Howelings
Ever Been Tear Gassed?
The only time I was ever personally tear gassed was when my18-year-old son and I decided, along with a whole gaggle of other country yokels, to enter the World’s Fair at Tunbridge (population 1,300), held every September in central Vermont, illegally by way of a maple tree branch that hung over the barb-wire fence.
As we all tumbled headfirst onto the tree’s roots I experienced what felt like a big ball of pepper tossed into the eyes. Thank you, Tunbridge constabulary.
My only other experience of poison gas was via a gentleman nicknamed “Boozy” King, the librarian at Cheltenham College boarding school in the west of England, who earned his nickname from a speech impediment caused by mustard gas during World War One.
What I did not know until I found out just last week is that my experience of being incapacitated by mace was of the same order as Mr. King’s throat being disabled by the Germans in the trenches.
In an informative article recently published in Britain, Yiannis Baboulias, who was himself tear-gassed in Athens in 2011 (or maced, pepper-sprayed, mustard gassed, it’s all the same stuff) reveals why scientists are now warning the public about what happened to so many innocent civilians — including journalists —in Ferguson, Missouri, during its recent police riot.
These incapacitating, eye-scorching, mucus-making, breath-blockading, panic-inducing products are based on (wait for it) 2 –chloro-benzal- malononitrile, a compound found in chili peppers. As a consequence, they all function like nerve gases and in in high doses can cause effects one-hundred-times more severe than the most powerful onion, causing extreme pain and other health problems still little understood.
They work primarily by activating pain-sensing nerves, particularly in the eyes. Prolonged exposure can cause dangerous respiratory problems (as for Mr. Boozy King) as well as heart attacks. It can kill people who suffer from asthma and can cause pregnant women to miscarry. And, points out Baboulias, it is today used quite irresponsibly.” One hundred or 150 canisters can be used to crack down on a rowdy protest.” And the gas can linger for days, leaving local residents waking up with red eyes, burning nostrils and throbbing headaches.
After World War One, when the Germans were using xyllyl bromide and the French ethyl bromoacetate, such weapons were banned for use in warfare by the Geneva Convention. But not for use among civilians! When the Chemical Weapons Convention was finally signed in 1993, it, too, included exceptions for domestic use, on which the United States among other nations had insisted.
The manufacturers of the 15 capsicum-based tear-gas products on today’s U.S. market warn of the toxicity of their products on the labeling but come up short on warning of their dangers and what to do about dangerous dosages. The basic instruction is to wash your eyes and leave the area.
Trouble is, points out Baboulias, people being tear-gassed rarely feel any inclination to move on from where they’re demonstrating, such as in Zuccotti Park in Wall Street’s financial district.
Demonstrators in Athens, Greece, claim on the Internet that lemon juice is a good antidote for scorched eyes, while tweeters in Tahir Square favored splashes of Coca Cola. Others recommended a solution of antacids such as Maalox mixed with plenty of water.
But the labeling on the actual products themselves offers neither comfort nor advice to either the user or the target.
All we know for sure is that the tear gas market is currently estimated to be worth $1.6 billion.
And know this, too: If you are being gassed in Egypt or Palestine, your inability to breathe is likely due to an excess of mucus caused by capsicum, chloropicrin, dibenzoaxazepine, bromoacetone and benzyl bromide that originates from the United States.
*****
Quote for the Week:
You could roll a bowling ball
All the way down Duval
And never hit a single soul at all
To the Gulf of Mexico.
And on the Atlantic end
Just a couple of fools gathering
To catch a wave
as the storm rolls in from the coast of Africa.
We don’t need no damn evacuation.
Welcome to our island home staycation.
While it’s just us here, I bet we share a beer,
Maybe shed a tear then laugh the night away. It’s been a perfect day in every way.
When this town takes a rest,
On nights like this
We own Key West.
Big boats cleared the docks
’Buggin’ out like the fighter jocks,
They’ll never know the tiki bar rocks
When it’s just us chickens!
Generators kickin’ in,
Cory Heydon’s gonna pick and grin,
Crowd is thin but it’s thick with friends
Still alive and kickin.’
We’re all in this thing together.
If it ain’t one thing it’s the weather.
- Clint Bullard, “We Own Key West”
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