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How to curb production of chemical weapons

Companies that manufacture and distribute the precursors to lethal agents must be open to surveillance and inspections, argues Leiv K. Sydnes.
  1. Leiv K. Sydnes

    1. Leiv K. Sydnes is professor of chemistry at the University of Bergen, Norway. He chaired the international task group that assessed the impact of scientific advances on the Chemical Weapons Convention in 2007 and 2012.

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Incidents involving chemical weapons are on the rise. In the past week, reports from Syria allege that scores of people in the city of Douma were killed with a toxic gas, possibly chlorine, a tactic that experts say has been used in Syria at least a dozen times since 2012. Last month in Salisbury, UK, former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal, his daughter Yulia and a police officer were exposed to an organophosphate called novichok, one of a family of nerve agents said to be the deadliest known1. And Kim Jong-nam, the eldest son of former North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, was assassinated in 2017 through exposure to another nerve agent, VX, at Kuala Lumpur international airport in Malaysia.

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Nature 556, 293-295 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-04579-2

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