Table 2. Crucial biological agents (Centers for Disease Control, Atlanta, Georgia, USA).
| Disease | Pathogen | Abused1 |
|---|---|---|
| Category A (major public health hazards) | ||
| Anthrax | Bacillus antracis (B) | First World War |
| Second World War | ||
| Soviet Union, 1979 | ||
| Japan, 1995 | ||
| USA, 2001 | ||
| Botulism | Clostridium botulinum (T) | – |
| Haemorrhagic fever | Marburg virus (V) | Soviet bioweapons programme |
| Ebola virus (V) | – | |
| Arenaviruses (V) | – | |
| Plague | Yersinia pestis (B) | Fourteenth-century Europe |
| Second World War | ||
| Smallpox | Variola major (V) | Eighteenth-century N. America |
| Tularemia | Francisella tularensis (B) | Second World War |
| Category B (public health hazards) | ||
| Brucellosis | Brucella (B) | – |
| Cholera | Vibrio cholerae (B) | Second World War |
| Encephalitis | Alphaviruses (V) | Second World War |
| Food poisoning | Salmonella, Shigella (B) | Second World War |
| USA, 1990s | ||
| Glanders | Burkholderia mallei (B) | First World War |
| Second World War | ||
| Psittacosis | Chlamydia psittaci (B) | – |
| Q fever | Coxiella burnetti (B) | – |
| Typhus | Rickettsia prowazekii (B) | Second World War |
| Various toxic syndromes | Various bacteria | Second World War |
Category C includes emerging pathogens and pathogens that are made more pathogenic by genetic engineering, including hantavirus, Nipah virus, tick-borne encephalitis and haemorrhagic fever viruses, yellow fever virus and multidrug-resistant bacteria.
1Does not include time and place of production, but only indicates where agents were applied and probably resulted in casualties, in war, in research or as a terror agent. B, bacterium; P, parasite; T, toxin; V, virus.