Porton Downs

Porton Down - British Chemical Testing Laboratories... 

Toward the end of 1964, British scientist Dr. Bill Ladell invited me to visit Porton Down, where the secret Chemical Defence Experimental Establishment was located. Bill thought I would find it useful to observe an LSD field test, which was designed to test the ability of highly trained LSD-dosed commandos to defend their position against undrugged attackers. ... 

The failure of physostigmine to reverse BZ effects during the first 8 hours (Fig. 8) is interesting and unexplained. It reminds one of the Berry and Davies findings (in 1970 at the British labs in Porton Down) which showed that the reversible anticholinesterase pyridostigmine was paradoxically effective as a prophylactic agent in the event of nerve gas exposure (see ref. ). 

Abigail Rose was raised in Somerset, England. She obtained her B.Sc. degree in Chemistry from the University of Southampton in 1998. She remained at Southampton, obtaining an M.Phil. in 1999 under the supervsion of Jeremy Frey and a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry in 2003 working with Andrea Russell. Her Ph.D. thesis work, funded by the EPSRC at Johnson Matthey, was on the applications of in situ EXAFS to the study of PEM fuel cell catalysts. Presently, she is working as a fuel cell scientist at DstI, Porton Down, a U.K. Ministry of Defence research laboratory. 

Porton Down, Salisbury, England Chemical Defence Establishment. 1975. 35 p. 

Balfour, D.J.K, Studies on the uptake and metabolism of H-CR by guinea pig cornea. Porton Down, Wiltshire, England Chemical Defence Establishment Technical Paper No. 191. 1975. 25 p. 

D. Gall Chemical Defence Establishment, Porton Down, personal communication, 1982. 134, 135... 

To whom correspondence should be addressed. Barry Lakeman, Department of Physical Sciences, Dstl Porton Down, Salisbury SP4 OJQ, UK, e-mail jblakeman dstl.gov.uk... 

Other products of Porton Down s research and development at the end of the 1930s included eye shields to protect against high-altitude liquid mustard gas attack, the oil-skin anti-gas cape, impregnated battle dress, protective dubbing for boots, detectors and detector paints, decontamination procedures, gas identification sets for service units, respirators and anti-gas covers for horses and dogs. Protection for camels was also studied a prototype respirator still exists in the establishment at Porton Down. 

All armies learned several lessons from this non-gas war. The phrase ffad Britain and the United States been prepared for war in 1936, there would not have been a war was taken as a self-evident truth.72 Certainly it was recognised that chemical warfare establishments, notably at Porton Down in the United Kingdom and Edgewood Arsenal in the United States, needed to be permanent organisations that concentrated on training, research and development, and chemical warfare preparedness. This lesson, from a slightly different angle, is reflected in the words of K.C. Royall, the US Under Secretary for War The better job you do, the less likely it is you will have to put to actual use the products of your work. 73... 

C.B. Carter, Porton Down 75 Years of Chemical and Biological Research, London HMSO (1992), p. 10. 

PRO, WO 33/1014, 2nd Annual Report of the Chemical Defence Research Establishment, Porton Down (1922). 

PRO, WO/42/26, Porton Down Chemical Defence Establishment, Correspondence 1939-1945. 

Before 1985, spent 20 years at Porton Down in research with over 100 publications on chemistry and medicinal chemistry. During the latter part of this period, occasionally served as a technical advisor to the UK government in discussions leading to the Chemical Weapons Convention. 

A number of organisations store frozen cells for sale or distribution and will also store cells for individuals as a back-up for departmental liquid nitrogen freezers. These include the European Collection of Animal Cell Cultures at Porton Down, the American Type Culture Collection Cell Repository at Rockville, MD, and the Human Genetic Mutant Cell Repositary at Camden, N.J. (Appendix 3). 

European Collection of Animal Cell Cultures, PHLS Centre for Applied Microbiology Research, Porton Down, Salisbury SP4 0SG. 

United Kingdom Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, Porton Down 29-Jun-1999 Designated... 

Figure 5. Result of the GC/MS/MS(MRM) analysis of a metal fragment extracted with dichloromethane proving the presence of sarin, (a) mlz 125 - mlz 81, (b) mlz 125 mlz 99, and (c) mlz 125 (unfragmented). Data recorded at DSTL, Porton Down (UK) on a Finnigan MAT TSQ 700 GC/MS instrument (Finnigan MAT, UK) (27). (Reproduced from Black, R. M., Clarke, R. J., Read, R. W. and Reid, M. T. J., J. Chromatogr., A, 662, 301-331 (1994) by permission of Elsevier Science)...

Dstl, Porton Down, Salisbury, Wiltshire, United Kingdom... 

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