Chemical warfare agents Weapons Convention International

This chapter includes four indices the Alphabetical index, the Chemical Abstract Service (CAS) numbers index, the International Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision (ICD-10) numbers index, and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons key (OPCW) numbers index. OPCW numbers are found in the "Handbook on Chemicals, version 2002," Appendix 2 in Declaration Handbook 2002 for the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling, and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction. OPCW numbers were developed to provide an easy method for tracking chemical warfare agents and precursors if CAS numbers were not available. 

Between 1989 and 1993, the Finnish Institute for Verification of the Chemical Weapons Convention (VERIFTN) initiated four international interlaboratory comparison (round-robin) tests for the verification of chemical disarmament (2) to test the effectiveness of their procedures for the recovery of treaty-related chemicals (Chemical Warfare agents... 

The Chemical Weapons Convention, whereby nations eschewed programs of development of chemical warfare agents by international treaty, entered into force in 1997 (OPCW, 2005). Unfortunately, such treaties cannot eliminate development and use of CWAs by a rogue nation or a terrorist organization. 

The foundation of the CWC s inspection activities was based around the declaration by member states of their chemical weapons capabilities and activities. Nations with chemical warfare programmes were required to declare their production, storage and destruction facilities, which would then receive top monitoring priority. Nevertheless, the CWC did allow states to maintain research programmes to ensure the integrity of defensive equipment such as gas masks and gas detectors, but these activities were also to be closely monitored since they involved work with the chemical agents listed on Schedule l.9 Otherwise, all other warfare agents, mustard gas, Lewisite, soman, sarin, tabun, VX and the capability to produce them were to be eliminated under the watchful eyes of international inspectors (Table 8.1).10 The convention thus defined chemical weapons as any toxic chemical, or its precursors, intended for purposes other than those not prohibited under this convention for... 

Part II is focused on chemical weapons. In Chapter 4, there are rather extensive descriptions and discussions of more than fifty of the best-known CW agents. Chapter 5 is a history of chemical warfare from ancient times to the present. And Chapter 6 discusses in detail the workings of the 1992 Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), by aU accounts one of the most effective international treaties written. (But not, as the chapter makes clear, without its limitations.) Included in the chapter is a lengthy discussion of the extremely difficult matter of verification, and the highs and lows of the international community s relationship with Iraq, an unwilling signer of the accord. 

SM, commonly known as mustard gas , was one of the first chemicals used in modern warfare. Since its use on the battlefield of Ypres in 1917 it has been used for little else but to wage war. In civil use it found brief employment as an anticancer agent during the 1960s, and has been used at low concentrations in creams used to treat psoriasis, but its association with the production of cancer terminated its use in medicine. With the formation of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) to enforce the international Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), SM is only likely to be encountered in dealings with non-compliant nations, anti-terrorist operations, during demilitarisation operations or in defence research. 

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