Chemical weapon
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Template:TOC-right A chemical weapon is a chemical, with a delivery system that can deliver the agent in militarily significant concentrations, the primary effect of which is to injure or kill through poisoning. While explosives and incendiaries are indeed chemical compounds, since their major military effect is through blast or heat, they are not considered chemical weapons.
The production and use of chemical weapons is internationally banned by the Chemical Weapons Convention. Historically, the most extensive use of lethal chemical weapons was in the First World War, although they were used sporadically in counterinsurgency, or in the Second World War Japanese campaign against China. The gassing of the Kurdish people by Saddam Hussein is another well known example.
History
While there were proposals, for example, for the use of chemical weapons in the American Civil War, the first large-scale use was in World War I.
World War I
Interwar
World War II
Japanese forces used chemical and biological weapons in China, and Italy used chemical weapons against Ethiopia.
Winston Churchill's history of WWII shows he intended to use mustard gas against the beaches if the Germans invaded. The United States Joint Chiefs of Staff recommended that chemical weapons be used against the Japanese garrison of Iwo Jima before the invasion, but President Franklin D. Roosevelt personally denied the request.
Outside China, the worst exposure was an accident. The U.S. had sent mustard gas bombs to Europe, to be used only in retaliation for a German attack. They were still on the ammunition ship SS John Harvey, moored in the harbor of Bari, Italy. On December 2, 1944, German bombers made a night attack on what Germany simply regarded as a concentration of Allied supplies and shipping. Medical personnel were unaware that the smoke and surface oil slick contained mustard; they not only did not treat for mustard poisoning, but, concerned about hypothermia, wrapped victims, still contaminated in oil, with blankets, increasing the exposure. There were at least 59 military deaths, and almost certainly some in civilian areas affected by the smoke.
Vietnam
The U.S. made fairly routine use of the "riot control agent" CS in clearing enemy tunnels and bunkers. While CS is considered a nonlethal agent, the safety in a confined space is not fully understood.
There was widespread use of a defoliant mixture called Agent Orange. While the actual defoliants were in regular agricultural use and not especially toxic, a number of batches contained a then-undetectable quantity of extremely toxic dioxn.
Types
Antipersonnel lethal or casualty
Choking gases
Blood gases
Vesicants
Nerve agents
- Binaries