preview

Weapon Of War: Chlorine Gas

Good Essays

Chlorine is the 17th element on the periodic table, and at -34 degrees Celsius and above it becomes a yellow gas that is fatal to humans. The use of chlorine gas as a poison on the battlefield came quickly after the start of World War One. It’s has been heavily influenced by politics, and sometime politics fails to limit harmful uses. To this day weapons grade chlorine gas is stockpiled and occasionally used despite multiple United Nations (UN) restrictions and international agreements. A political solution is needed to keep chlorine for only beneficial uses.

Chlorine is a halogen gas, and one of its characteristics is that it bonds with nearly every element, and for that reason it was difficult to discover initially. In 1774 a Swedish scientist …show more content…

On April 22 of 1915 German forces used chlorine gas on troops in battle. At the second battle of Ypres, German forces placed cylinders containing the pressurized gas on the front line. The Allied soldiers believed the cloud of gas to be a smoke screen for a German attack. These soldiers held their position and among the estimated 15,000 soldiers that came in to contact with the gas 5,000 or so died as a direct result. (Marrs, T., & Maynard, R., (1996) Chlorine gas was optimal for the trench warfare of World War One because it is 2.5 times heavier than air and seeped into low points on enemy lines where the troops were often dug in. Additionally pressurized gas cylinders could be placed on allied lines as well as launched from artillery shells and even thrown as gas canisters resembling grenades. The Allied forces responded to the German gas attack by using gas in Loos in September of 1915. The British forces deployed gas using pressurized cylinders similar to that of the Germans at Ypres. However on parts of the battlefield the wind changed direction blowing the gas back into the faces of the Brits. Chlorine gas and similar gases developed later in the war accounted for 91,000 fatalities on the battle field. (Poison Gas and World War One. (2014.) This statistic does not take into consideration the deaths happening years after the war due to long term injury from the …show more content…

The Geneva Protocol effectively banned the use of “asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases, and of all analogous liquids, materials or devices.” (Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War, 1925, January 1)Since then several UN General Assembly resolutions have been made regarding the Geneva Protocol, and today it casts a far larger net over what cannot be used in armed conflict. In 1997 the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) was formed. Today 187 nations making up 98% of the world’s population are a part of the

Get Access