[ad_1]
A British couple was found unconscious in Amesbury, Wiltshire County, England after being poisoned in Novichok, the same substance used in the case of the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter , Yulia, in March. British police.
It is not yet known whether there is a relationship between the two cases.
Sergei and Yulia Skripal were found unconscious on a park bench in Salisbury on 4 March. At the time, the police stated that they had been poisoned by a "toxic agent". They were hospitalized in critical condition but recovered and are under the protection of the authorities – who have accused Russia of being behind the attack.
Last Saturday, Charlie Rowley, 45, and Dawn Sturgess, 44, were taken to hospital after being sick at home in Amesbury and in critical condition.
Police said Wednesday that they were exposed to the same "nerve agent" that poisoned the Skripal but found no evidence suggesting that they would have been victims of an attack .
British couple found on Saturday and are in serious condition
1) It was developed in the Soviet Union
The name novichok means "novice" in Russian, and if applied to a group of neurotoxic substances developed by the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980.
They were known as a fourth-generation chemical weapon and were developed under a Soviet program called Foliant.
The existence of novichok was revealed by the chemist Vil Mirzayanov in the 1990s, through the Russian press. Later, he fled to the United States, where he published the chemical formula in his book State Secrets .
In 1999, US officials traveled to Uzbekistan to help dismantle and decontaminate one of the largest centers for the production of chemical weapons in the Soviet Union.
According to Mirzayanov, the Soviets used this site to produce and test small quantities of Novichok.
2) It is more toxic than other substances
One of the groups of chemicals called novichoks – A-230 – is considered to be eight times more toxic than agents. like VX.
"It's more dangerous and more sophisticated than sarin or VX and it's harder to identify," says Professor Gary Stephens, a specialist in pharmacology at the University of Reading, in England.
Variants of A -230 exists. One of them, A-232, would have been used by the Russian army as the basis of the chemical weapon known as Novichok 5.
3) Novichoks exist in various forms
Some novichok agents are liquid but others are raw are solid.
Some agents may also be "binary weapons", which means that the agent is stored in two separate chemical ingredients, which makes it safer to carry and store
According to Stephens, this would be one of the main "advantages" of Novichok: "It is because the parts that compose them are not on the list of banned substances".
4) May take effect quickly
Novichoks were made to be more toxic than other chemical weapons; some versions start to take effect very quickly, take 30 seconds to two minutes
The main form of exposure would be by inhalation but may also be by skin contact.
However,
5) The symptoms are similar to those of other nervous agents
Novichok agents have effects similar to those of other neurotoxic agents. They act by blocking messages from the nerves to the muscles, causing the collapse of bodily functions.
Mirzayanov tells the BBC that the first symptom to look for is miosis, excessive contraction of pupils
Higher doses can cause seizures and stop breathing, he says. "Then convulsions and vomiting begin, then comes death."
Mirzayanov also said that there are antidotes that can help prevent the poison's advance. If a person is exposed to the agent, his clothes should be removed and his skin should be washed with water and soap.
6) Other people may have done novichok?
The UK has accused Russia of being behind the former spy and his daughter. The Russians denied any involvement in the case and demanded evidence.
Moreover, Moscow claimed that the United Kingdom could have itself produced the toxic agent of the Defense Research Center of the Department of Defense in Porton Dow, which the British firmly denied.
The Kremlin also made similar allegations, Slovakia and the Czech Republic – all denied by their respective governments.
Mirzayanov believes that Russia was behind the attack in Salisbury to be "the country that invented (the agent), has experience and turned it into a weapon" .
The Russian ambbadador to the UN says that the development of nerve agents was stopped in 1992 and that stockpiled stocks were destroyed in 2017.
In September, the Organization for The Prohibition of Chemical Weapons confirmed the destruction of 39,967 metric tons of chemical weapons in Russian hands.
However, novichoks have never been reported to the organization, and chemicals have never been part of any control regime, in part because of uncertainties on their chemical structure, explains Professor Alastair Hay of the University of Leeds, England
BBC News Brazil – All rights reserved. (F, b, e, v, n, t, s) {if (f.fbq) returns; n = f.fbq = function () {n.callMethod?
n.callMethod.apply (n, arguments): n.queue.push (arguments)}; if (! f._fbq) f._fbq = n;
n.queue = n.loaded = 0; n.version = 2.0 & # 39 ;; n.queue = []; t = b.createElement (e); t.async =! 0;
t.src = v; s = b.getElementsByTagName (e) [0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore (t, s)} (window,
document, "script", https: //connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js');
fbq (& # 39 ;, & # 39; 695146213959045 & # 39;);
fbq ("track", "Pageview");
[ad_2]
Source link
