§ Mrs. CaltonTo ask the Secretary of State for Defence pursuant to his Answer of 20 March 2003,Official Report, column 884W, on chemical and biological weapons, what estimate has been made of the individual useable minimum and maximum lifetime, given the varying degrees of initial purity and differing storage conditions, of (a) wet form of anthrax, (b) smallpox, (c) VX gas and (d) mustard gas. [106235]
§ Dr. MoonieAs I set out in my previous response, the stability of the individual agents will depend on both their initial purity and the precise conditions in which they are stored.
The usable lifetime as chemical or biological warfare agents can vary widely. In respect of the biological warfare agents, it can vary from a couple months to 40 years for the wet form of anthrax and from a couple 650W of days to 30 years for smallpox. For the chemical warfare agents VX and mustard, it can very from a couple of days to 30 years.