{"id":9469,"date":"2014-11-26T09:55:50","date_gmt":"2014-11-26T17:55:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/?p=9469"},"modified":"2019-12-23T16:05:29","modified_gmt":"2019-12-24T00:05:29","slug":"tear-gas-banned-in-war-used-on-the-streets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2014\/11\/26\/tear-gas-banned-in-war-used-on-the-streets\/","title":{"rendered":"Tear Gas: Banned in War, Used on the Streets"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:2854,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.washingtonpost.com\\\/news\\\/morning-mix\\\/wp\\\/2014\\\/08\\\/14\\\/tear-gas-is-a-chemical-weapon-banned-in-war-but-ferguson-police-shoot-it-at-protesters&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p>The use of tear gas by the US police (and in other countries) is something I find seriously troubling. How can we justify using <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/morning-mix\/wp\/2014\/08\/14\/tear-gas-is-a-chemical-weapon-banned-in-war-but-ferguson-police-shoot-it-at-protesters\/\" title=\"Washington Post: Tear gas is a chemical weapon banned in war. But Ferguson police shoot it at protesters.\">a chemical agent banned from use in warfare<\/a> on our own citizens?<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n  Despite its ubiquity across the globe and in United States, tear gas is a chemical agent banned in warfare per the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993, which set forth agreements signed by nearly every nation in the world \u2014 including the United States. The catch, however, is that while it\u2019s illegal in war, it\u2019s legal in domestic riot control. That means Turkey got to use it on its protesters last year. That meant Bahrain got to the do the same. And now, in Ferguson, cops are likewise blasting residents protesting the police for the killing of an unarmed teen named Michael Brown.<\/p>\n<p>  &#8230;some scientists and international observers contend the tactic of spraying people with tear gas, which commonly uses the chemical agent 2-chlorobenzalmalononitrile (CS), can pose serious dangers. \u201cTear gas under the Geneva Convention is characterized as a chemical warfare agent, and so it is precluded for use in warfare, but it is used very frequently against civilians,\u201d Sven-Eric Jordt, a nerve gas expert at Yale University School of Medicine, explained to National Geographic. \u201cThat\u2019s very illogical.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>  Technically not a gas, Jordt said, tear gas is an aerosol. \u201cTear gases are nerve gases that specifically activate pain-sensing nerves,\u201d Jordt told National Geographic. And when used properly, in lower doses and deployed in open spaces, its effects are more or less harmless.<\/p>\n<p>  &#8230;But sometimes things don\u2019t go as planned. \u201cThe use of tear gas in \u2026 situations of civil unrest, however, demonstrates that exposure to the weapon is difficult to control and indiscriminate, and the weapon is often not used correctly,\u201d wrote Howard Hu in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1989. \u201cSevere traumatic injury from exploding tear gas bombs as well as lethal toxic injury have been documented.\u201d Hu found that if exposed to \u201chigh levels of CS,\u201d some victims experienced heart failure or even death.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The use of tear gas by the US police (and in other countries) is something I find seriously troubling. How can we justify using a chemical agent banned from use in warfare on our own citizens?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2042],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-9469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9469\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}