DEADLY NERVE AGENT CAN KILL IN SECONDS
NERVE agents are among the most deadly chemical weapons used in warfare and assassinations over the last 30 years. HOW DO THEY WORK?
Experts say the clear liquids can be made at only ‘a few laboratories in the world’, most government-controlled.
They can kill within minutes, by disrupting electrical signals through the nervous system which makes it hard to breathe. People cough and foam at the mouth as their lungs fill with mucus, they vomit, sweat, become incontinent and their eyes run. Victims typically die from suffocation.
It is described by experts as ‘turning on all the taps’. Dr Simon Cotton, from the University of Birmingham, said: ‘If you have ever seen a fly sprayed it drops on its back and lies with its legs in the air, twitching – this is the result of nerve agents taking hold.’
WHEN WERE THEY INVENTED?
Nerve agents were developed in Germany in the 1930s as pesticides, but were found to be extremely toxic. The first modern nerve agents, including sarin – released by a Japanese cult on the Tokyo subway in 1995 – were devised by the Germans during World War II.
Germany never used chemical weapons, despite producing ten tons of sarin. Production was taken over by the Soviet army after it captured the plant at Dyernfurth.
A new generation of the chemical
weapons include VX, which was invented by the British during the Cold War and is 150 times more deadly than sarin. The UN classes it as a weapon of mass destruction.
A ‘fourth generation’ of nerve agents, developed by the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s, are said to be even more toxic than VX. These Novichoks, meaning ‘newcomer’ in Russian, contain two harmless chemicals which become toxic when mixed in an aerosol or missile. This makes them easier to store and transport safely.
Professor Malcolm Sperrin, of the Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine, said: ‘Symptoms of exposure may include respiratory arrest, heart failure, twitching or spasms – anything where the nerve control is degraded.’
Scientists do not want to say how nerve agents are created, for fear of copycat attacks, but the ingredients are cheap and easy to obtain. They were first used in the Iran/Iraq war in the 1980s. HOW ARE THEY USED?
VX is one of four main nerve agents and is usually inhaled or absorbed through skin. Just a fraction of a drop can take effect within seconds and ‘fatally disrupt the nervous system’, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. They can be administered via aerosol or smeared on a victim’s face.
North Korean leader’s Kim Jongun’s half-brother, Kim Jong-nam, died within 20 minutes after his face was smeared with VX at an airport in Malaysia last February.