New Compound Quickly Disables Chemical Weapons

sciencehabit writes: In 2013, the Syrian military allegedly launched sarin gas rockets into a rebel-held town, killing hundreds. After diplomats brokered a deal to eradicate the weapons, international organizations began the dangerous job of destroying them. One roadblock to chemical weapons disposal is that heat and humidity quickly break down enzymes that can disable the deadly chemicals. Now, researchers have developed a highly stable compound that can inactivate nerve agents like sarin in a matter of minutes.

Comments

Kill it with Fire!

[Irate Engineer]

The destruction of intact chemical weapons is not very hard, you just need a hot incinerator. It's a little more complicated than that, but there are incinerators that are made to do this (IIRC one was deployed to Syria on a ship a few years ago to do this).

But, if what they are really talking about is decontamination of areas where these weapons were deployed, that is a much harder problem. You can't just rinse this stuff off because that just moves the problem. You have to got to chemically break down the chemical. If you have lots of masony and textiles contaminated, forget it, you'll need to kill that with fire too.