Experts hunt for traces of nerve agent in bid to track Skripals' attacker

Forensic experts will be looking for traces of nerve agent on the clothes of Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, and in the area where the two were attacked, in an effort to track down where the deadly substance was made, researchers say.

If small amounts of pure agent can be recovered, scientists at Britain’s military research lab at Porton Down will analyse them for telltale impurities that can potentially reveal which process was used to make the agent, and hint at where it was produced.

Nerve agents are made in several steps, and each one creates byproducts that are carried over to the next stage of the reaction, meaning that the final agent usually carries a chemical signature of how it was made, and sometimes the equipment used in manufacture.

“Porton Down will certainly be trying to look at environmental samples which will provide the best sort of clue,” said Alastair Hay, an environmental toxicologist at Leeds University who investigated the use of chemical weapons against Iraqi Kurds in Halabja in 1988.

“They’ll be looking for impurities and inadvertent reaction products and those would give some indication as to the possible method of manufacture.”


Source: theguardian