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Fate and degradation of the chemical warfare agent soman on sands

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Abstract

Soman is one of the most toxic nerve agents of the known chemical warfare agents. There is actually few knowledge on the behavior of soman in the event of an environmental contamination. It is in particular unknown whether soman remains on a given surface, evaporates into air, or degrades. Here, we studied the evaporation of soman deposited on silica sand using a laboratory-sized wind tunnel, thermal desorption, and gas chromatography. We also investigated the degradation of soman on silica sand by 31phosphorus solid state magic angle spinning nuclear magnetic resonance and gas chromatography–mass spectrometry. Results show that a drop of soman on silica sand spreads laterally while evaporating. The maximum vapor concentration was found when the spreading of the soman drop was maximum on the surface. Simultaneously, soman was absorbed gradually into the pore of sand and degraded to O-pinacolyl-methylphosphonic acid following a pseudo-first-order rate reaction over weeks. To our best knowledge, this is the first report on the fate of soman in a sandy environment.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank Chemical Analysis Test and Research Lab at Agency for Defense Development (ADD) for providing soman GD. We really thank the reviewers for their insightful comments on the paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Agency for Defense Development, Yuseong-Gu, Daejeon, 305-600, South Korea

    Hyunsook Jung & Kyoung Chan Lim

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  1. Hyunsook Jung
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  2. Kyoung Chan Lim
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Correspondence to Hyunsook Jung.

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Jung, H., Lim, K.C. Fate and degradation of the chemical warfare agent soman on sands. Environ Chem Lett 14, 367–372 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10311-016-0575-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10311-016-0575-1

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