Mortality, atropine causing

Most of the experimental chemicals were administered to too few volunteers to be examined separately for an influence on mortality. However, a few were considered of sufficient interest to justify being examined in that way (Table 4-4). The specific chemicals are grouped by type. The SMRs for these individual compounds range from a low of 0.80 (nine observed, 11.3 expected deaths) for the men rested with sarin only, to a high of 2.50 (five observed, two expected) for scopolamine only. Atropine, a therapeutic anticholinergic similar to scopolamine, had the next highest SMR, 1 76 (three observed, 1.7 expected). Of the eight deaths of men who received one or the other of these two therapeutically similar compounds, three were attributed to trauma (one accident, one suicide, and one other trauma), and one was due to cancer the causes of the other four will not be known until the death certificates are obtained. 

Delayed peripheral neurotoxicity has been reported in animal studies. Soman produced severe delayed neuropathy in the atropinized hen assay at 1.5 mg/kg (Willems et al., 1984). Sarin, tabim, and VX cause postimplantation mortality and fetotoxicity (HSDB, 2008 RTECS, 2008). 

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