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What Does Sarin Do to People?

Within seconds of exposure to sarin gas (or liquid, which evaporates easily), we start to notice the immediate effects of acetylcholine buildup. First, our smooth muscles and secretions go crazy. The nerves to those areas keep firing, keep telling them to go. The nose runs, the eyes cry, the mouth drools and vomits, and bowels and bladder evacuate themselves. It is not a dignified state.

Since sarin has no smell or taste, the person may very well have no idea what's going on. Their chest tightens, vision blurs. If the exposure was great enough, that can progress to convulsions, paralysis, and death within 1 to 10 minutes. If the exposure was not enough to kill them, though, the person…

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 Nerve agent sarin: Invisible and indiscriminate

What makes sarin so deadly? Why does it persist in the environment? And what can you do against its effects? One first aid remedy is to breathe through a towel soaked in a glass of water mixed with one tablespoon of baking soda. The alkaline solution degrades sarin.

Articles of Interest

How Sarin Nerve Gas Works (And What to Do If Exposed)

It's important to understand you can survive a low concentration of Sarin exposure as long as you don't panic and do seek medical attention. If you survive initial exposure, you may have several minutes to several hours to reverse the effects.

Japan Executes Cult Leader Responsible For 1995 Sarin Gas Attack On Tokyo Subway

Asahara, the visually impaired self-styled guru of Aum Shinrikyo, was sentenced to death in 2004 in part for directing Japan's deadliest terrorist attack — a complex plot that came to fruition on March 20, 1995, when cult members boarded five trains during morning rush hour and released the nerve agent, killing 13 people and sickening some 6,000 others. The death of Asahara appeared to draw the curtain on the cult's shocking crimes, which included not only the 1995 subway attack but also a similar, smaller sarin attack the previous year along with other attacks using the deadly chemical VX.

Nerve Gas Sarin Probably Caused Gulf War Syndrome

There have been many theories as to the cause, given that troops were exposed to multiple chemicals and pollutants during the war — including burning oil wells, pesticides and anti-nerve gas medications. Now the new study offers what experts called the strongest evidence yet that the main culprit was sarin — a nerve gas released into the air when Iraqi munitions facilities were bombed.

Nerve gas – the dark side of warfare

Nerve agents like VX or sarin all work in the same way. The human body uses a molecule called acetylcholine to transmit nerve messages across the gaps between cells. After acetylcholine has done its job, it is destroyed by an enzyme called acetylcholinesterase. Otherwise acetylcholine levels would build up and the nervous system would be overstimulated – you may have seen this happen when a fly has been zapped by an insecticide spray, and it lies on its back kicking its legs. Nerve agents bind to acetylcholinesterase and stop it from working, so that acetylcholine concentrations rise to fatal levels.

Sarin Gas: History of a Chemical Weapon

It has been outlawed since 1993, but the recent conflict in Syria has put sarin back on the list of deadly weapons purportedly used by regimes in the Middle East.

Sarin: the deadly history of the nerve agent used in Syria

Sarin was that breed of accident that scientists come to regret. Its inventors worked on insecticides made from organophosphate compounds at the notorious IG Farben chemical company in Nazi Germany. In 1938, they hit on substance 146, a formula that caused massive disruption to the nervous system. The chemical name was isopropyl methylfluorophosphate, but the company renamed it sarin to honour the chemists behind the discovery – Schrader, Ambros, Ritter and Van der Linde – according to Benjamin Garrett's 2009 book The A to Z of Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Warfare. The chemical they created had the grim distinction of being many times more lethal than cyanide.

What to Know About Sarin, the Deadly Nerve Gas Likely Used in Syria

Sarin, along with the nerve agents tabun and soman, was first produced by chemist Gerhard Schrader and his team in Germany in the late 1930s. The name is an acronym of the four scientists who created it: Gerhard Schrader, Otto Ambros, Gerhard Ritter, and Hans-Jürgen von der Linde.

‘Nanoscavengers' could protect people from sarin gas, other nerve agents

Current antidotes must be given as soon as possible, and although they can help mitigate the symptoms of poisoning, they don't act directly on nerve agents. As a result, researchers have been trying to develop prophylactic "scavenging" molecules capable of seeking out and degrading nerve agents in the body upon exposure. But such "bioscavengers" have only been able to provide brief protection in various lab animals, and no such therapies have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Resources

7 Facts About the Deadly Nerve Agent Sarin

Sarin was developed in 1938 in Germany. The chemical was initially created to be a pesticide that would kill insects, not a deadly chemical that would kill humans, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

CDC

Sarin is a human-made chemical warfare agent classified as a nerve agent. Nerve agents are the most toxic and rapidly acting of the known chemical warfare agents. They are similar to certain kinds of insecticides (insect killers) called organophosphates in terms of how they work and what kind of harmful effects they cause. However, nerve agents are much more potent than organophosphate pesticides.