Four Chemical Agents

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Pages: 2

Four types of chemical agents are nerve, choking, blood and blistering. Nerve agents can cause convulsions, and flood of body fluids, they can be contracted through air, food, water or skin contact. Choking and blood agents can both cause the failure of one’s body functions and can be contracted through skin contact or breathing. Blistering agents which can be contracted through skin or air contact can cause choking, burns and respiratory failures. “Chemical weapons are inexpensive and are relatively easy to produce, even by small terrorist groups, to create mass casualties with small quantities” (K. Ganesan, 2010). Some of the problems that a terrorist organization would encounter with chemical agents is that they must have a way to get it out, “that is, they need a way to spread the …show more content…
According to the CDC the most threating can be “smallpox, anthrax, plague, botulism, tularemia, and hemorrhagic fever” (White, 2014). All of these agents are airborne and can be spread to the masses without even knowing a person is infected. Smallpox is contagious and can lead to death, Anthrax is a “non-contagious bacterial infection and plague transmitted by insects” (White, 2014),Botulism is a foodborne illness and can be combined with other types of bacteria’s to be used as a weapon, and hemorrhagic fever is also known as Ebola. Although biologicals are easy to make and produce they also can be difficult to control. Some problems that can be caused by these types of weapons is the lack of medicines to treat them or lack of doctors to be able to provide treatment. These types of weapons are also ones that are not able to be caught until after it begins to effect people they do not show up on radar, nor can they be spotted just by looking at a person and unfortunately, they do even more damage as far as terrorism is concerned by causing mass panic among