Novichok, the Russian Nerve Agent Spooking Britain

It was the first use of a nerve agent on European soil since World War II. On March 4, Sergei Skripal, a former Russian spy who was convicted and imprisoned in Russia for working as a double agent, and his daughter were found unresponsive and slumped on a shopping-center bench in Salisbury, England, a two-hour drive southwest of London. Prime Minister Theresa May said that the two had been poisoned with Novichok, a “military grade” nerve agent developed by Russia, and she moved swiftly to retaliate against the government of President Vladimir Putin. Russian authorities have rejected May’s claims as nonsense.

The word -- pronounced novee-CHOCK -- means “the new guy” in Russian, which is no coincidence. It refers to the fourth generation of solid nerve agents developed in the former Soviet Union, ones manufactured from materials that remain legal under the international Chemical Weapons Convention that took effect in 1997. These co-called binary agents (meaning they become lethal only when combined) were first made as ultrafine powders but can be turned into liquids and gas. The toxins belong to a chemical family called organophosphates, and because they’re related to pesticides (which are also known to have nervous-system effects), their development was sometimes cloaked as an agricultural effort.