What are in chemical weapons?

Answer 1

According to Critical Will:

About 70 different chemicals have been used or stockpiled as Chemical Weapons (CW) agents during the 20th century. These chemicals are in liquid, gas or solid form and blister, choke and affect the nerves or blood. Chemical warfare agents are generally classified according to their effect on the organism and can be roughly grouped as: Nerve Agents, Mustard Agents, Hydrogen Cyanide, Tear Gases, Arsines, Psychotomimetic Agents, Toxins and Potential CW Agents.

Under the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) chemicals are divided into three groups, defining their purpose and treatment:

* Schedule One are those typically used in weapons such as sarin and mustard gas and tabun;

* Schedule Two include those that can be used in weapons such as amiton and BZ;

* Schedule Three chemicals include the least toxic substances that can be used for research and the production of medicine, dyes, textiles, etc.

CW agents mainly used against people are divided into lethal and incapacitating categories. A substance is classified as incapacitating if less than 1/100 of the lethal dose causes incapacitation, e.g., through nausea or visual problems. The limit between lethal and incapacitating substances is not absolute but refers to a statistical average.

Incendiary agents such as napalm and phosphorus are not considered to be CW agents since they achieve their effect mainly through thermal energy. Certain types of smoke ammunition are not classed as a chemical weapon since the poisonous effect is not the reason for their use. Plants, microorganisms, the produced toxins belong to that class. Pathogenic microorganisms, mainly viruses and bacteria, are classed as biological weapons.

* Chemicals that blister: sulphur mustard, lewisite, nitrogen mustard, mustard-leweisite, phosgene-oxime.

* Chemicals that affect the nerves: VX, Sarin, Soman, tabun, novichole agents.

* Chemicals that cause choking: cholrine, phosgene, diphosgene, chloropicrin.

* Chemicals that affect the blood: herygem, cynanide, cynaogen chlorine.

* Chemicals for riot control: tear agent 2 (SN gas), tear agent 0 (CS gas), psychedelic agent 3 (BZ)

Two examples:

* Mustard is an oily liquid with a garlic-like smell. Mustard gas was first used as a chemical-warfare agent during WWI, when it war responsible for about 70% of the million-plus gas casualties. Both in vapour and in liquid form its effect is to burn any body-tissue which it touches. Taken into the body, it can act as a systemic poison-- deadlier, weight for weight than hydrogen cyanide. Its burning effects are not normally apparent for some hours after exposure, whereupon they build up into the hideous picture of blindness, blistering and lung damage. Its most prominent use after that war was by Italy in Ethiopia during 1936. During WWII it was produced by Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, South Africa, the USA and the USSR. It was the CW agent that was stockpiled in by far the largest quantity on the order of hundreds of thousands of tons overall but used only by Japan in China. It is probably still the most heavily stockpiled CW agent today. Its last established use appears to have been by Egypt intervening in the (North) Yemeni civil war of the mid-1960s.

* Tabun, or ethyl NN-dimethylphosphoramidocyanidate, otherwise known as GA, is a liquid that evaporates only half as fast as mustard gas, but is a powerful poison. Even short exposure to small concentrations of its vapour can result in almost immediate symptoms, felt first in the chest (as a persistent contraction of the pupil) and chest (as a tightness or asthma-like constriction). If a lethal dosage has been induced, either from inhalation of the vapour or be absorption of the liquid through the skin, a characteristic sequence of toxic manifestations ensues, some of great violence, including running nose, sweating, involuntary urination and defecation, vomiting, twitching, convulsions, paralysis and unconscious.