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Via the Global Security Newswire:

WASHINGTON — The United Kingdom announced today that it had finished destroying thousands of decades-old chemical weapons (see GSN, June 6, 2002).

The elimination of the last known “legacy” munitions containing agents such as sulfur mustard and phosgene is in keeping with the nation’s obligations under the Chemical Weapon Convention, a Defense Ministry spokesman said.

The British military began using chemical weapons in World War I, and maintained an offensive program until 1956. The Porton Down research facility was already regularly destroying weapons when the treaty entered into force in the United Kingdom in 1997. A total of 7,000 munitions have been destroyed since 1989, with work ending on March 7.

The 3,812 weapons eliminated at Porton Down over the last decade were recovered individually or in small numbers from existing or former military sites. Most dated from 1939 to 1945, The Herald newspaper reported. The artillery and mortar shells were “rusty, old, they couldn’t be used,” the Defense Ministry spokesman said.

Some weapons were drained of agent and then incinerated, while others were detonated if they were found not to contain any dangerous substances. The entire project cost nearly $20 million.

Though chemical weapons are not really an existential threat today, when combined with nanotechnological delivery vectors they could become effective across incredible ranges. Relinquishment of chemical weapons is also proof that nations are willing to give up a class of weapons when it is this inhumane.

From ScienceDaily.com:

Using lasers and tuning forks, researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have developed a chemical weapon agent sensing technique that promises to meet or exceed current and emerging defense and homeland security chemical detection requirements. The technique, called Quartz Laser Photo-Acoustic Sensing, or “QPAS,” is now ready for prototyping and field testing.

PNNL, a Department of Energy national laboratory, has demonstrated QPAS’s ability to detect gaseous nerve agent surrogates. In one test, researchers used diisopropyl methyl phosphonate (DIMP), which is a chemical compound that’s similar to sarin. QPAS detected DIMP at the sub-part-per-billion level in less than one minute. The miniscule level is similar to letting one drop of liquid DIMP evaporate into a volume of air that would fill more than two Olympic-size swimming pools.

“QPAS is an extremely sensitive and selective chemical detection technique that can be miniaturized and yet is still practical to operate in field environments,” said Michael Wojcik, a research scientist at PNNL. “The laser, tuning fork and other technology needed for QPAS are so simple, and yet robust, that further development is a low-risk investment, and we’re eager to take it to the next level.”

The instrument is based on Laser Photo-Acoustic Sensing, or LPAS, and infrared Quantum Cascade Lasers, or QCLs. LPAS is an exquisitely sensitive form of optical absorption spectroscopy, where a pulsed laser beam creates a brief absorption in a sample gas, which in turn creates a very small acoustic signal. A miniature quartz tuning fork acts as a “microphone” to record the resulting sound wave.

It would probably be a good idea to have these installed all over major cities. Such an action would radically improve the government’s ability to quickly respond to a chemical disaster.