What sarin, the chemical weapon used in Syria, does to your body

 

At least 58 people – including children – died and many more were injured in a suspected sarin chemical attack.

Sarin is near impossible to detect until it’s too late. The gas has no decipherable smell or taste and is absorbed simply through exposure.

Sarin can permeate skin, membranes and lungs or it can be mixed into water.
It doesn’t always kill, though with fatal doses deaths are almost never immediate.
After exposure, victims suffer an often long and always excruciating pain. If they are lucky the effects of the gas will eventually wear off, otherwise they will perish.

Nerve agents disturb neurotransmitters – the way our nerves communicate – by affecting the frequency at which they carry out processes and preventing them from being broken down once their job is done.
If a neurotransmitter is not broken down it lingers delivering the same instruction to the body over and over again.

Within a few seconds of being exposed to sarin, it inhibits control of smooth muscles – an involuntary tissue which ensures organs like the stomach, intestines and bladder work effectively – and uncontrollable secretions begin, eyes water uncontrollably, saliva and vomit is emitted from the mouth and the bowel and bladder also evacuate.
Vision is blurred and breathing is restricted due to a painfully tight chest.

If someone has been exposed to a lethal amount of sarin, the body will start to violently convulse and become paralysed.
Chemical attacks can kill within 10 minutes.

 

A man carrying a child following a suspected chemical attack, at a makeshift hospital in the town of Khan Sheikhoun, northern Idlib province, Syria (Picture: AP)

At least 58 people have been killed and dozens wounded in a suspected chemical attack on a rebel-held town in north-western Syria (Picture: AP)

Children get treatment at a hospital after a suspected chlorine gas attack by Assad Regime forces to Khan Shaykhun town of Idlib, Syria on April 4, 2017 (Picture: Getty)

What does sarin do to the body?

A Syrian child receives treatment after an alleged chemical attack at a field hospital in Saraqib, Idlib province, northern Syria, 04 April 2017 (Picture: EPA)

A Syrian child receives treatment at a hospital in Khan Sheikhun (Picture: Getty)

A child gets treatment at a hospital after Assad Regime forces attacked with suspected chlorine gas to Khan Shaykhun town of Idlib, Syria on April 4, 2017 (Picture: Getty)

An unconscious Syrian child is carried at a hospital in Khan Sheikhun, a rebel-held town in the northwestern Syrian Idlib province, following a suspected toxic gas attack on April 4, 2017 (Picture: Getty)

Sarin usually doesn’t leave victims blind or infertile, and thankfully most people do not die.

Though exposure is so gruesome and painful that when the Nazis realised the scale of agony they could cause with sarin, they reportedly held off using it in World War II due to fears of a retaliation.

Since the discovery in 1937, sarin has been used as a weapon. In 1988, Iraq killed around 5,000 Kurds by using sarin and sulphur mustard at Halahbja