Toxic agents stocks

For many years, toxoids, which are immunologically active but non-toxic derivatives of toxins, have been used as in the prophylaxis and treatment of bacterial toxin-related diseases. These include notably diphtheria and botulism. Toxins must be produced as an essential precursor to the production of antitoxins and thus potential stocks of toxins exist from this route, which are produced in large-scale fermentation tanks. The existence of such stocks, which were outside the existing Chemical Weapons Convention, was the initial source of suspicion that toxins were being developed for use as toxic agents by the Soviet Union during the Cold War in the 1980s. 

Ron G. Manley, Chemical Weapon Agent and Historic Chemical Munitions Disposal The British Experience , in Thomas Stock and Karlheinz Lohs, eds. The Challenge of Old Chemical Munitions and Toxic Armament Wastes (New York Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 231-240. 

After-action reports on the Tokyo subway incident (Obu, 1996 Olson, 1996 Yanagisawa, 1996) provide an example of the value of communication between the law enforcement and medical communities as well as an example of a missed opportunity for communication within the medical community that might have made the medical response even more effective than it was. Japanese police had apparently been planning a raid on Aum Shinrikyo facilities throughout Japan, and for that reason the government had ordered medical supplies, including nerve agent antidotes, not normally stocked in quantity by hospitals (anonymous comments in Obu, 1996). One of the reasons for the raids was the suspected involvement of the Aum Shinrikyo in a previous toxic gas incident in the city of Matsumoto almost a year before the Tokyo attack (Morita et al., 1995). The release in that city in 1994 of what was subsequently identified as... 

Lohs K, Stock T (1997) Characteristics of chemical warfare agents and toxic armament wastes. In Lohs K, Stock T (eds) The challenge of old chemical munitions and their armament wastes, chap. 2. Oxford University Press, Oxford, p 27... 

Manley, R.G. (1993) CW agent and historic chemical munitions disposal - the United Kingdom experience, in T. Stock K. Lohs (eds.). The challenge of old chemical munitions and toxic armament waste, SIPRI, Stockholm (in press). 

So, piperazine is less efficient as a curing agent for poly(VDF-co-HFP) copolymer, whereas 2,5-dimethyl piperazine [18] produces well-cured vul-canizates from stocks which are less toxic than those containing HMDA-C. 

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