Generic Rapid Analysis of Current and Prospective Nerve Agents and Their Degradation Products

Abstract

We have developed a rapid and highly reliable analytical methodology for current and prospective nerve agents and their degradation products. The approach is to augment existing analytical methods with a specific enzymatic transformation step. It utilizes a novel bacterial phosphonate ester hydrolase enzyme (PEH), which degrades the agents alkali hydrolysis phospho-products (h-agents) to alkylphosphonic acids. Combined with current analytical protocol, which involves testing both the neat and alkali treated sample, the process would generate three distinct phospho-analytes for each agent. Thus, the unique fingerprint produced would enable rapid screening and identification of current and prospective nerve agents and their phospho-products using existing instrumental methods (e.g., GC-FPD, GC-PFPD, LC/MS, GC/MS, and GC/MS/MS). For example, we used GC-FPD to ferret out the presence of potential h-agents in samples that were contaminated with other phospho-compounds. This was possible because of the telltale retention time shifts on the chromatograms as the result of the PEH hydrolytic activity. Two critical issues concerning the methodology were addressed in this study: the effectiveness of the alkali to hydrolyze current and prospective nerve agents and the ability of PEH to further degrade the resulting phosphonate esters. All five nerve agents and nine commercially obtained dialkyl alkylphosphonates tested were converted to their respective alkyl alkylphosphonate esters by alkali treatment. This demonstrates the effectiveness of alkali, since the dialkyl alkylphosphonates are assumed to possess much stronger ester bonds than are expected in the leaving groups of any prospective nerve agent.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Oct 01, 2005
Accession Number
ADA449794

Entities

People

  • Gregory Pellar
  • Ilya Elashvili
  • Mary B. Potter

Organizations

  • Edgewood Chemical Biological Center

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Counter WMD

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Abstracts
  • Chemical Warfare Agents
  • Chemical Weapons
  • Complex Mixtures
  • Degradation
  • Detection
  • Detectors
  • Enzymes
  • Esters
  • Fingerprints
  • Hydrolases
  • Hydrolysis
  • Identification
  • Mustard Agents
  • Nerve Agents
  • Phosphonates
  • Phosphonic Acids

Readers

  • Analytical Chemistry
  • Organic Chemistry
  • Systems Analysis and Design