A method for extracting, enriching and identifying chemical warfare agents from oils and other organic liquids could help government and homeland security officials protect civilians more effectively from their potentially deadly effects.

Chemical warfare agents are powerful, noxious chemicals that have been used as weapons of mass destruction. They can be nerve, blister, choking, or psychochemical agents that act on the nervous system, skin, lungs, blood or brain. The most lethal are nerve agents classified as G-agents (sarin, soman, tabun and cyclosarin) and V-agents (VX).

Chemical warfare agents are powerful, noxious chemicals that have been used as weapons of mass destruction. Image credit: Pixabay.Finding trace amounts of a chemical warfare agent in a sample can be challenging, especially if the agent and the liquid it is in are both water repellent, which is often the case. In a new study, researchers from India's Defence Research and Development Establishment (DRDE) developed a method that overcomes this challenge using iron oxide nanoparticles.

The researchers decorated iron oxide nanoparticles with a substance called poly methacyrlic acid-co-ehtylene glycol dimethacrylate. This made the particles more “sticky,” helping them attach more easily to the chemical agent particles in the samples. They tweaked different aspects of the extraction method and eventually were able to identify the agents at low concentrations of about 0.1 micrograms per milliliter.

“Extracting hydrophobic chemicals, like these agents, from a hydrophobic background, like organic liquids, is a tough challenge to achieve analytically,” says Dr. D.K. Dubey, corresponding author of the DRDE study. “But efficient and sensitive analytical methods are pivotal in the early detection and identification of toxic agents."