Talk:Nerve agent/Archive 1

Request for Advice
I WAS INVOLVED IN NERVE GAS EXPERIMENTATION AT FT BRAGG, NC A LONG TIME AGO.A SENATE SUBCOMMITTEE RECENTLY APPARENTLY HAD CONTACTED THE VA WHO THEN CONTACTED ME ABOUT THIS SITUATION.

DURING THESE EXPERIMENTS WE WERE REPEATEDLY SUBJECTED TO VOLUMINOUS AMOUNTS OF NERVE GAS WHILE THE ONLY PROTECTIVE GEAR WORN WAS A GAS MASK. SHORTLY BEFORE HAVING THE GAS TURNED IN THE SIX LARGE MACHINES THERE, WE WERE ALL GIVEN A LARGE DOSES OF ATROPINE WHICH WE WERE TOLD WAS AN ANTIDOTE IF ANY NERVE GAS GOT BY THE MASK.

THE VA HAS SINCE OFFERED TO TREAT ME FOR THE ILLNESSES WHICH HAVE RESULTED; HOWEVER, SINCE THERE IS NOT A TRULY ENTHUSIASTIC FEELING WITHIN ME ABOUT VA'S CONCERN WITH MY HEALTH, IT IS MY DESIRE NOW TO LEARN MORE ABOUT WHAT IT IS THE VA WANTS TO INVOLVE ME IN.

THOUGHOUT THE YEARS SINCE, I HAVE SUFFERED CONTINUALLY WITH BALANCE AS WELL AS OTHER ORTHOPEDIC AND GENERAL BODY PROBLEMS AS WELL AS WITH BOUTS OF INTERMITTENT FEELING OF ENORMOUS WEAKNESS. IN THE PAST I HAVE ALWAYS SOUGHT OUT PRIVATE MEDICAL HELP AND DOCTORS NOT FROM THE VA AND AM THINKING IF CONTINUING WITH THESE PRIVATE PHYSICIANS IS THE RIGHT WAY TO GO.

MY QUESTIONS ARE TWO. 1)WHERE ONE CAN OBTAIN INFORMATION ABOUT THESE LONG TERM CONSEQUENCES? 2)HOW THEY CAN BE TREATED AND WHAT TYPES OF MEDICAL TREATMENT IS AVAILABLE TO STOP THE PROGRESSIVE NATURE OF THESE SYMPTOMS?
 * Why is it conspiracy freaks always feel the need to SHOUT online? - hazhar
 * Hazhar, if this gentleman truly did participate in military testing of nerve agents (which 'did' occur, according to military documents I ran across in my research for this site), then he is not a "conspracy freak". ClockworkTroll 23:47, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * Sir, I wish I was able to help you. I am not a doctor, but as far as I know there is little knowledge of the long-term effects of nerve agents, and even less about possible treatments. ClockworkTroll 23:47, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)
 * I read your shouting article with great interest and conclude;
 * 1) You are a liar, since anyone as you say "SUBJECTED TO VOLUMINOUS AMOUNTS OF NERVE GAS WHILE THE ONLY PROTECTIVE GEAR WORN WAS A GAS MASK" would be dead, since nerve gas is absorbed also by the skin, not only through the breathways, and
 * 2) You need treatment for clinical paranoia. Nixdorf 12:16, 21 September 2005 (UTC)

There are inconsistencies within this story which lead me to believe that this is not a true account. First off, Atropine is only given in the event of exposure, not in advance, as this story claims. Secondly, having been involved in Special Forces, I know that training done with these materials is done with full chemical suits. There is training with Tear Gas that is done without a suit, but that will not cause this to happen.

It is crackpots, like this, that make legitimate problems harder to solve. Go look somewhere else for your free lunch. When did America become a nation of whiny, what's in it for me losers, instead of a nation of people who believed in working for what they get?

64.229.195.23 (talk) 20:34, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Though there is very little follow-up research in warfare agents (at least in any publicly available source), the basic remains just as exposure to high dosage of any other organophosphate. The long term effects are, unfotunately, mostly chronic and can only be controlled through drugs, physiotherapy and exercise. I would recommend you to seek an expert with a good research fund and offer yourself as a subject. and being more to the topic- 1) you would find more information looking for long term organophosphate and insecticide exposure effects. 2) mostly you can only (as you said yourself) prevent or at least slow down further progress. general good health (not smoking, not drinking, not using drugs and a balanced diat accompanied with exercize) is always a good place to start, but it is best to consult a specelist before setting any major change in your life.

I am dubious about these alleged chronic effects of nerve agents -- not out of any love for nerve agents, but because the Federation of American Scientists, no fans of chemical agents themselves, seem very skeptical: http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/doctrine/army/mmcch/NervAgnt.htm#LONG%20TERM%20EFFECTS  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.165.87.144 (talk) 23:45, 19 November 2007 (UTC)


 * The FAS is not the author of the referenced document. mdf (talk) 12:36, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Revert a few months
In June someone at 159.242.10.188 took out major parts of the article (like the entire "History" section!), for this reason it has been reverted. Sad that this was not detected earlier. Nixdorf 12:16, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Thank you for noticing. I'm glad somebody did! – ClockworkSoul 19:40, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

UN Resolution 687
The article says this document classifies nerve agents/chemical weapons as WMDs. However, UN Security Council Resolution 687 is about Kuwait's return to independence and a call on Iraq to renounce chemical and nuclear weapons. Does anyone know the correct UN resolution? Stephen Compall 20:32, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

I haven't found anything from the UN, but maybe the chemical weapons convention? raptor 06:48, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Cutaneous toxicity of nerve agents
The G-agents penetrate skin poorly. While there have been incidents of cholinesterase depression following prolonged or high-concentration skin exposure to GB vapor, a person protected by a mask might do fairly well for some time. Sandy L 23:20, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Vapors of some G-agents are poorly resorbed cutaneously. GD (Soman), for instance, has a quite significant skin resorptivity, almost as high as V-series agents, and liquid G-agents contaminating the skin are resorbed even better. There were alleged cases in nazi ammo factories, where cutaneous exposition to spills of liquid GA caused deaths in few minutes.--84.163.82.1 11:16, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Why didn't Hitler use Nerve agents.
The article claims that Germany mass produced nerve agents during World War II. Why didn't Hilter use them?!
 * Because Nazis were aware of the risk of allied retaliation. In fact, Allies did posses several times greater stockpiles of "then-conventional" CW agents (phosgene, mustard) and were in possesion of some nerve agents (as DFP). Hitler and nazi military leaders were well aware of the fact, that their first-use of any chemical warfare in the war would result almost inevitably in massive chemical retaliation. An air raid on a major german city, dropping several thousands tons of phosgene or mustard or both was an inacceptable risk, even for hard-line Nazis.--84.163.82.1 11:22, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I am no sure if Hitler was thinking about something like that ^^

I know he himself was wounded by gas attacks in ww1 and my old school book states this was the reason he opposed the usage of gas.

Question
Shouldn't the nazi production of tabun be also in the tabun (nerve agent) article itself? I may be wrong but the tabun article barely mentions it. 74.135.49.209 17:05, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Request
Great article guys, I gotta confess I only came here after seeing that film "The Rock", could some1 explain the difference between the VX in reality and The Rock a bit more please. Like I get there is a cure, Atropine (in the leg tho, not the heart, altho u can take it in the heart can't you? you know for other things like cardiac arrest). And I know ur skin doesn't melt off, but u do spasm n choke to death yea? Also is what they say about lethality of it right, ya know like how much it takes to wipe out San Francisco. I'll have to watch it again, and give u guys the numbers. Ryan4314 (talk) 17:35, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Section "Popular Culture"
I do not like too much the way actors, storybooks and the like find their way into an encyclopedic article on a technical matter. Acutally, I don't think this section even belongs here. From my understanding, it does not contribute to the scientific, technical or common knowledge about nerve agents. I would love to get some feedback on that. Lost Boy (talk) 11:08, 30 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Feedback, I think the Pop Culture section is fair play. Most of us aren't chemical weapons experts, and that is who this article is designed for. The pop culture section teaches us the difference between reality and the movies (and if u don't like that the movies don't portray chemical weapons properly, there's not much we can do about that). Ryan4314 17:19, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Isn't wikipedia policy shifting away from that? cyclosarin (talk) 07:25, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
 * The tendency is moving away from "trivia" sections, and the like. "In popular culture" sections aren't quite the same thing, but they have the same troubling tendency to grow quickly out of control. The difference between the two, really is that the former can usually at least partially incorporated into the body of the article, and the latter often cannot. It seems to me that the section needs to be dramatically rewritten so that it illustrates the difference between real life and fictional representations of the subject, rather than serving as a list of every time nerve agents appeared in a song or on a TV show. If that can't be done, then I would prefer to see it unceremoniously lopped off rather then kept. – ClockworkSoul 07:47, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
 * It's growing like a tumor. The entire lot of it looks pretty unencyclopedic, so I'm cutting the whole thing. – ClockworkSoul 21:38, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Iran's use of nerve gas in Halabja?
The 'Since WWII' section talks about nerve gas being used in Halabja. It states that "As Iraq neither used, nor could produce these agents, Iran is the most likely perpetrator at Halabja." I've never heard this before, and it's pretty much the exact opposite of what the Halabja article says. I don't have time to check the SSI reports that are cited right now, but unless someone knows something about Iran's involvement, i'm going to fix this later tonight. dcole (talk) 18:39, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Ok, according to the Halabja poison gas attack page, the claim that Iran was behind the attacks was discredited in the 90's, and I couldn't find any SSI papers on their online archive dealing with the subject, so I'm going to remove the claim that Iran was behind the nerve gas attacks. dcole (talk) 23:51, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

yellow agent
please add "Yellow agent", as an agent mentioned by Homeland Security on one of their scenarios (it could be a fictional gas) --Enric Naval (talk) 20:39, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
 * The only hit I can find on Google is the link you provide. Reading the security report, it describes Agent Yellow as a combination of surfer mustered and lewisite, neither of which are nerve agents.  I'm not sure if this is an actual established compound, or made up for a security exercise, but in either case, it is not a nerve agent.  dcole (talk) 00:59, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I finally added it to List_of_fictional_toxins --Enric Naval (talk) 23:35, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Get citation
I rather doubt the US would trade back thermonuclear information for production of V-agents. You should insist on a citation for that. The DOD and AEC in 1958 were protective enough, and I doubt the Chemical Corps could have got that out of them for any pre-existing agreements. 143.232.210.150 (talk) 02:05, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Split proposal
The G-series and V-series nerve agents have different enough chemistries, structures, and actions that they should have their own page - much like Novichok agent. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Whoop whoop pull up (talk • contribs) 22:47, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

"10 times more toxic"
In the V-series section, it says that the "the V-series agents are about 10 times more toxic than the G-agent sarin (GB)". As far as I know, as a nobody, there's no way to universally measure toxicity, as it depends on many factors. Shouldn't this be straight up be removed? During my own small research, I've found that VX is not ten times more deadly than GB. It's either less, or more than ten times, depending on factors. I could be wrong, though. Only site I had laying around; http://www.fas.org/programs/bio/chemweapons/cwagents.html 81.235.247.92 (talk) 12:08, 11 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I've always assumed that the LD-50 was the standard for measuring toxicity, but reading a bit more I see that it depends on the ingestion mode. Either way, this source, from the VX (nerve agent) article does state that it's the "most toxic" nerve agent, but to your point, we don't seem to currently have a source that says it's "10 times more" toxic than G series. OhNo itsJamie  Talk 14:20, 11 September 2012 (UTC)
 * LD50 or LCt50 in human toxiciology is not really as important as the laymen often tend to think, save for: chemical warfare agents (and to a degree, toxicological epidemiology as a whole). Yep, in this field, one has to consider what dosage/concentration/exposition values would result to what percentage of fatalities or grave poisonings.  For the attacker, these figures are obviously needed to most correctly pre-estimate the amount of a CW agent needed for a target area for a specific effect on the foe he plans.  Obviously enough, the amouth of say Soman needed to "neutralize" 70 or more % of the enemy personell by inhalation in a target area of some 1.2 km² at 0100 hours local time under the meteorlogical conditions of no to little wind, inversion and temperature of say 8 °C for unprotected enemy force is markedly different to say the same effect on enemy force with some degree of protection in a sunny, windy day at 32 °C by percutaneous exposure.  So, there are for the most (actualy for every agent ever fielded) agents such figures, which bring along a level of probability quite a lot higher than in the most poisons.  As to the relative toxicity V-agents vs. Sarin:  by inhalation, VX and VR (the two V-agents known to be fielded in mass quantities by the US and USSR respectively), the inhalative toxicity (in terms of acute LCt50) is some 2.5 — 10 times higher than that of Sarin (assuming LCt50 for Sarin to be 100 mg × min / m³ air in resting healthy men and LCt50 for VX/VR to be in the order of 10—40 mg × min / m³ air for the same target cohort).  Percutaneously however, the V-agents are up to 100—200 × more toxic than Sarin (GB); the estimated percutaneous acute lethal dose for an "average man" (=healthy young soldier BW ~ 75 kg) to be 1,700 mg Sarin vs. 2—10 mg VX/VR.  This stuff is quite complex in its entirety and not all the data are published in open literature, for obvious reasons, you see.  Cheers,--95.208.70.158 (talk) 23:10, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

1.129.107.143 (talk) Note that the MSM has made very little (no?) mention of the possibility that the Sarin gas attacks in ASyria could have been merely an attack on, or using, organophosphate insecticide. Is the poison used in the recent attack in Britain related to an organophosphate insecticide? —Preceding undated comment added 01:20, 31 March 2018 (UTC)

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gseries
where do the names come from, apart from the "g"? this (eytmology) needs to be included68.151.25.115 (talk) 12:21, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

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Weaponization of nicotinic receptor agonists?
A number of sources cite examples of nicotine being weaponized e.g. Ciottone's Disaster Medicine & The threat of bioterrorism in America. Epibatidine is also named. I don't know if weaponization by terrorists is appropriate to mention save to say that it has happened. Would such a class be termed a nerve agent? Although the name does not specify a site of action, it appears that the definition specifies acetylcholine esterase. I previously pointed out the carbamates whose action and treatment isn't identical to organophosphates but at least they affect the same signaling cascade. It it isn't a good fit, I apologize for wasting your time. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.99.74.135 (talk) 16:46, 26 March 2018 (UTC)