Chemical warfare agents Lewisite

A4.1 The answers are shown in Figure 11.5. Incidentally, dimercaprol is also known as British Anti Lewisite (or BAL) and was originally developed as an antidote to the chemical warfare agent Lewisite, an arsenic derivative. 

During World War II, it was feared that an organo-arsenic chemical warfare agent, Lewisite, might be used. The biochemist Sir Rudolph Peters and his co-workers developed an antidote, 2,3,-dimercapto-... 

C. The chemical warfare agent lewisite (dichloro [2-chlorovinyl]arsine) is a volatile vesicant liquid that causes immediate severe irritation and necrosis to the eyes, skin, and ain/vays (see also p 372). 

Picolyl chloride hydrochloride Promethazine hydrochloride Tetramethylammonium hydroxide Xylenesulfonic acid sodium salt Chemical Warfare Agents Lewisite (Agent L)... 

Other organoarsenicals, most notably lewisite (dichloro[2-chlorovinyl]arsine), were developed in the early twentieth century as chemical warfare agents. Arsenic trioxide was reintroduced into the United States Pharmacopeia in 2000 as an orphan drug for the treatment of relapsed acute promyelocytic leukemia and is finding expanded use in experimental cancer treatment protocols (see Chapter 54). Melarsoprol, another trivalent arsenical, is used in the treatment of advanced African trypanosomiasis (see Chapter 52). 

Figure 8. Chemical structures of 2-chlorovinyldichloroarsine (Lewisite LI), 2-chlorovinylarsonous acid (CVAA), British Anti-Lewisite (BAL) and the CVAA-BAL complex. (Reprinted from Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology, Vol. 184, D. Noort,H.P. BenschopandR.M. Black, Biomonitoring of Exposure to Chemical Warfare Agents A Review, pages 116-126 (2002), with permission from Elsevier Science.)...

Atomic Absorption Spectrometry Acetylcholinesterase British Anti-Lewisite Carboxylesterase Central Nervous System Chemical Warfare Agent 2-chlorovinylarsonous Acid Enzyme-linked Immunosorbent Assay Environmental Protection Agency... 

In this report, the Subcommittee on Chronic Reference Doses for Selected Chemical-Warfare Agents of the National Research Council s (NRC s) Committee on Toxicology reviews the scientific validity of the Army s interim values for the six chemical-warfare agents—GA, GB, GD, VX, sulfur mustard, and lewisite. The NRC report is intended to be useful to the Army in making site-specific cleanup decisions. 

The results of the subcommittee s evaluations are presented in Chapters 2 through 9. Chapter 2 reviews the method used by the Army to derive RfDs, and also inclndes a discussion of the benchmark dose method as a point of departure for calculating RfDs. Chapters 3 throngh 6 evaluate the RfDs for the nerve agents GA, GB, GD, and VX. Chapter 7 evalnates the RfD and slope factor for sulfnr mustard, and Chapter 8 provides an evaluation of the RfD for lewisite. Research recommendations are presented at the end of Chapters 3-8 for each of the specific chemical-warfare agents. 

Stewart, D.L., E.J. Sass, L.K. Fritz and L.B. Sasser. 1989. Toxicology studies on lewisite and sulfur mustard agents Mutagenicity of lewisite in the Salmonella histidine reversion assay. Final Report, Pacific Northwest Laboratory Report, PNL-6872, Richland, WA. Trammell, G.L. 1992. Toxicodynamics of organoarsenic chemical warfare agents. In Somani, S.M., Ed. Chemical Warfare Agents. Academic Press, Inc. New York, pp.255-270. 

Lindherg, G., Runn, P., Winter, S., Falhnan, A. (1997). Basic information on lewisite - a chemical warfare agent with effects similar to mustard gas. Defense Research Establishment, Division of NBC Defense, Umea, Sweden. 

Young, R.A. (1999). Health Risk Assessment for Lewisite. In Health Risk Assessments for Oral Exposure to Six Chemical-Warfare Agents. National Research Council. National Academy Press, Washington, DC. 

History and Background Information Lewisite (also known as Agent L) is no longer considered a state-of-the-art chemical warfare agent (Franke, 1967 Goldman and Dacre, 1989). Lewisite is relatively simple and inexpensive to produce (Franke, 1967). 

Lewisite is a local and pulmonary irritant, a vesicant, and a systemic poison. When ingested with food, it produces severe gastrointestinal irritation. The eyes, respiratory tract, and skin are the most likely sites of exposure when lewisite is used as a chemical warfare agent. The agent is lipophilic... 

Arroyo, C.M., Burman, D.L., Kahler, D.W., Nelson, M.R., Corun, C.M., Guzman, J.J., Smith, M.A., Purcell, E.D., Hackley, B.E., Soni, S.D., Broomfield, C.A. (2004). TNF-alpha expression patterns as potential molecular biomarker for human skin cells exposed to vesicant chemical warfare agents sulfur mustard (HD) and Lewisite (L). Cell Biol. Toxicol. 20 345-59. 

Aerial bombs containing chemical warfare agents were first developed around the end of World War I. The first US aerial bombs were 30 lb bombs that held roughly 10 lb of mustard agent. By World War II, 100 lb mustard bombs, 115 and 125 lb bombs filled with mustard, Lewisite, or GA, and 500 and 1000 lb bombs filled with hydrogen cyanide, phosgene, or... 

Other organic arsenical chemical warfare agents are methyldichlorarsine (MD), phenyldichloroarsine (PD), and ethyldichloroarsine (ED). These plus lewisite (L), mustard agents, and phosgene oxime make up the vesicant class. 

Research on anesthetic gases during the nineteenth century facilitated the development and use of poisonous war gases in the twentieth. This led to attempts to counteract the effects of chemical warfare agents and other toxic compounds, particularly arsenicals, introduced by Paul Ehrlich (1854-1915) for the treatment of syphilis. This resulted in the synthesis of the first specific chemical antidote, British anti-Lewisite (BAL), in 1945 by R.A. Peters, L.A. Stocken, and R.H.S. Thompson in Oxford. Studies on the mechanistic bases for toxicity were applied to the synthesis of effective insecticides. For example, during the 1940s, the Swiss chemist Paul Muller discovered a compound, now known as DDT, that poisons insects on contact. 

Sulfur mustard (2,2 -dichlorodiethyl sulfide, mustard gas, HD) and lewisite (2-chlorovinyldichloroarsine) are the best known vesicating (blistering) chemical warfare agents. Sulfur mustard is the blistering agent most commonly associated... 

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