IUPAC
The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC ) is an international federation of National Adhering Organizations working for the advancement of the chemical sciences, especially by developing nomenclature and terminology. It is ...
name: ''O'',''O''-diethyl ''S''- -(diethylamino)ethylphosphorothioate) (also called Amiton or Tetram) is a "V-series" nerve agent chemically similar to the better-known VX nerve agent. Tetram is the common Russian name for the substance. Amiton was the trade name for the substance when it was marketed as an
insecticide
Insecticides are substances used to kill insects. They include ovicides and larvicides used against insect eggs and larvae, respectively. Insecticides are used in agriculture, medicine, industry and by consumers. Insecticides are claimed to b ...
With a toxicity of about 1/10 that of VX, i.e. similar to that of
sarin
Sarin (NATO designation GB G-series, "B"">Nerve_agent#G-series.html" ;"title="hort for Nerve agent#G-series">G-series, "B" is an extremely toxic synthetic organophosphorus compound.Schedule 2 of the
Chemical Weapons Convention
The Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), officially the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction, is an arms control treaty administered by the Organisation for ...
rather than the more restrictive Schedule 1. It is thought that
North Korea
North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the northern half of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and shares borders with China and Russia to the north, at the Yalu River, Y ...
may have military stockpiles of this chemical
.
During the early 1950s at least three chemical companies working on organo-phosphorus insecticides independently discovered the severe toxicity of these chemicals. In 1952, Dr. Ranajit Ghosh, a chemist working for ICI at their Plant Protection Laboratories at Jealott's Hill was investigating the potential of organophosphate esters of substituted aminoethanethiols for use as pesticides. Like the earlier German investigators of organophosphates in the late 1930s who had discovered the G-series nerve agents, Dr. Ghosh discovered that their action on cholinesterase made them effective pesticides. One of them, Amiton, was described in a 1955 paper by Ghosh and another chemist, J. F. Newman, as being particularly effective against
mite
Mites are small arachnids (eight-legged arthropods). Mites span two large orders of arachnids, the Acariformes and the Parasitiformes, which were historically grouped together in the subclass Acari, but genetic analysis does not show clear evid ...
s. It was brought to market as an insecticide by the company in 1954 but was subsequently withdrawn as too toxic.
The toxicity of these substances had not passed unnoticed by the
British Government
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, image2 = Royal Coat of Arms of the United Kingdom (HM Government).svg
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, as some of the compounds had already been sent to their research facility at
Porton Down
Porton Down is a science park in Wiltshire, England, just northeast of the village of Porton, near Salisbury. It is home to two British government facilities: a site of the Ministry of Defence's Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl ...
for evaluation. Some of the chemicals from this class of compounds formed a new group of nerve agents called V Agents. The British Government unilaterally renounced chemical and biological weapons in 1956, although in 1958 traded their research on VG technology with the United States Government in exchange for information on
thermonuclear weapons
A thermonuclear weapon, fusion weapon or hydrogen bomb (H bomb) is a second-generation nuclear weapon design. Its greater sophistication affords it vastly greater destructive power than first-generation nuclear bombs, a more compact size, a lowe ...
. The US then went into production of large amounts of the chemically similar, but much more toxic VX in 1961.
It is classified as an extremely hazardous substance in the United States as defined in Section 302 of the U.S. Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (42 U.S.C. 11002), and is subject to strict reporting requirements by facilities which produce, store, or use it in significant quantities.