Patocka_2018_Mil.Med.Sci.Lett_87_1

On March 4, Sergei Skripal, a former Russian spy who was convicted and imprisoned in Russia for working as a double agent, and his daughter were found unresponsive and slumped on a shopping-center bench in Salisbury, England. On 12 March 2018, British Prime Minister Theresa May said in Parliament that the two had been poisoned with Novichok, a 'military grade' nerve agent developed by Russia, and she moved swiftly to retaliate against the government of President Vladimir Putin (BBC News, 12 March 2018). It was the first use of a nerve agent on European soil since World War II. Russian authorities have rejected May's claims as nonsense. On 14 March 2018, the UK expelled 23 Russian diplomats after the Russian government refused to meet the UK's deadline of midnight on 13 March 2018 to give an explanation for the use of the substance (BBC News, 14 March 2018). The whole world has learned about the existence of a highly toxic neuro-paralytic substance called Novichok, which should have been destroyed under the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction (https://treaties.un.org/Pages/ViewDetails.aspx?src=TREATY&mtdsg_no=XXVI-3&chapter=26&lang=en). It will not hurt to tell what's behind Novichok, what substances are involved and how dangerous they are. Novichok is a series of nerve agents the Soviet Union and Russia developed between 1971-1993 (Tucker, 2006; Ellison, 2007). They were designed as part of a Soviet program codenamed "FOLIANT" (Pitschmann, 2014), nevertheless Russia officially denies producing or researching Novichok agents (Borger, 2018). Novichok agents were developed during the Cold War period and have never been used on the battlefield. In 2011, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) Scientific Advisory Board reported that no peer reviewed paper on Novichok agents in scientific literature exist (OPCW Report, 2011) and in 2013 OPCW reported that it had insufficient information to comment on the existence or properties of Novichok agents (OPCW Report, 2013). Since then, new information has emerged that confirms the existence of Novichok agents and brings more information about them. Novichok agents are binary weapons, in which precursors for the nerve agents are mixed in a munition to produce the agent just prior to its use (Darling and Noste, 2016). Because the precursors are generally significantly less hazardous than the agents themselves, this technique makes handling and transporting the munitions a great deal simpler. Additionally, precursors to the agents are usually much easier to stabilize than the agents themselves, so this technique also made it possible to increase the shelf life of the agents. Binary weapons are safer to store, transport and handle. Different dihalonitrosomethanes or nitromethanes serves as precursors of Novichok agents. These react with phosphorus halides, phosphite, phosphate and alkylphosphonate esters to form formaldoximes. Novichok family of analogs comprises more than a hundred structural variants. From a military standpoint, the most pronounced Novichok was A-232 (Novichok-5). Other possible organophosphate molecules that can be ranked among Novichok agents are shown