Post date: Sep 17, 2013 12:38:30 PM
U.N. chemical investigators have confirmed the use of sarin nerve agent in an August 21 poison gas attack outside the Syrian capital, an attack the US says killed more than 1400 people including 400 children. Created by accident in the 1930s by German scientists producing pesticides, the deadly nerve agent has been used as a weapon at least three times in the last 25 years.
SAID TO BE EASTERN GHUTAH, SYRIA (RECENT - SAID TO BE AUGUST 21, 2013) (U.S. GOVERNMENT HANDOUT) - Sarin was discovered in 1938 in Wuppertal-Elberfeld in Germany by scientists attempting to create stronger pesticides, but in recent decades it has been used in three infamous acts of chemical warfare.
Dan Kaszeta (PRON: Ka-zeeta), an independent consultant and author on chemical, biological, and radiological defence, says victims, such as those killed in last month's apparent attack on civilians inDamascus that killed hundreds, suffer appalling deaths."Symptoms generally proceed through headache, nausea, vomiting, tearing, lots of secretions - saliva, mucous, loss of your bowel and urinary control, leading eventually to convulsions. Generally the mechanism of death is asphyxiation because if all of your muscles are convulsing, so are your diaphragm muscles, so you can't actually breathe properly," said Kaszeta.
Sarin is one of the most toxic and rapidly acting of the nerve gases. Odourless, colourless and tasteless, it is made in liquid form and, according to Kaszeta, looks a little like vodka.
Sarin binds and blocks the action of acetylcholinesterase - an enzyme in the body that breaks down a chemical called acetylcholine. When exposed to the gas, the levels of acetylcholine quickly build up in victims' bodies, disrupting bodily functions.
Once stored, the agent can last for lengthy periods, according to former top U.S. weapons investigator for Iraq, Charles Duelfer.
"Not all nerve agent is the same. Sarin came be made different ways and have different qualities. So if you get samples of it that can be analysed in a laboratory - for example you can see if it has preservatives in it, sort of like some sarins are like Wonderbread, you can put it on the shelf and it can last forever," said Duelfer, on August 22, as news of the alleged attack was being reported.
It will quickly evaporate once released, though, according to Dan Kaszeta, a US army chemical corps officer in the 1990s, who witnessed the vapourising of the chemical in a test.
"In my own training, in a relatively cool room, in a live nerve agent training facility in Alabama I watched, I physically stood there and watched a droplet of sarin evaporate in a matter of minutes," said Kaszeta. "Some of the other nerve agents, things like VX or Soman, can last days or weeks because they are thick and oily substances with very low vapour pressures, whereas sarin was designed to be a non persistent rapid casualty producing agent, not a long term contaminant," he said.
Kaszeta says there are up to 20 different chemical pathways used to make sarin, but emphasises that its manufacture is far from an easy process.
"It's not a high-tech product, it's the cutting edge of 1938 technology. Having said that, the various 18 to 20 different pathways to produce industrial quantities of sarin require sophisticated and very hazardous chemicals. For example, the majority of the processes involve handling large quantities of hydrophloric acid, hyrdogen fluoride, HF, which as you may or may not know is extremely dangerous stuff, the sort of thing that the amateur is not going to mess around with in the kitchen," he said.
The rocket attack in the Syrian capital on August 21 has caused a diplomatic storm. Chemical weapons were outlawed globally in 1993 via the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), an arms control agreement which outlawed the production, stockpiling, and use of chemical weapons and their precursors. A total of 189 states are party to the CWC, and Syria on Saturday (September 14) agreed to a provisional application pending its entry into force on October 14.
Sarin was one of the nerve agents believed to be used by Saddam Hussein's Iraqi forces in an attack on the Kurdish city of Halabja in which 5,000 Kurds died and more than 7,000 people were injured or suffered long-term illness. In a sarin attack on the Tokyo subway carried out by members of Aum Shinrikyo in March 1995, 13 people died.
According to initial reports, the U.N.'s report on Syria does not apportion blame. U.S. allegations that theSyrian government was responsible led to threats of military action before a deal was brokered byRussia for Syria to make safe its chemical arms.