Talk:Nerve agent

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Request for Advice

I WAS INVOLVED IN NERVE GAS EXPERIMENTATION AT FT BRAGG, NC A LONG TIME AGO.A SENATE SUBCOMMITTEE RECENTLY APPARENTLY HAD CONTACTED THE VA WHO THEN CONTACTED ME ABOUT THIS SITUATION.

DURING THESE EXPERIMENTS WE WERE REPEATEDLY SUBJECTED TO VOLUMINOUS AMOUNTS OF NERVE GAS WHILE THE ONLY PROTECTIVE GEAR WORN WAS A GAS MASK. SHORTLY BEFORE HAVING THE GAS TURNED IN THE SIX LARGE MACHINES THERE, WE WERE ALL GIVEN A LARGE DOSES OF ATROPINE WHICH WE WERE TOLD WAS AN ANTIDOTE IF ANY NERVE GAS GOT BY THE MASK.

THE VA HAS SINCE OFFERED TO TREAT ME FOR THE ILLNESSES WHICH HAVE RESULTED; HOWEVER, SINCE THERE IS NOT A TRULY ENTHUSIASTIC FEELING WITHIN ME ABOUT VA'S CONCERN WITH MY HEALTH, IT IS MY DESIRE NOW TO LEARN MORE ABOUT WHAT IT IS THE VA WANTS TO INVOLVE ME IN.

THOUGHOUT THE YEARS SINCE, I HAVE SUFFERED CONTINUALLY WITH BALANCE AS WELL AS OTHER ORTHOPEDIC AND GENERAL BODY PROBLEMS AS WELL AS WITH BOUTS OF INTERMITTENT FEELING OF ENORMOUS WEAKNESS. IN THE PAST I HAVE ALWAYS SOUGHT OUT PRIVATE MEDICAL HELP AND DOCTORS NOT FROM THE VA AND AM THINKING IF CONTINUING WITH THESE PRIVATE PHYSICIANS IS THE RIGHT WAY TO GO.

MY QUESTIONS ARE TWO. 1)WHERE ONE CAN OBTAIN INFORMATION ABOUT THESE LONG TERM CONSEQUENCES? 2)HOW THEY CAN BE TREATED AND WHAT TYPES OF MEDICAL TREATMENT IS AVAILABLE TO STOP THE PROGRESSIVE NATURE OF THESE SYMPTOMS?

Why is it conspiracy freaks always feel the need to SHOUT online? - hazhar
- Hazhar, if this gentleman truly did participate in military testing of nerve agents (which 'did' occur, according to military documents I ran across in my research for this site), then he is not a "conspracy freak". ClockworkTroll 23:47, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Sir, I wish I was able to help you. I am not a doctor, but as far as I know there is little knowledge of the long-term effects of nerve agents, and even less about possible treatments. ClockworkTroll 23:47, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)
I read your shouting article with great interest and conclude;
- 1) You are a liar, since anyone as you say "SUBJECTED TO VOLUMINOUS AMOUNTS OF NERVE GAS WHILE THE ONLY PROTECTIVE GEAR WORN WAS A GAS MASK" would be dead, since nerve gas is absorbed also by the skin, not only through the breathways, and
- 2) You need treatment for clinical paranoia. Nixdorf 12:16, 21 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Though there is very little follow-up research in warfare agents (at least in any publicly available source) , the basic remains just as exposure to high dosage of any other organophosphate. The long term effects are, unfotunately, mostly chronic and can only be controlled through drugs, physiotherapy and exercise. I would recommend you to seek an expert with a good research fund and offer yourself as a subject. and being more to the topic- 1) you would find more information looking for long term organophosphate and insecticide exposure effects. 2) mostly you can only (as you said yourself) prevent or at least slow down further progress. general good health (not smoking, not drinking, not using drugs and a balanced diat accompanied with exercize) is always a good place to start, but it is best to consult a specelist before setting any major change in your life.

I am dubious about these alleged chronic effects of nerve agents -- not out of any love for nerve agents, but because the Federation of American Scientists, no fans of chemical agents themselves, seem very skeptical: http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/doctrine/army/mmcch/NervAgnt.htm#LONG%20TERM%20EFFECTS —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.165.87.144 (talk) 23:45, 19 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The FAS is not the author of the referenced document. mdf (talk) 12:36, 6 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Revert a few months

In June someone at 159.242.10.188 took out major parts of the article (like the entire "History" section!), for this reason it has been reverted. Sad that this was not detected earlier. Nixdorf 12:16, 21 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for noticing. I'm glad somebody did! – Clockwork Soul 19:40, 9 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

UN Resolution 687

The article says this document classifies nerve agents/chemical weapons as WMDs. However, Wikisource:UN Security Council Resolution 687 is about Kuwait's return to independence and a call on Iraq to renounce chemical and nuclear weapons. Does anyone know the correct UN resolution? Stephen Compall 20:32, 1 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I haven't found anything from the UN, but maybe the chemical weapons convention? raptor 06:48, 12 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Cutaneous toxicity of nerve agents

The G-agents penetrate skin poorly. While there have been incidents of cholinesterase depression following prolonged or high-concentration skin exposure to GB vapor, a person protected by a mask might do fairly well for some time. Sandy L 23:20, 8 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Vapors of some G-agents are poorly resorbed cutaneously. GD (Soman), for instance, has a quite significant skin resorptivity, almost as high as V-series agents, and liquid G-agents contaminating the skin are resorbed even better. There were alleged cases in nazi ammo factories, where cutaneous exposition to spills of liquid GA caused deaths in few minutes.--84.163.82.1 11:16, 26 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Why didn't Hitler use Nerve agents.

The article claims that Germany mass produced nerve agents during World War II. Why didn't Hilter use them?!

Because Nazis were aware of the risk of allied retaliation. In fact, Allies did posses several times greater stockpiles of "then-conventional" CW agents (phosgene, mustard) and were in possesion of some nerve agents (as DFP). Hitler and nazi military leaders were well aware of the fact, that their first-use of any chemical warfare in the war would result almost inevitably in massive chemical retaliation. An air raid on a major german city, dropping several thousands tons of phosgene or mustard or both was an inacceptable risk, even for hard-line Nazis.--84.163.82.1 11:22, 26 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Question

Shouldn't the nazi production of tabun be also in the tabun (nerve agent) article itself? I may be wrong but the tabun article barely mentions it. 74.135.49.209 17:05, 19 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Request

Great article guys, I gotta confess I only came here after seeing that film "The Rock", could some1 explain the difference between the VX in reality and The Rock a bit more please. Like I get there is a cure, Atropine (in the leg tho, not the heart, altho u can take it in the heart can't you? you know for other things like cardiac arrest). And I know ur skin doesn't melt off, but u do spasm n choke to death yea? Also is what they say about lethality of it right, ya know like how much it takes to wipe out San Francisco. I'll have to watch it again, and give u guys the numbers. Ryan4314 (talk) 17:35, 26 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Section "Popular Culture"

I do not like too much the way actors, storybooks and the like find their way into an encyclopedic article on a technical matter. Acutally, I don't think this section even belongs here. From my understanding, it does not contribute to the scientific, technical or common knowledge about nerve agents. I would love to get some feedback on that. Lost Boy (talk) 11:08, 30 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback, I think the Pop Culture section is fair play. Most of us aren't chemical weapons experts, and that is who this article is designed for. The pop culture section teaches us the difference between reality and the movies (and if u don't like that the movies don't portray chemical weapons properly, there's not much we can do about that). Ryan4314 17:19, 3 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Isn't wikipedia policy shifting away from that? cyclosarin (talk) 07:25, 19 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The tendency is moving away from "trivia" sections, and the like. "In popular culture" sections aren't quite the same thing, but they have the same troubling tendency to grow quickly out of control. The difference between the two, really is that the former can usually at least partially incorporated into the body of the article, and the latter often cannot. It seems to me that the section needs to be dramatically rewritten so that it illustrates the difference between real life and fictional representations of the subject, rather than serving as a list of every time nerve agents appeared in a song or on a TV show. If that can't be done, then I would prefer to see it unceremoniously lopped off rather then kept. – Clockwork Soul 07:47, 19 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It's growing like a tumor. The entire lot of it looks pretty unencyclopedic, so I'm cutting the whole thing. – Clockwork Soul 21:38, 28 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Iran's use of nerve gas in Halabja?

The 'Since WWII' section talks about nerve gas being used in Halabja. It states that "As Iraq neither used, nor could produce these agents, Iran is the most likely perpetrator at Halabja." I've never heard this before, and it's pretty much the exact opposite of what the Halabja article says. I don't have time to check the SSI reports that are cited right now, but unless someone knows something about Iran's involvement, i'm going to fix this later tonight. dcole (talk) 18:39, 8 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]