Abstract
The present study aimed to investigate the persistence and existence of chemical warfare agents (CWAs) and related dissipation products in the environment of Sardasht area, Iran. Three types of environmental samples including water, soil, and native local plant materials were collected and analyzed. Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry in the electron impact ionization mode has been developed for the separation, screening, identification, and qualification of chemicals after the sample preparation methods. The initial results revealed that no trace of related compounds or CWAs was detected in the soil and water samples. However, trace amounts of some degradation products of blistering agents like mustard gas (HD) and lewisite were found in a tree wood from a house subjected to chemical attack as well as in barley samples (a mixture of leaves and root) collected from an agricultural field in the area indicating chronic low exposure to the environment and people. In order to validate the applied extraction procedures, ethylene glycol was spiked to some of the samples including groundwater, surface soil, grape, and alfalfa plants. All the recoveries were in the range of 83.6-107.4% with the relative standard deviations varying from 4.9% to 12.4% (n = 3) successfully.
Highlights
In several cases, the laws of war have been broken by both parties leading the war to be directed toward civilians, women, and children, or the use of mass destruction weapons against the military and civilians including chemical weapons, despite the use of which have been banned for decades under the Geneva Convention almost 100 years ago
Since the main purpose of this research is to detect and identification of any compound related to degradation by-products of Mustard gas (HD) and Lewisite as the authorized blistering agents, screening analysis was conducted for all the studied environmental samples including water, soil and plant
Considering the important factors to have a systematic sampling plan such as exact specification of points, time and alternation of sampling and preservation of sample composition until the time of analysis, eight soil samples were prioritized according to Table 2
Summary
The laws of war have been broken by both parties leading the war to be directed toward civilians, women, and children, or the use of mass destruction weapons against the military and civilians including chemical weapons, despite the use of which have been banned for decades under the Geneva Convention almost 100 years ago. The chemical agents are used to kill, seriously injure, or disable people due to their physiological effects The toxicity of these agents is because of their ability to interact with enzymes, proteins, and nucleic acids in living organs. The chemical agents are first cause stimulation in cells and affect the cells as a cellular toxin in living tissues (Singha et al 2016). Compounds such as sarin, soman, tabun, mustard gas, and lewisite are among the chemical warfare agents, which are known as blistering, blood, nerve, asphyxiation, and riot control agents (Hellström and Ödalen 2013; Hanaoka 2005). The mentioned issues are not the only destructive effects of sulfur mustard (Nilsson et al 1992)
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