Twenty Five Years of the Laboratory for the Chemical and Analytical Control of the Federal State Budgetary Establishment «27 Scientific Centre» of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation

Abstract

The Convention on the prohibition of the development, production, stockpiling and use of chemical weapons and on their destruction (CWC) stipulates the realization of the detailed procedure for the verification of the implementation of all its provisions, including the analytical control of the presence of the prohibited substances in samples, taken during the inspections of the sites of alleged development of chemical weapons (CW). In 1992 the Laboratory for the chemical and analytical control of the Military academy of radiological, chemical and biological defence named after Marshal of the Soviet Union S.K. Timoshenko has been created, and from the very beginning it participates in the above mentioned verification programme. Since 2006 the Laboratory operates within the framework of the federal state budgetary establishment «27 Scientific Centre» of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation. As a result of the successful performance in the OPCW`s (the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons) Official Inter-Laboratory Proficiency Testing Programme, in 2000 the Laboratory has been awarded the status of «designated» (a type of OPCW`s accreditation). It has been certified to perform independent analysis of authentic samples, taken from the sites of international inspections and transferred off-site in accordance with the relevant provisions of the CWC. To date, the OPCW has organized 42 official OPCW Proficiency Tests for the analysis of environmental and technological samples, and two official OPCW Biomedical Proficiency Tests. In 2016, together with the accreditation for the analysis of environmental and technological samples, valid since 2000, the Laboratory of the «27 Scientific Centre» of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation has been designated for the analysis of authentic biomedical samples. During its 25 years of existence, the Laboratory has been successfully solving the problems of the analysis of composite objects during the investigations into the alleged use of chemical weapons, as well as of the analysis of samples, taken from the burial sites for abandoned chemical weapons and from the territories of their former production facilities.

Keywords

• organisation for the prohibition of chemical weapons
• proficiency tests for analytical laboratories
• chromatography–mass spectrometry
• identification