons. </p>
<p>Chemical weapons are, by nature, indiscriminate – it’s very hard to use them in a way that targets only combatants (people directly participating in hostilities) and spares civilians, which is a <a href="https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/ihl/WebART/470-750065">fundamental rule of the law of armed conflict</a>. </p>
<p>Even if you could use chemical weapons in a discriminate manner, they would still be illegal under the international law principle that prohibits means and methods of warfare that <a href="https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/ihl/WebART/470-750065">cause unnecessary suffering and superfluous injury</a>, that is, when the injury or suffering caused is out of proportion to the military advantage sought. </p>
<p>While a number of countries are known or suspected to have VX in their possession, there’s no evidence that a state has employed it in armed conflict, or in any other context. <a href="https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/cwcsig">North Korea is not a party</a> to the Chemical Weapons Conventions.</p>
<p>Malaysia and the international community as a whole are somewhat constrained to act against North Korea for its use of VX nerve agent to kill Kim Jong-nam. The Malaysian authorities are, of course, perfectly entitled to prosecute the perpetrators. But whether the international community could do anything to North Korea itself is a bit more problematic. </p>
<p>First, it would have to be proved that the perpetrators were acting on instructions from North Korean authorities, or that their acts were somehow attributable to the North Korean government. Only then would the acts of the individual perpetrators be considered acts of the state. </p>
<p>The use of this chemical weapon is internationally prohibited, but the chances of being able to bring North Korean authorities before an international criminal tribunal, or to bring a suit against North Korea in the International Court of Justice, are essentially non-existent. </p>
<p>The only option would be for a resolution to be passed in the UN General Assembly or the Security Council, or both, condemning the use of chemical weapons in violation of the treaty. Another option is imposing sanctions against North Korea in addition to <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-01/un-imposes-new-sanctions-on-north-korea/8081704">the ones that already exist</a>. </p>
<p>Any country that maintains diplomatic relations with North Korea, such as Malaysia, or treaty arrangements could potentially be entitled to take action. It could expel North Korean diplomats, or withdraw its own ambassador from North Korea.</p>
<p>Whether it’s legal for a country to have someone killed on foreign soil as appears to have happened in this case is very complicated under international law. Broadly, it can be legal in a couple of very limited circumstances. </p>
<p>It’s allowed if the targeting state is at war with the targeted state (and the person who is killed is a citizen of the targeted state), and the person being targeted is a lawful target under the international law of armed conflict because that person is a member of the armed forces or is otherwise directly participating in the armed conflict.</p>
<p>Second, if the targeted person is about to carry out an armed attack on the targeting state, international law on the use of force says it’s lawful to target that person to stop them carrying out an imminent attack. </p>
<p>Having said that, neither of those scenarios seems to be at play here – <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/kim-jong-nam-murder-second-woman-arrested/">the two women arrested for carrying out the attack</a> are an Indonesian national and one carrying a Vietnamese passport. </p>
<p>Neither of those countries is at war with North Korea, so the first scenario is out. </p>
<p>The second scenario also doesn’t seem relevant as there’s no evidence to suggest that Kim Jong-nam was about to launch an armed attack against Malaysia, Indonesia or Vietnam necessitating the use of lethal force to prevent it. This appears to be a political assassination, not a legally justifiable act of self-defence or use of lethal force in a situation of armed conflict.</p>
<p>The only similar recent example that comes to mind is the <a href="http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/an-eye-for-an-eye-the-anatomy-of-mossad-s-dubai-operation-a-739908.html">assassination of a Hamas agent in Dubai in 2010</a>, allegedly by the Israeli Mossad agency. That was a case of a person being killed on foreign soil, seemingly by a state government agency. </p>
<p>The international response ranged from condemnation of the act and expulsion of Israeli diplomatic agents from countries that had been subject to passport fraud in the process, including Australia, as those responsible for that attack were carrying fake documents from various states.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/73602/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Emily Crawford is a member of the Australian Red Cross International Humanitarian Law Advisory Committee (NSW)</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ian Musgrave receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council to study adverse reactions to herbal medicines, and has previously been funded by the Australian Research Council to study potential natural product treatments for Alzheimer's disease. He also is receiving funding from APL to study food safety. He has lead a study into the developmental toxicity of cyanobacterial toxins.</span></em></p>Using nerve agents is banned under the Chemical Weapons Convention, but North Korea is not a party to it.Emily Crawford, Lecturer and Co-Director, Sydney Centre for International Law, University of SydneyIan Musgrave, Senior lecturer in Pharmacology, University of AdelaideLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/602902016-06-03T11:39:25Z2016-06-03T11:39:25ZAssad may be using sarin gas – and the world is staying on the sidelines<p>New <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/1.717294">reports</a> indicated that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad may be carrying out sarin gas attacks. If that’s true, this represents a massive escalation in his strategy, and a devastating blow to one of the only diplomatic achievements in the Syrian conflict so far.</p>
<p>Assad supposedly disposed of all his chemical weapons under a deal brokered by the US and Russia. Specifically, he signed up to the <a href="https://www.opcw.org/chemical-weapons-convention/">Chemical Weapons Convention</a> in <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/10/russia-un-syrian-chemical-weapons">2013</a>, which requires states to eliminate their chemical stockpiles completely. This was after his now infamous attack at <a href="https://www.hrw.org/report/2013/09/10/attacks-ghouta/analysis-alleged-use-chemical-weapons-syria">Ghouta</a>, in which regime forces killed approximately 1,400 people with sarin.</p>
<p>But despite that breakthrough, Assad has repeatedly carried out chemical strikes using agents such as <a href="https://theconversation.com/chlorine-attacks-continue-in-syria-with-no-prospect-of-assad-being-brought-to-account-39209">chlorine</a>. But what’s even more alarming about these reports is that while he has largely limited himself to small-scale attacks since acceding to the convention, he is supposedly now using sarin again. This is an extremely dangerous agent, capable of killing thousands.</p>
<p>As such, its use would represent a major intensification of Assad’s campaign – one that is being totally ignored by the international community.</p>
<p>We have been inundated with reports that the dictator has <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/james-clapper-assad-regime-chemical-attacks-2016-2?r=US&IR=T">used chlorine</a> in chemical strikes throughout Syria. <a href="https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/chlorine">Chlorine</a> is not considered the worst chemical agent, but its effects are still horrific, especially when delivered by <a href="http://www.vocativ.com/237144/syria-a-brief-history-of-the-barrel-bomb-timeline/">barrel bomb</a>, a method long favoured by Assad’s forces.</p>
<p>For example, chlorine was used in March 2015 in the town of <a href="http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/07/03/the-build-it-yourself-bombs/">Sarmin</a>. The strike killed an entire family, including three very young children. Dr Mohamed Tennari, who treated the victims, gave testimony to the UN Security Council, reducing its members <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/16/us-mideast-crisis-syria-un-idUSKBN0N72SY20150416">to tears</a>. Since then, strikes have been numerous and extensive, and Assad was even <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/syria-s-assad-used-chemical-weapons-civilians-during-truce-israel-n530096">using chlorine</a> during the efforts to enforce a “<a href="https://theconversation.com/despite-ceasefire-violence-in-syria-is-still-outpacing-efforts-to-stop-the-conflict-55190">cessation of hostilities</a>” earlier this year.</p>
<p>Distressing though this is, it would pale in comparison to hard confirmation that Assad is now using sarin, a vastly more dangerous and deadly agent. Last month, Israeli sources reported that Assad had used it against IS fighters to stop them seizing airbases near Damascus. This was reported as the <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/17/assads-forces-have-used-sarin-nerve-gas-for-the-first-time-since/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/17/assads-forces-have-used-sarin-nerve-gas-for-the-first-time-since/">first time Assad had used sarin</a> since Ghouta. </p>
<p>But he may have used it even earlier. On December 22 2015, the regime apparently used a nerve gas of some kind in one of the same suburbs targeted at Ghouta: <a href="http://en.etilaf.org/press/chemical-attack-by-assad-regime-on-moadamiya-a-blatant-violation-of-unsc-resolutions.html">Moadamiya</a>. A <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/united-states-probes-reports-of-chemical-weapons-use-by-bashar-al-assad-regime-in-syria/">video</a> was released “showing victims, some wearing breathing masks and others with tubes siphoning blood from their lungs”. </p>
<p>No matter when the first attack post-2013 actually was, the fact is that we now have several credible (if unproven) allegations of sarin and/or other nerve gas use in Syria, and that these attacks are getting more destructive. Pessmimistic concerns that Assad would hoard some of his arsenal may have been borne out, or it may be that he has re-acquired sarin from other sources.</p>
<p>It’s worth noting that this is exactly what Assad did the first time around; until Ghouta, he tested the waters, carrying out bigger and bigger chemical attacks to see whether the international community would retaliate. When they didn’t, Ghouta was attacked. He may be using this tactic again, slowly building up his strikes to see if the world bites back.</p>
<p>If precedent is anything to go by, it probably won’t.</p>
<h2>On the sidelines</h2>
<p>Since the Syrian government’s stockpiles of sarin and other weapons were destroyed, the international community has done nothing to stop the subsequent chemical attacks. And its negligence has implications beyond the attacks themselves: it threatens to destroy the Chemical Weapons Convention, the best hope we have for eliminating these hideous armaments.</p>
<p>If Assad gets away with what he’s done, the convention will be meaningless. Its fundamental principle is supposedly that the possession and use of chemical weapons must be stopped at all costs, but the treatment of Assad reveals that, in fact, it’s being taken on a case-by-case basis. </p>
<p>Sticking to the convention suddenly looks like a mug’s game – and it will only be harder to enforce it from now on. How are powerful states supposed to make others toe the line and destroy their stockpiles when they’ve allowed a murderous government to gas its own citizens? </p>
<p>Above all, this is a disaster for the US. Often first in line to enforce international rules – albeit when it is convenient for them – Washington has now lost the legitimacy to tell others what to do when it comes to chemical weapons. That legitimacy has been steadily eroded over the years, not least by the US military’s use of white phosphorous in <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4440664.stm">Fallujah, 2004</a>, but now it’s finally crumbled. </p>
<p>If the reports of Assad’s latest escalation are valid, this threatens the very basis of chemical weapons control. And the international community is just sitting back and watching it collapse.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/60290/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Bentley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Syria’s chemical weapons were supposedly all destroyed in 2014, but news reports indicate that nerve gas may have been kept back.Michelle Bentley, Senior Lecturer in International Relations, Royal Holloway University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/449952015-07-23T10:08:43Z2015-07-23T10:08:43ZExplainer: biosafety and biosecurity in South Africa<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89350/original/image-20150722-1479-8qygt2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South Africa needs to ensure that it is equipped to deal with bioterrorism attacks and possible laboratory outbreaks.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mariana Bazo/Reuters</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the scientific world, laboratories provide the crucial space for scientists to work and test hypotheses that they are working on. There are dangers involved, though. Laboratories may contain many hazardous chemicals and the spread of these could have devastating effects on the environment, humans, livestock and agriculture. </p>
<p>It is imperative that the necessary precautions are taken to ensure that hazardous material and potentially dangerous pathogens are handled safely and securely.</p>
<p>Biosafety generally means the adherence to good laboratory practices and <a href="http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=33817">procedures</a>. It also refers to the use of appropriate safety equipment and facilities in order to ensure the safe handling, storage and disposal of biological material. This includes <a href="http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/publicat/lbg-ldmbl-04/ch2-eng.php">pathogens</a> – infectious agents that cause disease. </p>
<p>Measures to prevent harm caused by the accidental exposure to harmful pathogens and toxins fall under the term biosafety. Physical containment barriers and practices are <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2493080/">mandatory</a>. This is to prevent unintentional exposure to biological agents. They are also required to prevent accidental release into the environment.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.epa.gov/agriculture/tbis.html">Biosecurity</a> refers to the misuse or abuse of biological material. This includes pathogens and their products. There need to be ways to protect their misuse from causing harm to humans, livestock or crops. </p>
<p>Measures need to be implemented to control any harm in the event of exposure. This includes the protection, control and accountability for harmful biological materials – specifically in <a href="http://www.who.int/csr/resources/publications/biosafety/WHO_CDS_EPR_2006_6.pdf">laboratories</a>, in order to prevent their unauthorised access, loss or theft.</p>
<p>Bio-risk assessment is the quantitative and/or qualitative assessment of the possibility of a particular biological event. This includes natural disease outbreaks such as Ebola, accidents or the deliberate misuse of biological agents. The type of biological event that may adversely affect the health of humans, animals and crops. </p>
<h2>Why it is relevant to South Africa</h2>
<p>The use of biological material for harmful purposes is becoming an increasing threat. Even though it is not widely publicised, there have been incidents of both unintentional and deliberate exposure to harmful biological agents. Some of the most common agents used in bioterrorism include <a href="http://gulfnews.com/news/americas/usa/sarin-how-nazis-developed-deadly-neurotoxin-1.1179868">sarin neurotoxin</a>, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-33607623">ricin</a> and <a href="http://www.npr.org/2011/02/15/93170200/timeline-how-the-anthrax-terror-unfolded">anthrax</a>. </p>
<p>Existing legislation and capacity to monitor and deal with these types of problems is <a href="http://uctscholar.uct.ac.za/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=1277&local_base=GEN01">fragmented</a> in South Africa. This is scattered across a number of <a href="http://www.acgt.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/South-Africa-status-with-respect-to-biotechnology-and-biosafety_Hennie-Groenewald.pdf">departments</a> such as Agriculture, Health, and Trade and Industry. This makes reporting and monitoring very difficult. </p>
<p>It would be appropriate for one department, such as Science and Technology, to take overall responsibility for the implementation of biorisk assessment legislation in South Africa. </p>
<p>South Africa has excellent ethical guidelines in place for human and animal <a href="http://www.kznhealth.gov.za/research/ethics3.pdf">experimentation</a>. But there is a lack of education and training in research ethics for life scientists working with harmful biological <a href="http://sabioriskassociation.org/">material</a>. </p>
<p>There is a conspicuous absence of a database of both public and commercial laboratories working on such material within South Africa. There is generally a disconcerting low level of awareness among life scientists about national and international conventions, laws and regulations related to their research.</p>
<h2>How vulnerable is South Africa?</h2>
<p>South Africa has largely been spared the threats of bioterrorism. But given that South Africa is the <a href="http://www.southafrica.info/africa/">gateway</a> to Africa and the transit route to many Western and Eastern destinations, we will not be immune from such threats forever. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89349/original/image-20150722-1473-lfqsa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89349/original/image-20150722-1473-lfqsa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89349/original/image-20150722-1473-lfqsa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89349/original/image-20150722-1473-lfqsa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89349/original/image-20150722-1473-lfqsa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89349/original/image-20150722-1473-lfqsa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89349/original/image-20150722-1473-lfqsa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">All scientists in South Africa need to be aware of the dangers that stem from laboratories.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wolfgang Rattay/Reuters</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Research and development in the life sciences are crucial in driving the bio-economy in South Africa. It is also imperative that such research is conducted in a safe, secure and ethically sound manner. There is a general attitude that “this does not apply to me or my work” or “my work cannot be used for harmful purposes by <a href="http://www.gov.za/minister-naledi-pandor-international-symposium-bio-safety-genetically-modified-organisms">scientists”</a>. </p>
<p>Creating awareness and accepting that the misuse of scientific technology is a reality is in the interest of both South Africans and the life science community.</p>
<p>Although the South African legislative framework is robust and comprehensive, it suffers from several <a href="http://innovationsymposium.wits.ac.za/usrfiles/users/1/pdfs/Pamela_Andanda.pdf">limitations and challenges</a>. These include:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Lack of coherence in the categorisation of pathogens;</p></li>
<li><p>The lack of harmonisation of guidelines; and</p></li>
<li><p>The deficiency in infrastructure and capacity to meet the challenges for implementation of the legislation. </p></li>
</ul>
<p>South Africa also has a complex set of regulations governing the detection, identification, control, and prevention of human, animal and plant diseases caused by infectious agents. There is a definite need to develop a single, locally relevant list of infectious agents. There is also a need for their control and eradication. This list should be dynamic and regularly updated. </p>
<p>One should not be alarmist, but given the increasing threats elsewhere in the world, South Africa should not be complacent. The country should rather be proactive in putting in place preventative measures to protect its population. Criminal elements intending to use technology for harmful purposes are always a threat anywhere in the word. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Find the official Academy of Science of South Africa report <a href="http://www.assaf.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Final-WEB-K-12423-ASSAF-Biosafety-and-Biosecurity-Report_DevV11LR.pdf">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/44995/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Iqbal Parker receives research funding from the South African Medical Research Council (MRC) and the National Research Foundation (NRF)</span></em></p>In the science world, laboratories are essential but safety precautions should be taken to prevent any incidents like the Ebola outbreak or biochemical attacks.Iqbal Parker, Director, International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/188702013-10-03T20:34:07Z2013-10-03T20:34:07ZSeek and destroy: dismantling Syria’s chemical weapon stockpile<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/32382/original/dpv87qth-1380778021.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The huge task of locating and disposing of Syria's chemical weapons has begun ... so what will inspectors look for?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Lucie Parsaghian</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A team of inspectors from the United Nations and Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (<a href="http://www.opcw.org/">OPCW</a>) <a href="http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2013/10/un-inspectors-begin-mission-destroy-syrian-chemical-weapons/70091/">entered Syria</a> on Tuesday to begin the long task of finding and disposing of the country’s chemical weapon stockpile, after a large-scale <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-23777201">nerve gas attack</a> <a href="https://theconversation.com/chemical-weapons-in-syria-who-what-where-when-why-17581">in Damascus</a> in August.</p>
<p>This attack was confirmed by a <a href="http://www.un.org/disarmament/content/slideshow/Secretary_General_Report_of_CW_Investigation.pdf">joint report</a> issued by the UN, World Health Organisation (<a href="http://www.who.int/en/">WHO</a>) and OPCW in September, but a few days before the report was released, the Syrian government agreed to <a href="http://www.opcw.org/special-sections/the-opcw-and-syria/statements-and-press-releases/opcw-to-review-request-from-syria/">sign the Chemical Weapons Convention</a> and a settlement was reached that the country’s stocks of chemical weapons would be destroyed <a href="http://www.opcw.org/fileadmin/OPCW/EC/M-33/ecm33nat01_e_.pdf">within a year</a>.</p>
<p>So what will the weapons inspectors be looking for - and how will they know if they’ve found everything?</p>
<h2>Follow the paper trail</h2>
<p>As part of the destruction process, the Syrian government <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/21/world/middleeast/syria.html?_r=0">provided OPCW with a list</a> of their chemical weapon stockpiles. While the OPCW does not release information about each nation’s weapons declaration, the US government has suggested it thinks it is a truthful statement of the Syrian chemical weapons inventory.</p>
<p>To be sure that the Syrian government are not trying to withhold some chemical weapons, the inspection team will check that the paper trail for the declared materials makes internal sense. </p>
<p>This process would be a cross between quantity surveying and forensic accountancy, but with laboratory chemistry to confirm the identity and purity of the materials.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/32383/original/4b6b5989-1380778175.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/32383/original/4b6b5989-1380778175.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/32383/original/4b6b5989-1380778175.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32383/original/4b6b5989-1380778175.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32383/original/4b6b5989-1380778175.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32383/original/4b6b5989-1380778175.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32383/original/4b6b5989-1380778175.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32383/original/4b6b5989-1380778175.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">UN inspectors collecting samples from a site that was allegedly hit by a chemical gas weapon, in Moadamiyeh suburb, Damascus, Syria.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Moadamiyeh Media Centre</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For a bioweapons example of this, the UN investigation into Iraqi weapons of mass destruction found out that Iraq had imported tens of tonnes of biological growth media. </p>
<p>The media is used in medical diagnostics, but the amount needed for that purpose was in the hundreds of kilograms each year. This hundred-fold discrepancy allowed the inspectors to deduce that there was a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rihab_Rashid_Taha">hidden bioweapons program</a>.</p>
<p>There are also checks in the environment <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocky_Flats_Plant">outside of potential chemical weapons production and storage sites</a>. Although many of the weapons themselves are short-lived in the natural environment, some of the precursors (chemicals that when reacted together produce a chemical warfare agent) and breakdown products survive longer and have no known natural source.</p>
<h2>What needs to be destroyed?</h2>
<p>Estimates suggest that the Syrian stockpile consists of :</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/most-of-syrias-toxins-can-be-destroyed-more-easily-than-officials-initially-thought/2013/09/26/66cd1ca2-26e3-11e3-b75d-5b7f66349852_story.html">300 tonnes of mustard gas</a> (a <a href="http://www.bt.cdc.gov/agent/sulfurmustard/basics/facts.asp">blistering agent</a>)</li>
<li>700 tonnes of sarin (a <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/22/syria-deaths-strike-sarin-alleged-chemical">nerve agent</a>)</li>
<li><a href="http://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/en/IMG/pdf/Syrian_Chemical_Programme.pdf">several tonnes of a V-series</a> persistent <a href="http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/831760-overview">nerve agent</a>.</li>
</ul>
<p>Comments by US officials suggest that Syria only maintained a small quantity of sarin ready to use. Most of the material was stored as precursors. </p>
<p>The French government suggests that these stocks are of a “binary type chemical weapon”. Toxins in binary chemical weapons are kept in the form of two physically separated precursors, making them safer to transport and store.</p>
<p>The Chemical Weapons Convention is clear that nations need to destroy:</p>
<ul>
<li>the chemical agents (bulk agents and precursors)</li>
<li>the delivery systems (bombs, shells, and rockets)</li>
<li>the means of producing more chemical agents.</li>
</ul>
<h2>How will they destroy the chemical weapons?</h2>
<p>Bulk stores of chemical weapons and precursors can be processed in a similar way to any other toxic liquid. This would be accomplished by reacting them with a denaturing agent or placing them in a liquid incinerator. </p>
<p>Although this is a major environmental and health and safety issue, it would not be beyond most industrialised nations. </p>
<p>To dispose of most chemical weapons, mixing them with an alkaline solution is the favoured denaturation method. However, some agents, particularly V-series nerve agents, are better disposed of by other reactions, such as exposure to hypochlorite (ClO<sup>-</sup> ) bleach solution. </p>
<p>In all cases, the final mixture is usually incinerated at over 1,000°C and even then, the flue gas is scrubbed to ensure minimal toxic material reaches the environment.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/32384/original/shm7t9rz-1380778322.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/32384/original/shm7t9rz-1380778322.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/32384/original/shm7t9rz-1380778322.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32384/original/shm7t9rz-1380778322.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32384/original/shm7t9rz-1380778322.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32384/original/shm7t9rz-1380778322.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32384/original/shm7t9rz-1380778322.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32384/original/shm7t9rz-1380778322.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">UN weapons inspectors collecting samples during their investigations at Zamalka, east of Damscus, Syria, in August.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Local Committee of Arbeen</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Chemical agents that have been loaded into delivery systems are more difficult to dispose. Until the early 1970s it was common to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_CHASE">dump the weapons at sea</a> rather than try to safely disassemble them. </p>
<p>Since the Chemical Weapons Convention era, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnston_Atoll_Chemical_Agent_Disposal_System">specially designed and often highly automated facilities</a> have been used to dismantle the weapons, remove the chemical weapon agent, burn the explosive components, denature and incinerate the chemical weapon agents and finally decontaminate the metal casings (which then become scrap metal).</p>
<h2>Working with precursors</h2>
<p>Storing sarin (and possibly V-series agents) as precursors is very good news. Although the precursors and breakdown products are often toxic and/ or corrosive, they are nowhere near as dangerous as the nerve agents. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/32385/original/v4xd4gcp-1380778422.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/32385/original/v4xd4gcp-1380778422.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/32385/original/v4xd4gcp-1380778422.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=748&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32385/original/v4xd4gcp-1380778422.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=748&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32385/original/v4xd4gcp-1380778422.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=748&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32385/original/v4xd4gcp-1380778422.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=940&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32385/original/v4xd4gcp-1380778422.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=940&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/32385/original/v4xd4gcp-1380778422.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=940&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A UN weapons inspector collecting samples in August.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Committee of Arbeen</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>If the Syrians used the same combination of chemicals that the US developed for their <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M687">binary chemical weapons</a> program (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methylphosphonyl_difluoride">methylphosphonic difluoride</a> and isopropyl alcohol), the precursors are around 1,000 times less toxic than the weapons.</p>
<p>Another advantage for the disarmament team is that the precursor materials only work as a weapon if you have all of them. It may be that to disable the binary weapons, only one less toxic material needs to be disposed of in the short term. That would prevent the production of any more chemical weapons immediately, while a solution to disposing of the more toxic precursor is found. </p>
<p>If the Syrians are using the US binary weapon components, disposing of the isopropyl alcohol would be relatively easy as it is a <a href="http://www.bunnings.com.au/diggers-125ml-isopropyl-cleaning-alcohol_p1564443">common laboratory and household chemical</a> but chemical weapons stocks would be harder to reestablish if the methylphosphonic difluoride component was destroyed.</p>
<p>It’s not all good news - there would still be several hundred tonnes of chemical weapons that would need to be destroyed. The OPCW, the US and Russia are working on a <a href="https://www.opcw.org/fileadmin/OPCW/EC/M-33/ecm33nat01_e_.pdf">framework</a> that would see all of Syria’s chemical weapons destroyed in the first half of 2014. </p>
<p>That is seen as a very tight schedule. Following <a href="http://www.opcw.org/the-opcw-and-libya/libya-facts-and-figures/">Libya’s accession</a> to the Chemical Weapons Convention in 2004 it was expected that it would take a relatively short time to destroy their roughly <a href="http://www.finlandtimes.fi/worldwide/2013/09/27/2609/Libyas-mustard-gas-destroyed-in-almost-10-years">25 tonnes of mustard agents</a>. </p>
<p>However, the process was incomplete by the time of the fall of the Gaddafi government and is now not expected to be complete until December 2016. </p>
<p>To put that in perspective, the Syrians are thought to have 12 times more mustard agent and 24 times more nerve agent than Libya.</p>
<h2>Where’s it going to happen?</h2>
<p>It is <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-how-will-syrias-chemical-weapons-be-destroyed-18174">Syria’s responsibility</a> as the nation that owns the weapons to destroy them. </p>
<p>The US and Russia have previously used a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_chemical_weapons">combination</a> of chemical neutralisation and incineration to eliminate their own stockpiles. Dumping the weapons at sea or burning them in the open air is <a href="http://www.opcw.org/chemical-weapons-convention/">explicitly forbidden</a> by the Chemical Weapons Convention. </p>
<p>Although they may offer technical advice, assistance and even financial support, it is <a href="http://www.fas.org/programs/bio/chemweapons/cwconvention/CWC_implement_leg.html#211">illegal</a> for the US to import chemical weapons and Russia has also said that they <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/26/us-syria-crisis-russia-chemical-idUSBRE98P0N820130926">will not allow</a> the weapons to be moved onto their territory for destruction. </p>
<p>It is unlikely that any of Syria’s neighbours would be willing to receive the materials. That leaves trying to chemically react and incinerate up to 1,000 tonnes of lethal toxins in the middle of a warzone.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/18870/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Martin Boland does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A team of inspectors from the United Nations and Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) entered Syria on Tuesday to begin the long task of finding and disposing of the country’s chemical…Martin Boland, Research Fellow, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.