Examples of structures claimed as Novichok agents
Novichok, which means "newcomer" in Russian, is a Soviet-era class of nerve agents that was created in the 1970s and 1980s as an attempt to get around the Chemical Weapons Treaty, according to "Responding to Terrorism: A Medical Handbook," published in 2010. That's because the treaty banned chemical weapons that have a certain chemical structure, and Novichok has a different structure.Despite this structural difference, Novichok agents act like other nerve agents by binding to and inactivating cholinesterase, an enzyme that the nervous system uses to communicate with muscles.
"The reason you die from these [nerve agents] is very simple," said Dr. Lewis Nelson, chairman of emergency medicine at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, who is not involved with the Skripals' treatment. "If your muscles don't work you can't breathe, and if you can't breathe you eventually die."