Sarin laboratory

As with chemical weapons ingredients, the chemical equipment needed to make chemical warfare agents is commercially available just about anywhere. Certainly, to set up a full-scale poison gas production line, terrorists would need reactors and agitators, chemical storage tanks, containers, receivers, condensers for temperature control, distillation columns to separate chemical compounds, valves and pumps to move chemicals between reactors and other containers. Additionally, ideally the equipment would be corrosion-resistant. For a full-scale mustard gas production plant the price tag would be between 2.5 and 5 million. Approximately 10 million would be required to set up a plant to manufacture tabun, sarin or soman.47 Terrorists, however, can be assumed to forego the scale and the safety precautions that most governments would consider essential for a weapons programme. In fact, standard process equipment or a laboratory set-up of beakers and... 

Experimental conditions for recording reference spectra from authentic chemicals are similar to those used for test samples. By way of example, Figure 2 shows the library NMR spectra of sarin (GB) from the Spiez Laboratory and Figure 3 shows those of tabun (GA) from the Finnish Institute for... 

Bucci, T.J., and R.M. Parker. 1992. Toxicity Studies on Agents GB and GD (Phase II) 90 Day Subchronic Study of GB (Sarin, Type II) in CD Rats. Final Report. FDA 224-85-0007. DTIC AD-A248618. Prepared by the National Center for Toxicological Research, Jefferson, Ark., for the U.S. Army Biomedical Research and Development Laboratory, Fort Detrick, Frederick, Md. 

Of the bags of sarin used in the attack, two bags were not punctured. These bags were returned to the police laboratory for analysis. At one of the subway stations on the... 

According to inpatient records from St Luke s Hospital, the most common laboratory finding related to sarin toxicity was a decrease in plasma cholinesterase (ChE) levels in 74% of patients. In patients with more severe toxicity, plasma ChE levels tended to be lower, but a more accurate indication of ChE inhibition is measurement of erythrocyte ChE, as erythrocyte ChE (AChE) is considered true ChE and plasma ChE is pseudo ChE . However, erythrocyte ChE is not routinely measured, whereas plasma ChE is included in many clinical chemistry panels thus, it can be used as a simple index for ChE activity. In both the Matsumoto and Tokyo subway sarin attacks, plasma ChE served as a useful index of sarin exposure. In 92% of hospitalized patients, plasma ChE levels returned to normal on the following day. In addition, inpatient records from... 

Sekijima, Y., Morita, H., Shindo, M., Okudera, H., Shibata, T., Yanagisawa, N. (1995). A case of severe sarin poisoning in the sarin attack at Matsumoto—One-year follow-up on the clinical findings and laboratory data. Rinsho Shinkeijaku, 35, 1241-1245. 

In the approximately 70 years since the discovery of the toxic G agents and 50 years since the subsequent development of the V agents, humans have only occassionally served as test subjects in laboratory studies designed to determine threshold toxic effects associated with low-level (nonlethal) sarin and VX vapor exposures (2-10 min) (Johns, 1952 Sim, 1956 Bramwell et al., 1963). In addition, although the toxic effects of accidental exposures and nonexperimental exposures from terrorist or military attacks are documented, critical information related to the exposure conditions can only be estimated at best. Thus, estimates of human dose-responses to nerve agent vapor exposures from such sources are often associated with significant uncertainty and are of limited utility in predicting health hazard risks. 

Although the police investigation collected enough evidence to prove that sarin was used by AUM Shinrikyo terrorists in Tokyo, the final scientific proof came this summer, when two laboratories independently determined sarin metabolites in blood and urine samples drawn from Tokyo subway attack victims. The Holland group of investigators liberated them from plasma butyrylcholineste-rases [14], while the Japanese group used urine instead [30],... 

In the early 1950s, Dr David Grob (then associated with The Johns Hopkins Hospital) and associates investigated the clinical pharmacology of sarin in an elaborate series of studies extending over several years. They administered the agent orally, intra-arterially, percutaneously and topically in the eye, and described the clinical and laboratory effects, including those on the... 

At the same time, doctors and nurses from the Self Defense Force Central Hospital also suspected sarin poisoning and brought various documents and supplies to St. Luke s International Hospital. By the time most of the patients with cardiopulmonary or respiratory arrest had been resuscitated, results of laboratory tests revealed decreased plasma cholinesterase. Based on the various medical data, clinical and test findings, sarin poisoning was diagnosed with relative ease. 

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