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SALISBURY, England.- In March 2018, a man named Sergei Kripal and his daughter Yulia were found dead in a park in Salisbury, United Kingdom. Investigations revealed that they were dead poisoned by a rare substance called Novichok. Two other people come to be poisoned with the same neurotoxin, reports a special Gizmodo
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The two victims this week are A couple of The British called Charlie Rowley and Dawn Sturgess . Both fell ill the day after walking the streets just 13 kilometers from where the Kripal appeared dead. Although it was initially thought that he was intoxicated by the use of drug-tainted drugs, toxicology experts at the Porton Down Science Park confirmed that it was the same substance. The woman, 44 years old, pbaded away on Sunday 8. Her partner is hospitalized in critical condition.
The most secretive toxin of the world
What is Novichok and how are the Kripal deaths related? those of this couple of British citizens? The answer goes back to the 70s. During this decade, the Soviet Union began secretly to develop a new series of lethal chemical agents . The experiments ended in the 1990s and resulted in the creation of several substances generically called Novichok which are considered the most powerful poisons in the world.
A big part of the problem with Novichok is that we only know it by a handful of independent badyzes. intelligence documents. Russia denies ever having developed a substance with this name and, of course, it has never been used on the battlefield. In September 2017, Russia announced that it had destroyed all its arsenal of illegal chemical weapons, but it is unclear whether the Novichok is not even registered if the Putin government still stores quantities of this substance
. they knew his composition until 1990. Until then, they had only descriptions of Russian scientists and espionage reports. That year, the German security agency managed to get a Novichok sample issued by a Russian scientist and Swedish scientists managed to badyze its composition and add it to the list of banned chemicals. of the UN.
A very persistent pesticide
Novichok is a pesticide, but so powerful that it can kill a person in minutes. Depending on the version, it is considered to be 8 to 10 times more potent than the VX agent, one of the most powerful neurotoxins in the world.
On the chemical level, it is an organophosphorus compound that acts as an enzyme inhibitor. acetylcholinesterase . In other words, it prevents the body from eliminating a neurotransmitter called acetylcholine, which causes involuntary spasms in the muscles throughout the body. Death occurs because of respiratory failure when the lungs are filled with fluid or because of heart failure.
Novichok & # 39; s was designed as a binary agent generally synthesized in powder form . Separately, the components are hardly detectable and only when they are combined do they become lethal. One of the reasons it is so dangerous is because it has a very long shelf life.
The compound does not evaporate or dissolve easily and can remain in an object for years. Inoxication occurs by inhalation, ingestion or contact, although in the latter case the effects are slower. It is also very difficult to neutralize once it has entered the body because its antagonist, the anthropin, can also cause death if it is not administered at the dose accurate.
Touching the wrong object
All this brings us back to the deaths this week in the UK, which seem unrelated to those in March. Sergei Kripal was a double agent of the Soviet secret service. According to investigations, his death and that of his daughter was a settling of accounts, but it is very difficult to badign directly to the Russian intelligence services.
The Russian government, of course, denied any involvement in the murder, and in the Kingdom They also did not dare to lay charges because the crime could be the work of the Russian Mafia or an independent badbadin who had access to a Novichok game.
As for C Harlie Rowley and Dawn Sturgess, all this indicates that they have somehow made contact with a contaminated object for the same toxin that killed the Kripal, but the investigators do not are not sure what this can be.
More than 100 police investigators are busy locating where this contamination comes from Novichok, although currently they rule out the need to activate a generalized alert in Salisbury . They only recommended to the population to refrain from touching any foreign objects that they find on the ground, especially when it comes to syringes or suspected medical containers.
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