VX: banned, deadly nerve agent first created in UK lab in 1950s
What is it?
Code-named by the U.S. scientists who mass produced it, VX is an organophosphate compound and one of the deadliest chemical agents ever manufactured. Stockpiled by the U.S. in huge quantities during the Cold War, VX is perhaps 10 times as powerful as the Sarin toxin.
Odorless and clear when pure, it has the appearance of motor oil and is stable enough to be transported. It is also hard to detect, an advantage for a would-be assassin.
Downsides are that it lingers, potentially contaminating areas for long periods of time.
“It can kill an adult weighing 70 kilograms with just five milligrams on the skin,” said Yosuke Yamasato, former principal of the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force Chemical School. “It’s unbelievable that the executors of the crime used it with their bare hands — they must have not known the material was VX.”
What does it do?
It strikes the nervous system fast. A high dose can kill in minutes when inhaled, as the blood vessels in the lungs rapidly spread the compound into the bloodstream and vital organs. Nerve agents over-stimulate glands and muscles, leading them to quickly fatigue and become unable to sustain breathing.
Symptoms depend on dosage and whether it is inhaled or introduced through the skin — the slower form of poisoning. Exposure to low doses is survivable.
But more serious contamination is fast-acting and often gruesome. People exposed to the toxin may become short of breath and nauseous in minutes, or at a higher dose experience seizures, heart failure and a total shut down of the respiratory system.
There are antidotes but treatment must be immediate. U.S. soldiers carried kits to inject themselves with antidote during the first Iraq War.
The compound was first created in a British laboratory in the early 1950s. But American scientists honed its potency during the Cold War arms race with the Soviet Union.