Response to a Chemical Agent Attack US Army 1942 скачать в хорошем качестве

Response to a Chemical Agent Attack US Army 1942

World War II (WWII) has been called ''the unfought chemical war." Both sides had produced millions of tons of chemical weapons and had made massive preparations for their use, yet the weapons were never used. These preparations included the establishment of secret research programs to develop better weapons and better methods of protecting against these weapons. In the United States, some of this research was focused on the development of protective clothing and skin ointments, which could prevent or lessen the severe blistering effects of mustard agents (sulfur and nitrogen mustard) and Lewisite (an arsenic-containing agent). By the time the war ended, over 60,000 U.S. servicemen had been used as human subjects in this chemical defense research program. At least 4,000 of these subjects had participated in tests conducted with high concentrations of mustard agents or Lewisite in gas chambers or in field exercises over contaminated ground areas. The human subjects had experienced a wide range of exposures to mustard agents or Lewisite, from mild (a drop of agent on the arm in "patch" tests) to quite severe (repeated gas chamber trials, sometimes without protective clothing). All of the men in the chamber and field tests, and some of the men in the patch tests, were told at the time that they should never reveal the nature of the experiments. Almost to a man, they kept this secret for the next 40 or more years. Public attention was drawn to these experiments when some of the WWII human subjects began to seek compensation from the Depart ment of Veterans Affairs (VA) for health problems that they believed were caused by their exposures to mustard agents or Lewisite. Two factors complicated resolution of these cases. First, there were often no records or documentation available of an individual's participation in the testing programs. Second, there was a great deal of uncertainty about which health problems were in fact the result of mustard agent or Lewisite exposure. For more information, read the report of the Institute of Medicine (U.S.). Committee to Survey the Health Effects of Mustard Gas and Lewisite titled Veterans at Risk : the health effects of mustard gas and Lewisite / Constance M. Pechura and David P. Rall, editors. Available at http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record... . This is clipped from the 1942 US army training film, Decontamination: personnel and area. The entire film is available at the National Archives.