Chemical Weapons

John Singer Sargent, "Gassed"

Strictly speaking, a chemical weapon relies on the physiological effects of a chemical, so agents used to produce smoke or flame, as herbicides, or for riot control, are not considered to be chemical weapons. Although certain chemical weapons can be used to kill large numbers of people, as weapons of mass destruction, other weapons are designed to injure or terrorise people. In addition to having potentially horrific effects, chemical weapons are of great concern because they are cheaper and easier to manufacture and deliver than nuclear or biological weapons. Although there are many thousands of chemical compounds that could theoretically be used as chemical warfare agents, the actual number that have been weaponised is relatively small, perhaps a few tens in number.

The means available to adversaries for delivery of chemical weapons range from specially designed, sophisticated weapon systems developed by nations to relatively inefficient improvised devices employed by terrorists and other disaffected individuals and groups. Any nation with the political will and a minimal industrial capability could produce chemical agents suitable for use in warfare. Efficient weaponisation of these agents, however, does require design and production skills usually found in countries that possess a munitions development and production infrastructure or access to such skills from cooperative sources. On the other hand, almost any nation or group could fabricate crude agent dispersal devices. While such methods may result in a small number of affected persons, the psychological affect could be extremely significant.

Chemical agents have effects that can be immediate or delayed, can be persistent or non-persistent, and can have significant physiological effects. While relatively large quantities of an agent are required to ensure an area remains contaminated over time, small-scale selective use that exploits surprise can cause significant disruption and may have lethal effects.

A chemical weapon relies on the physiological effects of a chemical, so agents used to produce smoke or flame, as herbicides, or for riot control, are not considered to be chemical weapons. Although certain chemical weapons can be used to kill large numbers of people, as weapons of mass destruction, other weapons are designed to injure or terrorise people. In addition to having potentially horrific effects, chemical weapons are of great concern because they are cheaper and easier to manufacture and deliver than nuclear or biological weapons. Although there are many thousands of chemical compounds that could theoretically be used as chemical warfare agents, the actual number that have been weaponised is relatively small, perhaps a few tens in number.

History

There is a considerable amount of evidence that chemical weapons usage goes back well into history.  Menes, the first pharaoh, certainly had a serious interest in toxicology in about 3,000 BCE. The Egyptians used hydrocyanic acid. Sulfur dioxide, from burning sulfur was used by the Greeks. Later both sulfur dioxide and arsenic were proposed as weapons by Leonardo da Vinci.

WWI

At the beginning of World War I, the use of chemical weapons was still very much taboo. Not only did mankind have a universal aversion to the use of poison but there was also the 1899 Hague Convention. The modern use of chemical weapons began  when both sides to the conflict used poison gas to inflict agonising suffering and to cause significant battlefield casualties. The first agent was ethyl bromoacetate, a lachrymatory non-lethal agent.Such weapons basically consisted of well known commercial chemicals put into standard munitions such as grenades and artillery shells. Chlorine, phosgene (a choking agent) and mustard gas (which inflicts painful burns on the skin and causes significant damage to the respiratory system) were among the first chemicals used.  Chlorine was the first lethal chemical used, at the 2nd Battle of Ypres. The results were indiscriminate and often devastating. Nearly 100,000 immediate deaths resulted and many more suffered long-term damage leading to death from conditions such as emphysema, some casualties survived for many years but suffered continuous respiratory ill health. Since World War I, chemical weapons have caused more than one million casualties globally.

Inter-war years

As a result of public outrage, the Geneva Protocol, which prohibited the use of chemical weapons in warfare, was signed in 1925. While a welcome step, the Protocol had a number of significant shortcomings, including the fact that it did not prohibit the development, production or stockpiling of chemical weapons. Also problematic was the fact that many states that ratified the Protocol reserved the right to use prohibited weapons against states that were not party to the Protocol or as retaliation in kind if chemical weapons were used against them.

The chemicals employed before World War II can be styled as the "classic" chemical weapons. They are relatively simple substances, most of which were either common industrial chemicals or their derivatives. The classic chemical agents would be only marginally useful in modern warfare and generally only against an unsophisticated opponent, although they could be used in terrorist attacks, and have been used in Syria in modern times. Large quantities would be required to produce militarily significant effects, thus complicating logistics. In the case of terrorist attacks, relatively small amounts of an agent could cause significant casualties and disruption if used in some situations, for example in enclosed spaces such as shopping centres, concert halls or underground railway systems.

World War II

Chemical weapons were not used  during WWII.  Some claim of the use of Zyklon B, a commercial pesticide that released hydrogen cyanide gas, in the Nazi extermination camps was an example of chemical warfare. Zyklon B had been developed by chemists Walter Heerdt, Bruno Tesch, and Gerhard Peters at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry in Dahlem and produced by  Zyklon B gas was not a chemical weapon; it is not, and has never been, subject to any international disarmament bans. After World War I and during World War II, it was the most commonly used pesticide in the world. It was first used on September 3, 1941  in the Auschwitz death camp, by the initiative of the camp’s first deputy commandant Karl Fritzsch. The first victims were Soviet prisoners of war who had been taken to Auschwitz, and 250 sick Poles.

Although both the axis and allied powers experimented with CW agents during WWII, they were not used, the reasons may be that they were following the proscription on their use under the Geneva Protocol, or that all civilians and troops were equipped with respirators and other protective measures.

Gerhard Schrader, a 33-year-old German chemist at the IG Farben chemical company, created what he called Preparation 9/91, in 1936. Its intended use was as a pesticide, but it proved too effective and killed a wide range of organisms, including man. It was handed over to the military scientists of the Third Reich at Spandau Citadel, they were so impressed with its toxicity that they renamed the compound Tabun, the first nerve agent. He was paid 50,000 Marks (about $450,000 or £360,000 in 2022). Only two years later he developed another agent, Sarin. A third agent, Soman, was developed during the war. By the end of the war in excess of 50,000 tons of nerve agents had been produced, and many thousands of shells had been filled.

Cold War

During the Cold War, many nations researched chemical agents, possibly as many as twenty-five in all. Major research was certainly carried out in the USA, USSR and the UK, and chemical agents were weaponised and stockpiled by them.

United Kingdom

Work in the UK was centred on the Chemical Defence Experimental Establishment (CDEE), Porton. Ranajit Ghosh, a chemist at ICI, was investigating a class of organophosphate compounds  for use as a pesticide. In 1954, ICI put one of them on the market under the trade name Amiton. It was subsequently withdrawn, as it was too toxic for safe use. The toxicity did not go unnoticed, and samples of it were sent to Porton Down for evaluation. After the evaluation was complete, several members of this class of compounds were developed into a new group of much more lethal nerve agents, the V agents. The best-known of these is probably VX, assigned the UK Rainbow Code Purple Possum, with the Russian V-Agent coming a close second (Amiton is largely forgotten as VG). Other members of the V series are VE, VG, VM and VR.

On the defensive side, there were years of work to develop the means of prophylaxis, therapy, rapid detection and identification, decontamination and more effective protection of the body against nerve agents, capable of exerting effects through the skin, the eyes and respiratory tract.

Tests were carried out on servicemen to determine the effects of nerve agents on human subjects, with one recorded death due to a nerve gas experiment, that of 20 year old RAF airman Ronald Maddison . It was 51 years before an inquest found that he had died from sarin poisoning

In the 1950s the Chemical Defence Experimental Establishment became involved with the development of CS, a riot control agent, and took an increasing role in trauma and wound ballistics work. Both these facets of Porton Down's work had become more important because of the situation in Northern Ireland.

In the early 1950s, nerve agents such as sarin were produced, about 20 tons were made from 1954 until 1956 at CDE Nancekuke, in Cornwall.  Nancekuke was an important factory for producing and stockpiling chemical weapons. Small amounts of VX were produced there, mainly for laboratory test purposes, but also to validate plant designs and optimise chemical processes for potential mass production.  In the late 1950s, the chemical weapons production plant at Nancekuke was mothballed, but was maintained through the 1960s and 1970s in a state whereby production of chemical weapons could easily re-commence if required. The site closed in 1978, and reverted to being RAF Portreath, a radar station. It is now Remote Radar Head Portreath or RRH Portreath an air defence radar station operated by the Royal Air Force, and is part of Programme HYDRA.

United States

In 1958 the British government traded their VX technology with the United States in exchange for information on thermonuclear weapons  and by 1961 the U.S. was producing large amounts of VX and performing its own nerve agent research. This research produced at least three more agents; the four agents (VE, VG, VM, VX) are collectively known as the "V-Series" class of nerve agents.

Between 1951 and 1969, Dugway Proving Ground was the site of testing for various chemical and biological agents, including an open-air aerodynamic dissemination test in 1968 that accidentally killed, on neighboring farms, approximately 6,400 sheep by an unspecified nerve agent.

Project 112 and Project SHAD

From 1962 to 1973, the Department of Defense planned 134 tests that was described as a chemical and biological weapons "vulnerability-testing program", it was claimed at the time that harmless simulants were used, but in n 2002, the Pentagon admitted that some of tests used real chemical and biological weapons.

In October 2002, the Senate Armed Forces Subcommittee on Personnel held hearings as the controversial news broke that chemical agents had been tested on thousands of American military personnel. The hearings were chaired by Senator Max Cleland, former VA administrator and Vietnam War veteran.

Soviet Union

Due to the secrecy of the Soviet Union's government, very little information was available about the direction and progress of the Soviet chemical weapons until relatively recently. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Russian chemist Vil Mirzayanov published articles revealing illegal chemical weapons experimentation in Russia.

In 1993, Mirzayanov was imprisoned and fired from his job at the State Research Institute of Organic Chemistry and Technology, where he had worked for 26 years. In March 1994, after a major campaign by U.S. scientists on his behalf, Mirzayanov was released. Among the information related by Vil Mirzayanov was the direction of Soviet research into the development of even more toxic nerve agents, which saw most of its success during the mid-1980s. Several highly toxic agents were developed during this period; the only unclassified information regarding these agents is that they are known in the open literature only as "Foliant" agents (named after the program under which they were developed) and by various code designations, such as A-230 and A-232.

According to Mirzayanov, the Soviets also developed binary weapons, in which precursors for the nerve agents are mixed in a munition to produce the agent just prior to its use. Because the precursors are generally significantly less hazardous than the agents themselves, this technique makes handling and transporting the munitions a great deal simpler.

Additionally, precursors to the agents are usually much easier to stabilize than the agents themselves, so this technique also made it possible to increase the shelf life of the agents a great deal. During the 1980s and 1990s, binary versions of several Soviet agents were developed and designated "Novichok" agents (after the Russian word for "newcomer").

Types of Agents

Chemical warfare agents can be classified in a variety of ways, based upon their properties, none of the schemes is totally satisfactory as some agents have effects which which fall into more than one group. The following is based upon the most generally held view.

Choking agents (aka Pulmonary agents as they irritate the lungs)

Choking agents were employed first by the German army and later by the Allied forces in World War I. The first massive use of chemical weapons in that conflict came when the Germans released chlorine gas from thousands of cylinders along a 6-km (4-mile) front at Ypres, Belgium, on April 22, 1915, creating a wind-borne chemical cloud that opened a major breach in the lines of the unprepared French and Algerian units.  Eventually both sides mastered the new techniques of using choking agents such as chlorine, phosgene, diphosgene, chloropicrin, ethyldichlorarsine and perfluoroisobutylene, and launched numerous attacks though without any militarily significant breakthroughs once each side had introduced the first crude gas masks and other protective measures.

Choking agents are delivered as gas clouds to the target area, where individuals become casualties through inhalation of the vapour. The toxic agent  causes inflammation of the lungs and this causes fluids to build up in the lungs, which can cause death through asphyxiation. The effects may take up to three hours to be apparent. The long-term effects may last for many years.

Choking agents are not generally likely to be used in conventional warfare, but due to their ease of manufacture some have been used in recent years by countries that are not regarded as technologically advanced, and could also be used by terrorists.

Sternutators

Sternutators cause vomiting, respiratory irritation  and sneezing, their purpose is to incapacitate rather than to kill the enemy.

Lachrymators

Lachrymators cause irritation to the eyes, and hence tears. They are commonly called tear gas. Lachrymators are regarded now as riot control agents. Generally they cease to have any effect shortly after exposure ceases, although very high levels of exposure to some of the agents may cause long-term effects. The use of riot control agents as a method of warfare is prohibited by the CWC.

Vesicants

Blister agents or vesicants are an exception to the limited utility of classic agents. Although these materials have a relatively low lethality, they are effective casualty agents that inflict painful burns and blisters requiring medical attention even at low doses. The classic mustard gas is the most popular amongst those nations nations newly developing chemical warfare capability since it is relatively easy to make. Mustard is generally referred to as the "king" of agents because of its ease of production, low cost, predictable properties, persistence, and ability to cause resource-devouring casualties rather than fatalities. Delivered in liquid or vapour form, such weapons burned the skin, eyes, and respiratory tracts. The physical results, depending on level of exposure, might be immediate or might appear after several hours. Although lethal in high concentrations, blister agents seldom kill. At incapacitating levels this may be as long as 12 hours. Contrary to the normal expectation, horrible fatalities occurred in the Iran-Iraq War because Iranian soldiers, feeling no initial effects, continued to wear mustard soaked clothing and inhale its fumes. Untreated mustard casualties are likely to suffer acute respiratory reactions, and to contract serious infections from burns that have been treated too late.

Blood agents

Blood agents, such as hydrogen cyanide or cyanogen chloride, are designed to be delivered in the form of a vapour or as a gas. When inhaled, these agents prevent the transfer of oxygen to the cells, causing the body to asphyxiate. Such chemicals block the enzyme that is necessary for aerobic metabolism, thereby denying oxygen to the red blood cells, which has an immediate effect similar to that of carbon monoxide. Cyanogen chloride inhibits the proper utilisation of oxygen within the blood cells.

Nerve agents

Nerve agents interfere with nerve impulse transmission. They are a class of phosphorus containing organic chemicals (organophosphates) that disrupt the mechanism by which nerves transfer messages to organs. The disruption is caused by blocking acetylcholinesterase, an enzyme that normally destroys acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter. They are related to DDT. They are the most toxic of CW agents.
Nerve agents are now divided into three series:

• The G-series is named because German scientists first synthesized them. G series agents are known as non-persistent, while the V series are persistent. The first nerve agent synthesised was GA (Tabun) in 1936. GB (Sarin) was discovered next in 1939, followed by GD (Soman) in 1944 and finally the more obscure GF (Cyclosarin) in 1949.

• The V-series were developed in the 1950s. Workers at ICI in the UK were looking for new organophosphorous pesticides. In 1954, ICI put one of them on the market under the trade name Amiton. It was subsequently withdrawn, as it was too toxic for safe use. The toxicity did not go unnoticed and some of the more toxic materials had in fact been sent to the Chemical Defence Establishment at Porton Down for evaluation. After the evaluation was complete, several members of this class of compounds became a new group of nerve agents, the V agents (depending on the source, the V stands for Victory, Venomous, or Viscous). The best known of these is probably VX, with the Russian V-gas coming a close second (Amiton is largely forgotten as VG). This class of compounds is also sometimes known as Tammelin's esters, after Lars-Erik Tammelin of the Swedish Institute of Defense Research who first synthesised a number of the agents.

• The Novichok  (Russian for "newcomer") agents are a series of organophosphorous compounds that were developed in the Soviet Union from the mid-1960s to the 1990s. The goal of this program was to develop and manufacture highly deadly chemical weapons that were unknown to the West. These new agents were designed to be undetectable using standard 1970s and 80s NATO chemical detection equipment; to defeat NATO chemical protective gear; to be safer to handle; and to circumvent the Chemical Weapons Convention list of controlled precursors. In addition to the newly developed "third generation" weapons, binary versions of several Soviet agents were developed and were also designated as "Novichok" agents. In the USA binary weapons were also developed. Binary agents are made up of two parts, individually they are relatively non-toxic, but when combined following discharge from a weapon, they form the active agent.

Novichok agents

Despite what is frequently stated in the western press, there is no single substance known as Novichok. Novichok agents were developed in the 1950s through to the 1990s. They were designed as part of a Soviet programme codenamed FOLIANT. How many different agents were developed is unknown, although five are known, there are about 25 possible variants. The objectives were to produce agents that would penetrate NATO protective equipment, bypass the International Chemical Weapons conventions, and be more potent than previous nerve agents. A number of the Novichok agents were developed to be binary weapons, that is that two chemicals that were not covered by the current regulations could be combined at the point of use to produce the agent itself. There is some confusion, even in the scientific press, over the naming and chemical structures of various Novichoks. Effects are similar to other nerve agents.

Psychotomimetic Agents

Psychotomimetic Agents are generally now not considered to be likely chemical warfare agents. They were experimented with in the 1950s-70s, but tend to be unstable and are difficult to deliver in sufficient concentration to be effective, as well as being very unpredictable in their effects.

Toxins

As toxins are produced by living organisms they are chiefly considered on this site on the biological weapons page. Briefly  toxins or biotoxins are substances produced by one organism that have a  toxic action on another organism. Toxins are extremely poisonous products of the metabolism of living organisms like bacteria, plants, animals, and fungi. Biotoxins are biologically active chemical compounds produced by a specific chemical mechanism in a living organism. Chemically, they are a wide variety of complex structures including proteins, cyclic peptides, alkaloids, etc. In some cases after the structure of a toxin is known, they can be prepared by chemical synthesis. Some toxins can also be prepared by biotechnological techniques similar to those used in the production of some drugs. There are several differences between toxins and traditional chemical warfare agents. When compared, toxins generally have a higher molecular weight, most of them are odorless and not dermally active, and most of them produce immune responses in the host. Toxins are easy to use via the inhalation route in the form of aerosols. Their toxicity potential is much higher than highly toxic chemical agents like sarin. As a comparison, the lethal inhalation concentration (LCt50) of a botulinum toxin aerosol, on average, is 1000 times more toxic than sarin vapor. Toxins from plants, animals, bacteria, cyanobacteria, algae, and fungi have potential as CW agents. Some toxins, such as ricin (W), botulinum toxin (X), or saxitoxin (TZ), have been weaponised. Intensive military research activity was carried out on some toxins like palytoxin, batrachotoxin, and tetrodotoxin.

Binary Agents

Binary weapons are defined as chemical warfare agents where the toxic agent is produced during the flight time of the ammunition (rocket, shell or grenade) on its way to the target. The first binary agents were researched during WWII, they were a binary form of Arsine, and the blister agent Methyl (2-chloroethyl)nitrosocarbamate. The USA developed binary variants of three nerve agents, sarin (GB-2) soman (GD-2) and VX (VX-2). The Soviets responded with the development of binary nerve agents under their FOLIANT programme.

Civil Defence Corps

The Civil Defence Corps were trained in protection from  chemical agents, and all of its personnel were specifically trained in the fitting of civilian respirators. The idea being that in the days leading up to the outbreak of hostilities all of the Corps would be expected to set up respirator fitting stations and to fit and supply everyone with a respirator, enough of which had been stockpiled to supply the whole country. Special respirators were available for the very young and the infirm, however these were just the WWII equivalents fitted with new filters. In fact, until about 1960 civilian respirators were all similar to the WWII  versions, the only difference being the type of filter fitted.

The Corps were supplied with the S6 respirator from the mid 1960s, which had a serious disadvantage, they could not be used with a radio operator's microphone, or a telephone. Initially personnel requiring this facility were supplied with a WWII Civilian Duty Respirator with an updated filter canister.

The respirators shown are, from the left, the civilian duty respirator, the service respirator, and the S6.

For the detection of chemical agents, three methods were available, the Paper Detector, of which there were several versions for liquid gas, detector paint which could be coated onto any suitable surface and the Kit Vapour Detector. During training we sniffed chemicals which were meant to smell like some of the chemical agents.

The Civil Defence Corps were also supplied with respirator decontamination kits and anti-dimming kits. In wartime, personnel who were required to work outside would be supplied with NBC suits, which were initially heavy and cumbersome. During NBC training I wore the earlier lightweight suit  for an hour doing moderate physical work (cable laying), and to be honest it was long enough. Just before the Corps was disbanded the suit NBC No 1 was issued, it was much improved being lighter and more flexible. The final item of kit was three rapid injection (Autoject) pens containing 1mg of atropine sulphate, to be used in the event of exposure to nerve agents. The instructions for using these was pretty basic, and amounted to "If you are in any doubt, then jab." To use this device, one simply removed it from the packaging, took off the cap, and with a swift movement jabbed it into the front of the thigh, right through any clothing. The other civil defence services were also supplied with the same types of equipment.

Chemical Weapons Convention

In 1980 agreement was reached in the United Nations on the need to remove the threat of chemical warfare. At that time probably 25 countries had chemical weapons capability. Twelve years of negotiation lead to the adoption of the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on Their Destruction (CWC). It was opened for signature in 1993, and came into force in 1997, at which time The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons was formed with a duty to implement the convention. To date 192 countries have signed, but a number of UN member states have not, they are: Egypt, North Korea, and South Sudan, Israel has signed, but not ratified the convention.