what is chemical agents
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Explanation:
Chemical weapon
Description
A chemical weapon is a specialized munition that uses chemicals formulated to inflict death or harm on humans. Wikipedia
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There were over one million casualties from chemical weapons during World War I, leading to approximately 90,000 deaths, and untold morbidity and misery. Though chemical warfare was widely condemned and most nations have signed international treaties refusing to use chemical weapons, the unfortunate reality is that they have been used a number of times since World War IÑin 1935 by Italy against Ethiopia (mustard gas was sprayed from aircrafts), by Japan when they invaded China in 1936, by Egypt in the 1960s (phosgene and mustard gas by aerial bombs) in the Yemeni Civil War, and by Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war and on their own people, the Kurds (using sulfur mustard and nerve agents). More than 25 countries are thought to still be producing chemical warfare agents (CWA).
Unfortunately, CWAs have also been used by terrorists. The Japanese Aum Shinrikyo cult used sarin, a nerve agent, in a terrorist attack in Matsumoto in June of 1994, and again in the Tokyo subway system in March of 1995. It is the latter incident that has received much attention because of the number of people injured (over 5,000) and killed (12), and because the sect also had released anthrax in previous attacks and had produced other nerve and biologic agents. In addition, the agent was released in a subway. Subway systems are of great concern to planning agencies because there are massed concentrations of people at specific times and the sites have limited accessibility.
Though repugnant to all of us, it is not surprising that chemical weapons are used, purely on a cost-effectiveness basis. Conventional weapons (based on data from the 1960s) cost $2,000 to produce mass casualties per square kilometer, nuclear weapons cost $800, chemical weapons cost $600, and biologic weapons cost $1. Treating such chemical weapons, however, requires massive investment of medical resources to deal with results that are psychologically as or more devastating than any other weapon. In treating casualties, it is important to protect oneself, more so than in treating casualties from any other weapon of mass destruction. From an anesthesia perspective, patients who have been exposed to nerve agents or their antidotes may require modification of the anesthetic plan if they require surgery for other reasons.
One must also take into account that, because of the likelihood of an industrial accident, we may be more likely to see patients injured by chemical agents than by nuclear or biologic agents. The best example would be an industrial accident in which large amounts of chlorine were released either from an explosion, a train derailment, or truck crash.
The Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) is a multilateral treaty that bans chemical weapons and requires their destruction within a specified period of time. The treaty is of unlimited duration and is far more comprehensive than the 1925 Geneva Protocol, which outlaws the use but not the possession of chemical weapons.
CWC negotiations started in 1980 in the UN Conference on Disarmament. The convention opened for signature on January 13, 1993, and entered into force on April 29, 1997.
The CWC is implemented by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which is headquartered in The Hague with about 500 employees. The OPCW receives states-parties’ declarations detailing chemical weapons-related activities or materials and relevant industrial activities. After receiving declarations, the OPCW inspects and monitors states-parties’ facilities and activities that are relevant to the convention, to ensure compliance.
The CWC is open to all nations and currently has 193 states-parties. Israel has signed but has yet to ratify the convention. Three states have neither signed nor ratified the convention (Egypt, North Korea and South Sudan).
It defined chemical- warfare agents as including “all substances employed for their toxic effects on man, animals and plants”, and biological-warfare agents as those “that depend for their effects on multiplication within the target organism, and that are intended for use in war to cause disease or death in man, ...