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How do toxic industrial chemicals differ from chemical warfare agents?

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How do toxic industrial chemicals differ from chemical warfare agents?

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There is some overlap between these two categories. During WWI, industrial chemicals such as chlorine and phosgene were used effectively in the battlefield. However, beginning with the WWII era, these chemicals were supplanted for military purposes by typically much more potent chemicals whose properties were optimized to kill or disable. It is believed that nations selected only a dozen or so chemical warfare agents for mass production. However, a knowledgeable chemist could easily “design” structural analogs of the mass produced agents that would have similar properties and toxicity. This makes illicit preparation of chemical warfare agent–like compounds more difficult to prevent, and complicates the analytical laboratory’s efforts to identify the agent used in an attack.

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