The US government have been busy this week denying that pepper spray is a chemical (spoiler, it is a chemical). They’ve also been at pains to point out that it’s not the same as tear gas, which is at least technically correct. I’ve had a lot of requests over the past week for a graphic looking at tear gas, so here it is!
Over the past week, UK news has been dominated by the mysterious poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia. Today, this culminated in the British government revealing that it is believed a type of Novichok agent was the chemical culprit behind the attempted murder. This graphic takes a look at what we do know about Novichok agents and what is still unclear.
It’s been a little while since the last post on chemical warfare agents on the site, in which we looked at the G series nerve agents, including sarin and tabun. The second of the two graphics looking at nerve agents focuses this time on the V series, including the infamous VX.
Today’s graphic looks again at the darker side of chemistry, after the previous post on the various chemical agents used in World War 1. The present day spectre of chemical warfare is largely concerned with nerve agents, which come in two main groups; today’s post examines the G series of nerve gases, including sarin, which has made the news in the past year following its use on civilians in Syria.
I’ll be accompanying some of the students from my school on a history trip to Ypres and a few other World War 1 battlefields in a few weeks’ time. Obviously, they’d much rather be learning chemistry, so I’ve been reading up on the different chemical agents used during World War 1, and this graphic is a byproduct of that. As it turns out, several of them were used for the first time at Ypres, so it’ll even be topical!
