CBRN / HazMat Training Blog

Maintaining combat readiness is a vital requirement for military personnel who are deployed to potentially environments where there is risk of exposure to chemical warfare agents (CWAs) or toxic industrial chemicals (TICs).

The development, production and use of chemical weapons continues to remain a significant global concern, due in no small part to the wide availability of the active substances that are used to create them and the relative ease with which the methods or recipes for CWA production can be obtained and shared online.

Regular and rigorous training has a hugely important role to play in ensuring that military personnel acquire the essential knowledge, experience and practical skills that their demanding roles require.

The invisible and intangible nature of many chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) threats however can make them especially challenging to train for, and especially so when it comes to the conducting of effective chemical agent detection.

Chemical warfare agents (CWAs) are highly toxic chemicals that have been used in modern military conflicts dating back to the First World War.

In the last couple of decades however, particularly close attention has been paid to the acute and chronic health effects associated with exposure to these agents.

In this blog post we define five of the most common forms of CWA, their methods of dispersal, their modes of action and their effects on the human body.