SEVEN people were killed and more than 3000 taken to hospital after nerve gas was released in Tokyo鈥檚 underground system early on Monday morning. Japanese experts fear that the attack with the nerve gas sarin suggests that terrorists are increasing the weapons in their armoury. Sarin is relatively simple to make from materials that are available on the open market.
鈥淪arin has to go through four processes if it鈥檚 produced from the raw material, and that鈥檚 difficult,鈥� says Tasaka Kowa, chemistry professor at the International Christian University in Tokyo. 鈥淏ut if someone starts with the intermediate stage and just puts the chemicals together, he or she can do that with the knowledge of a university chemistry graduate.鈥�
Dispersing sarin is also easy. It dissolves in acetonitrile, a common industrial solvent. 鈥淭hat makes the sarin less volatile, and therefore easier to handle and to transport,鈥� says Kowa. 鈥淭he sarin evaporates gradually from the solvent, leaving [the terrorist] time to escape after planting it.鈥� Acetonitrile was detected in the liquids used in the Tokyo underground incident.
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In another incident last June, seven people died and around 200 were injured when sarin seeped into houses in the town of Matsumoto in central Japan. That incident is now being reexamined as another possible terrorist attack.