Phosphorothioates oxidative cleavage

Phosphorothioates and phosphonothioates are of particular significance as insecticides. Schematically, it can be stated that these xenobiotics undergo activation by oxidative desulfuration, and detoxification by hydrolytic cleavage. Oxidative desulfuration transforms phosphorothioates and phosphonothioates to the corresponding oxon derivatives (see Chapt. 7 in [59]), which are highly toxic as potent inactivators of acetylcholinesterase [69]. This route of toxification can be competitive with and/or followed by cleavage reactions, which can be either hydrolytic or oxidative. 

Cleavage of an 5-2-nitrobenzyl phosphorothioate is achieved with thiophen-oxide in 5 min." ... 

Two interesting examples of phosphorus-nitrogen bond cleavage have been reported by Cavell et al. (48), (50b) who found that dimethyla-minodifluorophosphine reacts with difluorophosphoric acid or difluoro-phosphorothioic acid F2P(X)XH (X = 0 or S) to give compounds of empirical formula [F2PX]2, which contain phosphorus in both tervalent and pentavalent oxidation states, e.g. (see also Section VII, E),... 

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