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Novichoks: The Dangerous Fourth Generation of Chemical Weapons

“Novichoks” is the name given to the controversial chemical weapons supposedly developed in the former Soviet Union between the 1970s and the 1990s. Designed to be undetectable and untreatable, these chemicals became the most toxic of the nerve agents, being very attractive for both terrorist and ch...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Franca, Tanos C. C., Kitagawa, Daniel A. S., Cavalcante, Samir F. de A., da Silva, Jorge A. V., Nepovimova, Eugenie, Kuca, Kamil
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6429166/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30862059
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijms20051222
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author Franca, Tanos C. C.
Kitagawa, Daniel A. S.
Cavalcante, Samir F. de A.
da Silva, Jorge A. V.
Nepovimova, Eugenie
Kuca, Kamil
author_facet Franca, Tanos C. C.
Kitagawa, Daniel A. S.
Cavalcante, Samir F. de A.
da Silva, Jorge A. V.
Nepovimova, Eugenie
Kuca, Kamil
author_sort Franca, Tanos C. C.
collection PubMed
description “Novichoks” is the name given to the controversial chemical weapons supposedly developed in the former Soviet Union between the 1970s and the 1990s. Designed to be undetectable and untreatable, these chemicals became the most toxic of the nerve agents, being very attractive for both terrorist and chemical warfare purposes. However, very little information is available in the literature, and the Russian government did not acknowledge their development. The intent of this review is to provide the IJMS readers with a general overview on what is known about novichoks today. We briefly tell the story of the secret development of these agents, and discuss their synthesis, toxicity, physical-chemical properties, and possible ways of treatment and neutralization. In addition, we also wish to call the attention of the scientific community to the great risks still represented by nerve agents worldwide, and the need to keep constant investments in the development of antidotes and ways to protect against such deadly compounds.
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spelling pubmed-64291662019-04-10 Novichoks: The Dangerous Fourth Generation of Chemical Weapons Franca, Tanos C. C. Kitagawa, Daniel A. S. Cavalcante, Samir F. de A. da Silva, Jorge A. V. Nepovimova, Eugenie Kuca, Kamil Int J Mol Sci Review “Novichoks” is the name given to the controversial chemical weapons supposedly developed in the former Soviet Union between the 1970s and the 1990s. Designed to be undetectable and untreatable, these chemicals became the most toxic of the nerve agents, being very attractive for both terrorist and chemical warfare purposes. However, very little information is available in the literature, and the Russian government did not acknowledge their development. The intent of this review is to provide the IJMS readers with a general overview on what is known about novichoks today. We briefly tell the story of the secret development of these agents, and discuss their synthesis, toxicity, physical-chemical properties, and possible ways of treatment and neutralization. In addition, we also wish to call the attention of the scientific community to the great risks still represented by nerve agents worldwide, and the need to keep constant investments in the development of antidotes and ways to protect against such deadly compounds. MDPI 2019-03-11 /pmc/articles/PMC6429166/ /pubmed/30862059 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijms20051222 Text en © 2019 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Review
Franca, Tanos C. C.
Kitagawa, Daniel A. S.
Cavalcante, Samir F. de A.
da Silva, Jorge A. V.
Nepovimova, Eugenie
Kuca, Kamil
Novichoks: The Dangerous Fourth Generation of Chemical Weapons
title Novichoks: The Dangerous Fourth Generation of Chemical Weapons
title_full Novichoks: The Dangerous Fourth Generation of Chemical Weapons
title_fullStr Novichoks: The Dangerous Fourth Generation of Chemical Weapons
title_full_unstemmed Novichoks: The Dangerous Fourth Generation of Chemical Weapons
title_short Novichoks: The Dangerous Fourth Generation of Chemical Weapons
title_sort novichoks: the dangerous fourth generation of chemical weapons
topic Review
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6429166/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30862059
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijms20051222
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