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SCMP Reporter

UNIVERSITY laboratories abound with stories about students who got into hot water by taking chemicals home and making some dire substance in their kitchens.

   There's the lad who made dynamite with glycerine and nitric acid; the kid who got a kick out of a bottle of the drug amyl nitrate, taken from a laboratory cupboard; and now there's the youngster who made the deadly nerve gas sarin for a dare.

  Every student and academic knows how easy it is to get hold of the raw materials. Safety officers, trade and customs officials admit it would be impossible to stop terrorists - or cranks - waging a deadly chemical war in Hong Kong.

  And university labs are probably the easiest place to target as the material source.

  First, they are not designed to be secure: wear a white coat, look confident and it would be simple to open a cupboard and take out a small jar of cyanide, nitric acid and glycerine. All you need to know is where the required chemicals are stored, and what you need.

  That's not to say that there are no rules for handling dangerous goods. There are locked central cupboards for 30 different categories of chemicals such as flammable solvents, corrosive acids or toxic compounds.

  But researchers can order what they like direct from suppliers, with no central monitoring or registry; and if they need it every day, the temptation is to keep it handy.

  Legislative Council education panel deputy chairman Cheung Man-kwong said it was an interesting issue which had been left to the good sense of the universities.

  'In the past no-one [outside the universities] cared about the security of the universities and how they kept these things,' he said. 'But it could be very dangerous if people can take chemicals out.'    He said he would ask the Education and Manpower Branch to explain to Legco how chemicals were kept and the procedures for obtaining them.

    Hong Kong University chemicals safety adviser, Des Mabbot, pointed out that the Fire Services Department had strict rules for inspecting the universities' dangerous goods stores before issuing licences.

   'Any significant volume of dangerous goods listed in the Dangerous Goods Ordinance have to be stored in specially designed stores,' he said.

  The Agriculture and Fisheries Department similarly requires that pesticides be stored, and radioactive materials signed for when required.

   But small volumes are exempt, and Dr Mabbot admitted that periodic inspections of labs throw up examples of chemicals being stored where they shouldn't be.

  'There are many different research groups of chemists,' he said.

  'Without being in the lab every day we can't know what they're making. We rely on people's professional ethics. If a research chemist decides to make sarin he could do it without any trouble.'   Buyers of chemicals listed by the Trade Department under the Import and Export (Strategic Commodities) Regulations also need a licence.

  In this group comes sarin and close relatives - some of which are sold commercially by big laboratory suppliers worldwide.

  And trade and customs officers admit it would be impossible to spot small amounts brought into the territory, licence requirements notwithstanding.

  The chemicals are listed in sales catalogues with prices and warnings of their highly dangerous nature.

  But university staff say prohibited substances have been inadvertently ordered and received without licences in the past.

  Researchers say they would have expected thousands of deaths if the gas released in the Tokyo subway was pure sarin, whose chemical name is isopropyl methane fluorophosphonate.

  Whatever was released may have been 'dirty' sarin - perhaps 10 per cent or even one per cent pure. But similar chemicals, such as di-isopropyl fluorophosphonate, which has several common names including dyflos, and di-isopropyl cyano methyl phosphonate, are sold by well-known suppliers such as US firm Sigma-Aldrich. Its latest catalogue describes the two chemicals as 'highly toxic' and an accompanying safety sheet says dyflos kills 'by inhalation, in contact with skin and if swallowed'.

   It costs US$85.70 for one gram and like sarin, it inhibits acetylcholinesterase, the enzyme that breaks down acetylcholine. Acetylcholine passes on the message from the nerve to tell the muscle to contract; unstopped, it leads to all the muscles going into spasm, causing tunnel vision, then tremors, incontinence, and ultimately collapse and heart failure, within minutes.

  'A physician should be alerted of the plan to work with this so that the antidote, atropine sulphate and 2-PAM [pyridine aldoxine methiodide], together are available and ready for use if required,' the company says.

  A researcher said he could think of no reason to buy the chemical except to research an antidote - or to make chemical weapons.

  Principal Trade Department officer, John Leung Chi-yan, said an import licence would be required for such chemicals listed as munitions under the Import and Export (Strategic Commodities) Regulations - which would not be given because of their dangerous nature.

  No one had applied for such a licence, he said.

  But a customs department spokesman said that it would be impossible to stop small amounts of chemicals being smuggled in - and even posted parcels could slip through.

  'The company should mark the contents on the parcel or box, but if you deliberately didn't fill in the form we are not going to open up each of the parcels,' he said.

  Small amounts of chemicals, such as cyanides and acid, mixed together form the gas hydrogen cyanide, which has no smell and is invisible - but can kill in minutes.

  Even pesticides - themselves nerve agents - could kill or be used to produce other relatives of sarin, said Hong Kong University of Science and Technology safety officer, Alfred Clancy.

  Mr Leung said 54 listed warfare chemicals, such as sodium and potassium cyanide, had civil uses such as electroplating, metals refining, dyeing or even making toothpaste.

  The department has issued 1,160 import licences in 1993 for the 54, representing 40,000 tonnes, he said. In comparison, there were 'about 10' prosecutions for import or export without a licence.

  One university source said: 'In the day-to-day business of university research, controlled substances have been brought in [unawares] without a licence.'   Hong Kong University research studies director, Brian Weatherhead, said that people went to 'considerable pains' to look after chemicals - including disposing of them safely.

  And ordering from companies such as Sigma could be 'very frustrating' because they were careful about who they sold to and what they sold. But 'heroin and crack and all the rest are going along all the time in Hong Kong'.

  'You can make all these things in your kitchen if you are not worried about safety or quality,' he said.

  'The recipe for making a hydrogen bomb regularly used to be published in underground magazines. And look at the easy way that the IRA used to gather together nitrate, fertiliser and saltpeter, and make quite effective bombs.' 



Recipe for a toxic disaster