• April 27, 2024

The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which currently oversees the destruction of Syria's arsenal, has been recognized with the Nobel Peace Prize .

According to the global chemical weapons control body based in The Hague, chemical weapons are devices and ammunition that have toxic substances in their interior, which aim to cause temporary disability or injury to people or animals and, failing that, cause death.

You may also be interested: 5 effects on the health of chemical weapons

Lethal and traumatic!

Chemical weapons are classified as asphyxiating agents (chlorine, phosgene), vesicants (mustard gas, lewisite), hemotoxics (hydrogen cyanide) and neurotoxics (sarin, soman, vx). The main damages to health are:

1. Eye and respiratory tract irritation
2. Dyspnoea
3. Constriction in the chest
4. Pulmonary edema
5. Blisters on the skin
6. Agony asphyxia
7. Complications in the blood
8. Conjunctivitis
9. Pneumonia
10. Loss of coordination
11. Poisoning

While the psychological effects of chemical weapons are post-traumatic stress and the fear left by a war or an attack with this type of weaponry.

Your damage is historic!

For its part, the Higher School of Chemical Engineering and Extractive Industries of the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN) He details that chemical weapons have been used in different stages of history.

1. April 22, 1915 in Belgium , where German troops used chlorine gas during the First World War, causing suffocation and death to thousands of people.
2. In the Vietnam War , the US troops used neurotoxic agents such as herbicides and poisonous gases, which caused the death of thousands of people and deformations in newborns
3. Iraq-Iran War . The use of mustard gas and neurotoxic agents caused skin damage, loss of vision and thousands of deaths.

Currently, Syria caused the death of at least 1,400 people with the use of chemical weapons such as sarin, mustard gas, which were loaded into missiles, warheads and rockets.

Video Medicine: Trauma Triad of Death (April 2024).