Talk:Blood agent

This statement isn't accurate: "(Blood agents) prevent the normal transfer of oxygen from the blood to the body tissues, resulting in chemical asphyxiation. This statement isn't quite accurate: blood agents (and cyanide in general) act by inhibiting cellular respiration by interruping the electron transfer chain during oxidative phosphorylation. I'll make the change when I have time (and more details), but is somebody beats me to this I won't be entirely opposed.

• You're right. All fixed. – ClockworkSoul 15:38, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Use

I heard somewhere that blood agents were used by Iran in the Iran - Iraq war, does anyone know if this is true? raptor 02:19, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Smell of arsine

Arsine has a very faint garlic odor detectable only at greater than fatal concentrations.

Go on. How do they know? Marnanel (talk) 09:04, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

Exactly what I was wondering. The idea that the only way they can find out for sure what a chemical smells like is to test it on volunteers (or are they...?). So, they get people to walk into a room with toxic gas, take a whiff and come back out to report it? It must be people plural, too, because how else would they know that only half of people can smell it? You'd need to have like at least 10 people try it to get a good cross section (and the more the better). Okay...so I can see walking into a room and taking a quick whiff. Probably takes more than that to kill you. But "in fatal concentrations"? That sounds a bit tougher. I'm assuming that only refers to how many ppm's there are in the air, and that taking a quick whiff still isn't going to be immediately deadly, but still...I hope they pay the volunteers well. And what about the ones that cause terrible burning of the respiratory tracts, skin burning, blindness, etc....who do they get to test and see what THOSE smell like? Kind of makes you wonder. I'm curious now to go to the page on VX or Sarin or one of those really deadly modern agents, and see if they say what they smell like....45Colt 00:26, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

Holocaust and other

I added and reverted a delete of this from the lead, this is notorious for being by far the largest death toll from NBC, chemical weapons, and blood agents.

The Nazi Germans during WW-II committed genocide mainly against Jews but included other targeted populations in the Holocaust, a commercial hydrogen cyanide blood agent trade named Zyklon B discharged in large gas chambers was the preferred method to efficiently murder their victims in a continuing industrial fashion ref Longerich, Peter (2010). Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-280436-5., this resulted in the largest death toll to chemical weapons in history.ref From Cooperation to Complicity: Degussa in the Third Reich, Peter Hayes, 2004, pp=2, 272,isbn = 0-521-78227-9

A bit on state execution probably should be in the article too — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.66.90.72 (talk) 14:21, 4 September 2018 (UTC)