WARFARE CHEMICALS: MECHANISMS OF ACTION AND LEGAL STATUS

Abstract

Terror actions and warfare threats are challenging tasks for scientific community and defense agencies around the globe. Chemical weapon use is considered as a serious war crime. For this reason, determining the use of chemical warfare agents (CWAs) in times of war or in acts of terrorism becomes an important task. Because of “for its extensive efforts to eliminate chemical weapons”, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) was received the 2013 Nobel peace prize.

From forensic pathology point of view CWAs-related suspected cases are one of the most difficult problems. Lack of reliable evidence and scientific information are major difficulties in this field. Scientific research on CWAs is mainly revolved around chemicals itself and metabolites/degradation materials.

In this presentation physiological and morphological aspects associated with selected toxic chemical exposure from a mainly forensic pathology perspective are presented.

Keywords

• WARFARE CHEMICALS: MECHANISMS OF ACTION AND LEGAL STATUS

Kaynakça

1. Sadık TOPRAK Department of Forensic Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Bülent Ecevit University, Turkey