At one end of the scale is DFP (diisopropyl fluorophosphate), described as a "relatively mild poison" (Mullen 1978: 69). Of the two principal categories of chemical toxins, fluoroacetates and organophosphorous compounds, the latter are widely considered the more lethal 64. Put another way, to incapacitate or kill a person drinking less than half a cup of untreated water from a 5 million-liter reservoir would require no less than 10 tons of potassium cyanide, compared to just 1/2 kg of Salmonella typhi (OTA 1991: 52).Īs in the case of biological agents, different types of chemical agents vary considerably in their lethality. Similarly, it has been estimated that it would take 100 grams of the "V" nerve agent, or almost 40 pounds of potassium cyanide, to have an effect on a water supply equivalent to just one gram of typhoid culture (SCJ 1990: 3-4). For example, Kupperman and Trent estimate that, based on "the weight required to produce heavy casualties within a square-mile area under idealized conditions," fuel-air explosives require 320 million grams fragmentation cluster bombs, 32 million hydrocyanic acid, 32 million mustard gas, 3.2 million GB nerve gas, 800,000 a "crude" nuclear weapon (in terms of fissionable material only), 5,000 Type A botulinal toxin, 80 and anthrax spores, 8 (Kupperman and Trent 1979: 57). Terrorism: Table of Contents| Definitions| Attacks Against Israel ToxicityĪs noted in the previous section, the toxicity of chemical agents generally falls somewhere in-between that of the more deadly biological agents and that of conventional weapons, or at the lower end of the scale for weapons of mass destruction.
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