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Emerging and Re-Emerging Chemical Threats (part 3)

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Chemical Threats on the Battlefield and Home Front 

Weapons of mass destruction – WMDs. Chemical agents, chemical weapons, chemical threat agents, chemical threats. They can go by a lot of names and are used in conflicts around the world, but they all refer to chemicals that can be weaponized as poisonous vapors, aerosols, liquids, or solids that have toxic effects on people, whether on the front lines or here at home.  

MRIGlobal's laboratories support chemical threat assessment.

As humans, we have been coming up with new and exciting ways to harm each other since the dawn of time, including these chemical threats. What we recognize currently as the definition of chemical weapons or chemical warfare agents really started in World War I, when the French first used tear gas without much effect. Later in the war, the German army utilized what we now know as HD or sulfur mustard with far greater impact. You can read more about these first-generation chemical weapons, and about our work with narcotic pharmaceuticals, Toxic Industrial Chemicals (TICs) and Toxic Industrial Materials (TIMs), and nerve agents at “Emerging and Re-emerging Chemical Threats.” 

Today’s Prevalent Chemical Threats
Pharmaceutical Agents
Fentanyl, which can be produced pharmaceutically and clandestinely, is a threat due to its potency and toxicity. Readily available to those recovering from an injury or surgery, individuals can become addicted after only one use. This presents a threat to users and first responders responsible for interdiction, decontamination, and remediation. Read more about fentanyl and our work to standardize decontamination and remediation product efficacy testing at “Fentanyl and the Meaning of ‘Clean.’”    

Blister Agents
While the blister agent sulfur mustard was first used in World War I more than 100 years ago, it continues as a threat today. Other blister agents can include lewisite and nitrogen mustard. As the name suggests, blister agents inhibit cell replication within the basal layer of the epidermis and thus disrupt this pattern, resulting in blister formation. They can also cause severe skin, eye, and mucosal pain and irritation.   

Riot Control Agents
Most commonly known as “tear gas,” riot control agents are non-lethal compounds used by the military and law enforcement for crowd control. These chemicals can include the compound 2-chlorobenzalmalononitrile (commonly referred to as CS gas), chloroacetophenone (CN) the active ingredient of Mace™, and Chloropicrin (PS) which is classified as a pulmonary agent.   

Nerve Agents
Nerve agents include Novichoks, tabun, soman, cyclosarin, and sarin, the latter of which has been used rather notoriously on multiple occasions. These are each acetylcholinesterase inhibitors, which cause your muscles to tense up and spasm, injuring or incapacitating the victim, sometimes with lethal results. Sarin and soman have been used in recent decades in Syria, where more than 300 chemical attacks have occurred. There was also a well-known sarin attack on civilians in Japan in 1995.  

Of these, one of the newest is Novichoks. These are nerve agents that were developed in the USSR starting in the 1970s, but came into prevalence in 2018 following an attempted assassination of a Russian national and his British daughter in Salisbury, England. Novichoks paralyze the respiratory muscles, suffocating an exposed individual, sometimes to death. If the person survives, they will likely be left with lasting neurological damage.  

 

Hear more about Novichoks and other threats on the “Chemical Threats” episode of “Science Diction,” where our experts discuss their use in conflicts around the world, how they’re evolving, and how we’re keeping up with emerging threats.

SLUDGEM
When looking at the involuntary signs and symptoms of exposure to nerve agents, there is a handy mnemonic known as SLUDGEM.   

  • Salivation 
  • Locomotion, or teary eyes 
  • Urination 
  • Defecation 
  • Gastrointestinal   
  • Emesis, or vomiting, and 
  • Meiosis, pinpoint pupils.  

Read more about the use of chemical threats in today’s conflicts around the world, technologies used to identify them, and MRIGlobal’s work to mitigate these threats to warfighters and civilians in “Emerging and Re-emerging Chemical Threats (part 2).” 

Detection of Chemical Threats
The goal of detection can depend on whether you are in a laboratory or in the field. In a laboratory, we want to quantify everything so we can have a complete characterization of the threat. In the field, we may just want to know whether an agent is present or not by using any number of portable instruments.  

The problem with chemical threats is that when responding to them, the team is always somewhat back footed because they never know quite what to expect. Fortunately, there are instruments available that can be quite effective in the classification and identification of these threats. These can include devices like ion mobility spectrometers which are often used in airports and will provide rapid results in support of homeland security. There are also portable GC-MS (gas chromatograph mass spectrometry) units that aid in drug detection and more specific identification of unknown samples. Systems for gas or liquid chromatography combined with mass spectrometry are highly effective for the identification and quantification of chemical warfare agents. Because those systems tend to be rather large and unwieldy for field use, that almost always occurs in laboratories for full sensitivity.  

With any instrumentation, whether in a laboratory or the field, it is critical that it is sensitive and well calibrated to help ensure accuracy. You want to limit the use of instrumentation that gives false positive alarms or a false negative. At MRIGlobal, a specialty of ours is the development, maturation, and operational testing of these types of instruments to ensure their accuracy. When there is a new detection method or new decontamination application instrument, we are the team that tests it to determine its efficacy and how quickly it works. Once our testing and evaluation is complete, warfighters and civilians can have confidence that these tools will work as intended. Read more about our work to ensure effective and fieldable instrumentation at “Detection Equipment to Address the Drug Crisis.” 

Decontamination of Chemical Threats
The decontamination method used depends on the chemical threat that has been detected. Unfortunately, there is no universal decontaminant that works for all chemical threats in all scenarios, so first understanding the nature of the threat is critical.  

When decontaminating a site, one option is simple – the physical removal of a compound from a substrate or environment. Alternatively, chemical decontamination is when the chemical threat, or neat agent in question, is converted into a less harmful degraded product and neutralized as a threat.  

One common decontamination method is hydrolysis, where the chemical is exposed to water and degrades. Unfortunately, the degradation products can sometimes be toxic, so that must be considered and measured. NMR spectroscopy can be used to measure the rate of reaction kinetics, or how quickly the compounds degrade when exposed to a decontaminant, providing insight into how much time and decontaminant is needed for the solution to be effective.  

Progress and Research in Detection and Destruction Methods
Fortunately, progress is being made in the detection and destruction of CWAs. In July 2023, the last chemical munition of the United States’ declared chemical weapons stockpile was irreversibly destroyed. MRIGlobal supported this effort over many years through sample analysis, method development, and method validation. Other researchers have developed methods to trace starting materials and even use biomarkers to determine whether exposure has occurred. Read about these and other techniques that are being developed to combat CWAs and other threats on the battlefield and the home front in “Chemical Threat Destruction and New Methodologies.”  

Mitigation of Chemical Threats
At MRIGlobal, we provide mitigation strategies that are effective and reasonable based on the scale of threats that are present. This work helps make sure that our partners in the military and law enforcement across the country and around the world can help ensure the safety of soldiers and civilians. As chemical threats evolve, the market and these systems for detection, decontamination, and protection must keep up, enabling members of the military and civilian populations to stay safe. 
 

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GETTING STARTED AT MRIGLOBAL
Contact MRIGlobal to further understand our work in defense against chemical and biological threats. We work with our clients to test and evaluate current methods to detect, prevent, decontaminate, protect, and destroy these materials. 

If you are part of an agency, business, or academic institution seeking assistance with a project, use our Project Quote Tool to get started. 

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