Sarin is a powerful neurotoxin developed by Nazi scientists in the 1930s, and it was originally developed as a pesticide.

The gas works by being inhaled or absorbed through the skin and kills by crippling the nervous system.

Symptoms include nausea and violent headaches, blurred or tunnel vision, drooling, muscular convulsions, respiratory arrest, loss of consciousness and then death, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Even a tiny dose of sarin - which, like other nerve gases such as soman, tabun and VX, is odorless, colorless and tasteless - can be deadly if it enters the respiratory system, or if a drop comes into contact with the skin.

AFP

(China Daily 05/07/2013 page11)