Assessing the Thermal Stability and Degradation Characteristics of Chemical Warfare Nerve Agents via Pyrolysis GC-MS

摘要

In the event of an accidental or intentional release of a chemical warfare nerve agent(CWNA), the capability to accurately predict hazard areas is crucial to minimizing their impact on civilian and military populations, and human collateral effects. In addition to meteorological observations and topographical data, successful modeling of the airborne transport and dispersion of these toxic chemicals with software tools such as SCIPUFF (Sykes et al.,1998) requires a knowledge of the stability of the CWNA in order to determine potential exposure dosages. Since thermal dissemination, such as pyrotechnics or explosive munitions, could be used as a method of disseminating CWNAs, characterization of the thermal degradation products is crucial. This presentation will focus on the development and application of a laboratory pyrolysis technique to qualitatively assess the thermal stability of CWNAs over a range of temperatures and conditions relevant to these methods of dissemination.