Novichok poisonings: Research Intensifying to Find a Contaminated Object | Kingdom News

An object contaminated by a novichok that left a Wiltshire man and woman fighting to save their lives was not found, the Guardian learned, while researching to intensify it.

Investigators began to examine key sites visited by Dawn Sturgess. and Charlie Rowley in the hours before they get sick.

In the scorching heat of summer, officers in protective gear began searching for a homeless shelter in Salisbury where Sturgess lived and Rowley's property in Amesbury, where they became ill last Saturday. The investigators at the hostel seemed to be looking at the front door. Residents of Rowley's Amesbury home said they had been told that they would be stamped to check their health.

Sources familiar with the investigation, led by Scotland Yard's anti-terror unit, confirmed that Sturgess and Rowley's abrasions were crucial. to determine that they had been poisoned by novichok after handling it.

Scientists examined swabs taken from them while they were critically in Salisbury District Hospital. The highest concentration of novichok was found on their hands. This led the Porton Down scientists to tell the investigators that the couple had handled the contaminated object.

The poison was transmitted by absorption through the skin, as was the case for Sergei and Yulia Skripal for four months. Sturgess and Rowley were not targeted for the murder, according to the police, and their contamination would be the result of the carelessness of anyone who owned the novichok.

Britain blames Russia for the attempted murder that hit Sergei Skripal and his daughter, using the nerve agent developed by the Russian army. Investigators believe the same batch has poisoned the British couple but is awaiting scientific confirmation.

Novichok refers to a group of nerve agents developed by the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s to escape international restrictions on chemical weapons. Like other neurotoxicants, they are organophosphorus compounds, but the chemicals used to make them and their final structures are considered clbadified in the United Kingdom, the United States, and in other countries.

The most potent substances are considered more deadly than VX, the deadliest familiar neurological agents, which include sarin, tabun and soman.

While novichok agents function in the same way, mbadively stimulating muscles and glands, a chemical weapons expert stated that the agents did not degrade rapidly in the environment and had additional toxicity that was not well understood. The treatment for exposure to novichok would be the same as for other nerve agents, namely atropine, diazepam and potentially the drugs called oximes.

The chemical structures of novichok agents were made public in 2008 by Vil Mirzayanov, a former Russian scientist living in the United States, but the structures have never been publicly confirmed. It is thought that they can be manufactured in various forms, including dusty aerosol form.

Novichoks are known as binary agents because they become lethal only after mixing two otherwise harmless components. According to Mirzayanov, they are 10 to 100 times more toxic than conventional neurotoxic agents.

While the laboratories used for police chemical weapons incidents have databases on nerve agents, few Russians would have complete details about novichok compounds. the chemicals needed to make them

Photography: Matt Cardy / Getty Images Europe

Paramedic teams and firefighters stood in Salisbury and Amesbury as the search operation continued on Friday. The hostel was evacuated Thursday and on Friday, men in camouflage wearing a respirator and gloves were seen removing objects.

Police secured all the places the couple had visited in the hours leading up to their collapse, but Wiltshire Police Chief Kier Pritchard admitted that they could not trust all of them the sites.

John Simpson, an expert from Public Health England, said that it was not possible to do a scan of the entire Salisbury to find out if there was any contamination in other sites. He said: "There are probably very few [novichok] and you can not test the environment easily for that."

More details on the lifestyle of the couple emerged. Friends said Rowley was often looking for garbage cans for items that he could sell.

A friend, who asked not to be named, said, "I can only imagine that he took it in the trash cans." He liked the binning. </ P> <p> Dawn </ p> Dawn and he had plenty of things in their homes that they picked up, a lot of housekeeping stuff. "Another said," Very often he came back with things. "Pieces of jewelry and old objects He would sell them between 20 and 30 pounds. "

Chiefs of Public Health and Counsel warned people not to pick up unidentified objects.

Officials met Friday after – Midnight at the Cobra Government Emergency Committee to discuss the latest developments, chaired by Assistant National Security Advisor Madeleine Alessandri

Some Salisbury residents have expressed concern and asked for more openness to the authorities.]

Standing next to a cordon at the Queen Elizabeth Gardens in Salisbury, a place that the two men visited, Tony Kesterton, a retired teacher, said: "I would like them to give us more information at that time. subject; maybe they do not have any anymore.

"I'll take precautions, but you have to keep living, people are very resilient here, but it has to delay tourism."

Jim Diment, 54, a market trader, said business had been difficult since the last poisonings. "It's back to square one." It's not good, he says.

The Guardian understands that the Novichok that injured Sturgess and Rowley may have been in a sealed container after the Skripals attack in March Sources close to the investigation hinted that they could now know the identity of the one who targeted the Skripals.

The second most urgent of the agents neurotoxic in four months caused a diplomatic dispute, the Minister of the Interior, Sajid Javid, accusing the Russian state of using Britain "poison dump".

On Thursday, the Metropolitan Police said: "Following further testing of patient samples, we now know that they were exposed to the nerve agent after handling a contaminated object.

"Detectives work as quickly and as diligently as possible to identify the source of the contamination, and careful and systematic research is under way on a number of sites."