After the recent use of Chemical Weapons (CW) in Syria, in August 2013 [1], despite the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) being in place, international community has apprehension that terrorist organization might be tempted to acquire and use CW against civilian people. The CWC, except for purposes that are not prohibited under the convention, prohibits the production, storage and usage of chemical warfare agents (CWAs). The treaty is administered by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) through its strict verification regime [2]. For the verification purpose, CWC enlisted millions of compounds having diverse chemical structures. However, very few specific compounds have been developed as CWAs, even though, verification program of CWC requires unambiguous identification of these enlisted compounds in the samples collected by the OPCW inspectors from the production, storage or suspected sites. Generally, OPCW inspectors perform on-site analysis; however, in case of any ambiguities samples may be sent to the designated laboratories certified by the OPCW for off-site analysis. The designated laboratories involved in off-site analysis aim to enhance their analytical capabilities to meet the challenges associated with verification program of the CWC. The major analytical challenge of verification program is the detection and identification of chemically diverse structures. This challenge becomes more difficult in the presence of high chemical background with low concentration level of analytes. Laboratories involved in off-site analysis use different instrumental techniques such as gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS), liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (LC–MS), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy to screen different class of compounds. Therefore, a prerequisite is to have a generic method which has the ability to identify the large number of compounds simultaneously.
CWAs are generally unstable, especially in the presence of water. Hydrolysis of CWAs leads to a multitude of stable degradation products. These degradation products are relatively non-toxic and have negligible industrial importance. However, there are exceptions which have industrial importance like thiodiglycol in textile industries and dimethyl methylphosphonate as a flame retardant. But their presence in the environmental samples is a good indication of possible use or production of CWAs.