March 8, 2018
By Lizzie Dearden and Samuel Osborne
A police officer (click here) who was poisoned by a nerve agent in the attack on a former Russian spy and his daughter is talking in hospital as the hunt continues for the culprits.
Security sources told The Independent several people are believed to be behind the assassination attempt in Salisbury, and are likely to be “either present or past state-sponsored actors”.
Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia remain in intensive care in hospital and authorities have not said whether they can recover....
...Ms Rudd said the nerve agent used was “very rare” but declined to name the precise chemical and emphasised that the risk to the public was low....
If I may?
VX degrades quickly in the presence of carbon. I think the length of exposure and the readily available emergency response may be the difference between the officer and the Russian expats. Hopefully, they will recover, but, any prolonged lack of oxygen due to failure of the nervous system could provide an adverse scenario.
The reports of VX, but, in trials by the USA military published in professional journals proved VX liquid as a highly volatile nerve agent which degrades quickly when exposed to carbon based surfaces. The impact on the human body is significant.
Perhaps the UK's law enforcement will provide more information, without speculation, when all their information is finalized.
