Chemical Agents of Opportunity for Terrorism: TICs & TIMs

Chemical Agents of Opportunity for Terrorism
Training Support Package
Participant Guide
Slide 10
Chemical Agents of Opportunity for Terrorism:
TICs & TIMs
• Dose-Response
Ethanol Intoxication:
A Prototype for Calmatives
– The more you drink, the drunker you get
– 1 beer: buzz
– 2 beers: intoxicated
– 6 beers: uncoordinated, slurred speech,
• Disinhibited
– 24 beers: coma, respiratory arrest
Module Two - The Clinical Neurotoxicology of Chemical Terrorism
10
The term calmative refers to a drug or chemical that producing a calming state. Ethanol
represents a nice example of a calmative and reinforces a key concept in toxicology -
dose response. The greater the exposure the more effect you see. For example, as you
drink more bottles of beer, the neurologic effects progress from mild inebriation to coma.
A larger dose or amount of a calmative may produce sedation, and an even larger dose
may produce coma. There are a large number of drugs and chemicals that cause
calming and sedation. One of the most commonly used chemicals that cause these
symptoms is alcohol. The specific chemical name of the active ingredient in alcohol is
ethanol. Different people have different responses to drinking the same amount of
ethanol. If someone doesn’t drink and then drinks one or two beers they may become
intoxicated while others who drink many beers every day may not experience any
obvious effect after only drinking one or two beers. However, for both individuals, if they
drink enough they will develop more and more “inhibitory” effects. Eventually the patient
who drinks a large number of beers may develop respiratory depression which is a
decreased number of breaths each minute. Normal is about 12 to 20 breaths per
minute. A respiratory arrest occurs when the number of breaths approaches no breaths
per minute.
December 2008 Version 2.0 Page 78