Rapid Identification of Irritant Type Chemicals through the Use of the Thunderdome(Trademark) FTIR Accessory

摘要

Allegations concerning the use and/or manufacture of chemical warfare (CW) agents in recent years has been of interest to many countries. Many allegations of the use of irritants and 'riot control' type chemicals have also surfaced in the world. The presence of CW agents, precursors, and decomposition (breakdown) products in the environment has been studied by various collection and extraction means. This has also been true for riot control type chemicals. Solid chemicals of interest have been sampled and either dissolved in solvent for analysis by various instrumental techniques or processed into KBr disks to be analyzed by Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR). All of these precise collection, preparation, and analysis techniques usually generate waste that must be dealt with. Rapid response situations require quick analytical techniques. The Thunderdome(Trademark), a single reflectance Horizontal Attenuated Total Internal Reflectance (HATR) accessory, was found to be a quick, forgiving piece of equipment that allows samples to be applied with minimal effort and spectra to be generated in >1 min. As a result, time consuming sample preparation processes are eliminated. The instrument used was a Nicolet 800 FTIR with a 680 Workstation. Spectral differences were noted in the samples and are presented in this report.