Abstract
Chemical warfare agents are toxic chemicals controlled by the Chemical Weapons
Convention (CWC).
Chemical warfare agents have been produced and used on a large scale. Tear gas grenades
were used in 1914 by the French army at the outbreak of the First World War, but it was not
until the German army used chlorine near Ypres in 1915 that the world entered the modern
era of chemical warfare. The development and use of chemical warfare agent continued
following the First World War despite the signing of the 1925 Geneva Protocol, which
banned the first use of chemical weapons.
Concerns within the military troops and defense communities over possible terrorist use as
well as the requirements of a verifiable CWC, have driven the development and application of
analytical methods for the detection and identification of chemical warfare agents.
Analytical methods that are currently used for the detection and identification of chemical
warfare agents are reviewed and classified by the number of dimensions of information they
provide.
Recent world events involving the possibility of use chemical warfare agents have increased
the need to develop an environmentally friendly universal decontaminating solution that
possesses non-corrosive and non-toxic properties for the rapid neutralization of lethal
chemical warfare agents. Decontamination systems are important because they allow rapid
decomposition of the toxic compounds.