Biomarkers of exposure to chlorine gas identified in plant tissue

When used as a chemical weapon, chlorine gas disperses so rapidly that evidence of its release can be hard to find. "With most nerve agents, we have biomarkers that are stable in the environment that we look for to confirm [the agents'] use, but no biomarkers have been verified and accepted by the scientific community for the case of chlorine," Katelyn E. Mason, a researcher in the Forensic Science Center at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, told C&EN. "It's a major gap in forensics." On April 8, at ACS Spring 2021, Mason reported that she and her colleagues have identified biomarkers in plant tissue that might be forensic tools for confirming chlorine gas release. To identify potential chlorine-containing molecules that could serve as biomarkers, Mason and her coworkers exposed Aegilops tauschii , a type of grass that's native to parts of Asia, including Syria, to chlorine gas at various concentrations