Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
These masks also are widely used by the clandestine laboratory investi-
gations units of the DEA and other law enforcement teams required to
enter illegal drug labs. Often these labs produce toxic fumes that can kill
or seriously injure law enforcement officers required to enter such places.
Today, however, the law enforcement community has had to prepare for
even more horrific possibilities. The real danger of terrorist attack using
weapons of mass destruction has forced police officers and federal agents
to procure and issue protective masks certified to protect the wearer against
the nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC) threats more commonly faced
by the military.
This scenario is not without precedent. On March 19, 1995, followers
of the Japanese AUM Shinrikyo (Supreme Truth) cult leader Shoko Asa-
hara brought quantities of sarin, a deadly nerve toxin, into the Japanese
subway system during the morning rush hour in lunch boxes and closed
soda cups. The terrorists left the sarin on the subway and punctured the
containers as they exited the car. The release of the gas killed 12 and
injured over 5,000 people. The chilling fact of these attacks was that sarin
is such a deadly agent that it could have easily killed thousands, had the
cultists developed a better technique of dispersing the agent. It has been
well documented that Saddam Hussein used sarin as well as mustard gas
against his minority Kurdish population. Pure sarin is colorless, odorless,
and volatile, and a highly lethal compound. Its pathogenic mechanism is
to inhibit the enzymatic action of cholinesterase (ChE), producing exces-
sive amounts of acetylcholine that, in turn, cause signs and symptoms
mainly in muscarinic, nicotinic, and central nervous system structures. What
this means is that sarin is a potent nerve agent. It may be absorbed through
any part of the body, but it is most effective as a weapon when it is released
into the atmosphere and is breathed by the intended victims. Military jour-
nals describe the effect of sarin exposure. The first sign of exposure may
be a reaction at the point of contact: localized sweating, muscular twitch-
ing, and severely constricted eye pupils. Other initial symptoms include a
runny nose accompanied by tightness of the chest with shortness of breath
and dimness of vision. In more severe exposure, headache, cramps, nausea,
vomiting, involuntary defecation and urination, twitching, jerking, stag-
gering, convulsions, drowsiness, coma, and respiratory arrest may be seen.
Mohammed Atta, the operational leader of the September 11 attacks,
spent time inquiring about obtaining a crop duster. The terrorists could
have easily used a crop duster to spread sarin over a densely populated
area, killing many thousands.
