Chemical Warfare in World War I Essay

According to Harry Patch, the last soldier of World War 1, “War is organized murder, and nothing else.” Nothing is more murderess than war. Some of the most brutal weapons of WW1 were poison gas, tanks, and submarines.

 On “The Second Battle of Ypres”, it was reported that 90 men died from gas poisoning in the trenches, out of the 207 near the dressing stations forty six out of the fifty eight died almost immediately. The British expressed their anger they made their own poison gas. The commander of II Corps, Lieutenant General Sir Charles

Mild toxicity has symptoms of lacrimation, eye pain, irritation of the mucus membrane, hoarseness, swelling of the skin, sneezing, and coughing. Severe toxicity’s symptoms include blindness, blistering, vomiting, nausea, and respiratory complications. Lung injury was the leading cause of death after the exposure of mustard gas. Lung injuries start with mild symptoms, and slowly increase into chemical pneumonia, and pulmonary edema. Within twenty-four hours of exposure to skin, victims are itchy and skin irritation, which lead to yellow filled blisters. Five to ten days after the exposure of large amounts of mustard gas, there is a drastic reduction in white blood cells. The decrease of white blood cells, affect the bone marrow and lymphatic tissue to look as if the person was exposed to radiation. The best treatment is decontamination.

Soon after Gas warfare was introduced to the western front, it was critisised for its brutality and cruelty however, it’s popularity increased anyway. Scientists were constantly coming up with new, more painful ways to kill with gas and gas warfare was quickly becoming a common threat on the Western front.

I was aware that there is not currently an antidote for mustard gas which is why the military harps so hard on donning and decontamination techniques. It seems like one of the more harsh types of weapons in the sense that it doesn’t kill quickly but rather maims its victims. It is nice to know that it is extremely difficult

Blister agent is one of the most used and deadliest chemical weapon ever to be documented in the last century. The scientific name for blister agent is Vesicants, from the Latin vesica bladder, or blister. Blister agents or "vesicants" are chemicals which have severe irritating properties that produce fluid filled pockets on the skin and damage to the eyes, lungs and other mucus membranes. Symptoms of exposure may be immediate or delayed for several hours after exposure. Weather plays a key part in how effective the use of blister agents can be when being deployed on an enemy. There are three major types of blister agents that can be categorized as such: sulfur mustard, nitrogen mustard, and Lewisite and halogenated oximes.

Enflurane is also very halogenated and is entered to a person's blood stream without a balanced anesthesia. The wake up time when induced by Enflurane is in the medium range which means it is not too short but it is also not very long. Ethylene, C2H4, is naturally occurring substance in coal gas. It is is colorless and it also smells a bit like ether. It is synthesized from petroleum hydrocarbons. Ethylene also has many other things that it is in such as rubbers, plastics, detergents, and antifreeze. Due to the high reactivity between oxygen which has caused deaths due to explosions and has not been used since the

Clearly, the potential for chemical weapon attacks is very real, as the assessibility is evident. The symtoms that victims had were consistent with that of a nerve agent; shortness of breath, disorientation, runny nose, eye irritation, blurred vision, nausea, vomiting, general weakness, and eventual loss of consciousness (BBC.Com, 2013).

Imagine strolling in an open field, out for a night walk and you here a loud blast at that time you don't think that much about it until hours after the fact when suddenly you can't breath and your skin begins to blister well you have succumbed to Mustard gas. It is normally known as a "Blister Agent" living up to the gruesome attribute of the wounds that it causes, resembling burns and blisters. In any case, since mustard agents withal cause appalling harm to the eyes, respiratory framework and internal organs, they ought to most likely be depicted as "blister and tissue-harming agents". Ordinary mustard agents, bis-(2-chloroethyl) sulfide, responds with a sizably boundless number of natural atoms. The impact

It is quite simple to manufacture this agent and it is commonly "first choice" when a country decides to build up a capacity for chemical warfare. (OPCW 1992) The agent can and has been used in solid, gas and liquid form. It is nearly odorless and is colorless when the agent is in its pure form. There are victim’s claims that mustard gas smells similar to garlic or onions, but the victim’s sense of smell is dulled after a few breaths, and so the small can

“The distinctly local effects of mustard gas” were defined and put out to public on numerous occasions. (MJA) Although, these symptomatic warnings did no woo the armies, and thus, they continued the use of weaponized gas throughout World War I. The local effects of mustard gas were said to “consist mainly of conjunctivitis and superficial necrosis of the cornea; hyperemia, edema, and later necrosis of the skin, leading to a skin lesion of great chronicity; and congestion. and necrosis of the epithelial lining of the trachea and bronchi.” (MJA) Something to keep in mind, the local effects are merely for being local, or in the area, to a weaponized mustard gas landing. If a human were to be intoxicated by mustard gas, the symptoms were far more severe. Those who were unfortunate enough to be intoxicated by the weaponized gas experienced symptoms such as: “vonuting and diarrhea, hyperexcitability and convulsions, and. irregularities of the heart, observed in animals exposed to the deadly vapors, suggest the presence of systemic effects that are due to absorption of the poison into the blood stream and its distribution throughout the organism.” (MJA) The document serves to layout the effects and damages done from weaponized gases. Although only one gas is being analyzed, any other weaponized gases are sure to resemble quite common documents. Upon reading of the document, you catch a real sense of

There are many different types of gas, each is unique to producing its own symptoms and effects. “The primary gases of World War I were Mustard, Phosgene, Chlorine, and a mix of Chlorine and Phosgene gases” (“Research”). Mustard gas is probably the most commonly known. Mustard gas was really painful because it caused the soldiers skin to blister. However, its symptoms did not always appear right away. Some soldiers did not even realize they had been infected with it until up to twelve hours later! One of the reasons it was so nasty was because it could transfer through material onto the skin. It was given the nickname “King of Gases” because of how commonly it was used. Another commonly used gas was Chlorine. Chlorine caused many deaths. Even those who survived the original dose usually ended up dying later due to pneumonia. The Chlorine gas caused acute bronchitis, and slowly suffocated those exposed to it.

Chlorine gas was used on a wide scale by the German forces at Ypres in April 1915. In its first uses, chlorine was deadly for soldiers who did not wear gas masks. In the first wide scale attack at Ypres, it was estimated that over 1,100 were killed. The German forces would not be ready for it’s level of effectiveness and they would delay in pressing into the gap formed in enemy lines, which caused them to gain very little ground. The effectiveness of chlorine would soon decline because its appearance and strong odor made it easy to spot. Also, because chlorine is water soluble, solders without gas masks could minimize its effect by placing water soaked rags over their mouths and nose. Releasing chlorine would be another problem because the

Records of the implementation of chemicals in battle tactics on a simple scale can be found as early as the Bronze Age.1 However, relatively recent developments in industry have facilitated the production, mobilization, and dissemination of destructive chemical agents. As a result of said technological innovations, the scale of implementation has shifted, resulting in vastly amplified hazards to not just military personnel, but also to the general public.2-3 The Geneva Protocol was enacted in 1925 with goals to prevent the future abuse of harmful and arguably cruel tactics in warfare.2 This was in direct response to the implementation of phosgene and chlorine gasses by Germany as weapons of mass destruction at Ypres, Belgium in 1915, considered

Above, bis (2-chloroethyl) sulfide (Mustard gas) is produced from the electrophilic addition of sulfur dichloride to ethane. Its properties were first defined by Fredrick Gurthie who in his paper ‘on some derivatives of olefines’[4] as “smelling like mustard, tasting like garlic, and causing blisters after contact with the skin”. Historically, mustard Gas had found no significant use until World War I where interest spread in the development of new chemical weapons [5]. Wilhelm Steinkopf, a German chemist; working under the invitation of Fritz Haber, was responsible for developing a large scale method of mustard gas production [6]. He did this using a process developed by an English chemist; Hans Thatcher Clarke, from the Mayer method, where ethanol is reacted with hypochlorous acid and then sodium sulfide. The product of which is heated with Hydrochloric acid [7][12]. This method proved most useful to the german army as it used 2-chloroethanol, which was readily available due to its large scale use in the chemical dye industry [2]. In 1916 Steinkopf had developed a