Chapter 25 Chemical warfare agents

Abstract

This chapter reviews field (onsite)- and laboratory (offsite)-based analytical methods used for the determination of chemical warfare agents, their characteristic degradation products, and related compounds, with an emphasis on analytical methods developed over the past five to seven years that could be used for forensic and other purposes. Chemical warfare agents have been referred to as warfare gases, but, in fact, most chemical warfare agents exist as liquids at ambient temperatures. Common chemical warfare agents have varying degrees of volatility and pose both a vapor hazard and a liquid contact hazard. This physical characteristic has made the analysis of chemical warfare agents amenable to the analytical techniques commonly employed for most environmental analyses, such as gas chromatography (GC) and liquid chromatography (LC) with a variety of detectors including mass spectrometry (MS). Samples contaminated with chemical warfare agents typically contain multiple components that are best characterized following chromatographic separation.