Whilst scanning through the radio stations when stuck in traffic, I came across a report concerning a regular television program called "Rogue Traders".

The idea of the program is to expose cow-boy traders by inviting them to work in a secret camera ridden house.

The episode in question related to pest controllers. Having witnessed some of the trader's incompetancy with the poisons that they posessed, the makers of the program decided to see how easy it was to aquire poisons without the required paperwork/qualifications/licences.

They phoned up a few companies, posing as a pest control company and managed to buy some quite interesting things with no more than a credit card number.

Amongst the things they got were some "class A" poisons, the most interesting was described as a box of aluminium containers, that when water is added to them, release phosgene gas!

No doubt that retailers of poisons are going to start doing the necessary background checks now that this program has been aired, but it won't affect other countries, where things are likely to be equally lax.

Just goes to show what you can get with very little effort sometimes!

Yea I was watching that yesterday. That stuff that releases phosgene gas wet was in this very small bottle. I tried to see what was in it but I only caught a small glimpse of it. It said aluminum something or it could have been ammonium something. IIRC it was a green liquid.
This dude called at his house and sold it to him at his door just like that!

Phosgene by hydrolysis... I'm trying to think what the other component was (assuming it was just one), but nothing obvious comes to mind. Maybe H-N=CCl2 (dichlorimine? I wouldn't be surprised if that existed as a cyclic trimer).
Hmmm... but that hardly makes synthesis any easier than other methods.

It would be fun to try and get some of that "just add water" phosgene, but I bet they have stopped selling it so readily, or worse, not stopped selling it but started listing all customers, possibly to give to the police to cross-reference with suspected al-Qua'eda sleeper agents, like you and me.

was it called foxtoxin or phoxtoxin ?,
there is a weevil insecticide by that name sold to grain growers here as pellets, a half dozen or so do a silo so it's strong stuff :D .
it comes in aluminium tubes about 12 by 4 cm. with about ten pellets in it, I can't find out the chemical's in it tho.
it's extremly toxic to humans and can only be bought with a farm chemical users permit in Australia

<small>[ February 07, 2003, 08:39 PM: Message edited by: irish ]</small>

Are you guys thinking of zinc phosphide? It forms phosphine gas when wetted down with water, and is extremely toxic, on par with HCN. You can buy it as 2% bait at hardware stores, but the pure stuff is restricted, for the obvious reasons.

The only other thing I could think of would be triphosgene, a crystalline polymeric form of CG, that decomposes into phosgene when wet.

If it is used by grain growers to kill pests then it is most probably Zn3P2 or AlP or sometimes even Ca3P2 was used. That produces PH3 (Phosphine), just like NBK said. That used to be used for silo fumigation. Phosgene, to some extent hydrolyses to HCl and CO2 which would be damaging to both the seeds and the silo.
I had about 500g of that stuff at one time but I hardly ever used it. It makes excellent smoke bombs though. :p

i read somewhere that phosgene is formed after chloroform is put away for too long

<small>[ February 19, 2003, 02:17 AM: Message edited by: blackstar ]</small>

Tada! While reading throught the latest "GunMart" I found an article on mole control. One of the methods mentioned was by using Aluminium Phosphide pellets, which release phosphine on contact with water. I guess that solves the puzzle then. Sorry about bringing up an old post, just thought I'd clarify it. I must say the security on purchasing this product is very low, I found a supplier that'd sell me 100g for £20, with no requirement of Health+Safety qualifications etc.

This is sold as 57% Aluminium phosphide, a bit more potent than the 2% NBK2000 was talking about.