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Author: Geoff Plunkett
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781922132918
Category : Chemical agents (Munitions)
Languages : en
Pages : 256
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Book Description
In 1943 a top secret consignment of chemical weapons, includingdeadly mustard gas, arrived in Australia by ship. But there wasa problem -- it was leaking. Military authorities quickly realisedthis but, in the interests of secrecy, sent unprotected andunsuspecting wharf labourers into a lethal environment. The resultwas catastrophic: permanent disability and death. This shockingnarrative includes accounts of official deceit, intimidation ofgassed labourers and denial of natural justice. The truth, buriedin classified documents and the testimony of the few survivors, isthat human life was sacrificed for the sake of secrecy.Almost 70 years after war stocks of chemical weapons wereapparently totally destroyed, mustard gas is still present on theAustralian mainland, in her oceans and along her coastal fringes.The total destruction of chemical stocks is simply anothermilitary assumption. The truth is that these deadly weapons wereincompletely destroyed, buried or simply lost. Many retain theireffectiveness despite the passing of time, a fact that cost oneman his life and saw staff and children at a school badly burned.Mustard gas weapons have been retrieved as recently as 2012and more may lie in shallow graves waiting to be
Author: Geoff Plunkett
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781922132918
Category : Chemical agents (Munitions)
Languages : en
Pages : 256
Get Book Here
Book Description
In 1943 a top secret consignment of chemical weapons, includingdeadly mustard gas, arrived in Australia by ship. But there wasa problem -- it was leaking. Military authorities quickly realisedthis but, in the interests of secrecy, sent unprotected andunsuspecting wharf labourers into a lethal environment. The resultwas catastrophic: permanent disability and death. This shockingnarrative includes accounts of official deceit, intimidation ofgassed labourers and denial of natural justice. The truth, buriedin classified documents and the testimony of the few survivors, isthat human life was sacrificed for the sake of secrecy.Almost 70 years after war stocks of chemical weapons wereapparently totally destroyed, mustard gas is still present on theAustralian mainland, in her oceans and along her coastal fringes.The total destruction of chemical stocks is simply anothermilitary assumption. The truth is that these deadly weapons wereincompletely destroyed, buried or simply lost. Many retain theireffectiveness despite the passing of time, a fact that cost oneman his life and saw staff and children at a school badly burned.Mustard gas weapons have been retrieved as recently as 2012and more may lie in shallow graves waiting to be
Author: Joel A. Vilensky
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253111528
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 241
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Book Description
"Dr. Vilensky raises important concerns regarding the threats posed by lewisite and other weapons of mass destruction. As he describes, non-proliferation programs are a vital component in the War on Terror." -- Richard G. Lugar, United States Senator "Joel Vilensky's book is a detailed and immensely useful account of the development and history of one of the major chemical weapons.... We will always know how to make lewisite, the 'Dew of Death,' but that does not mean that we should, or be compelled to accept such weapons in our lives." -- from the Foreword by Richard Butler, former head of UN Special Commission to Disarm Iraq In 1919, when the Great War was over, the New York Times reported on a new chemical weapon with "the fragrance of geranium blossoms," a poison gas that was "the climax of this country's achievements in the lethal arts." The name of this substance was lewisite and this is its story -- the story of an American weapon of mass destruction. Discovered by accident by a graduate student and priest in a chemistry laboratory at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., lewisite was developed into a weapon by Winford Lewis, who became its namesake, working with a team led by James Conant, later president of Harvard and head of government oversight for the U.S.'s atomic bomb program, the Manhattan Project. After a powerful German counterattack in the spring of 1918, the government began frantic production of lewisite in hopes of delivering 3,000 tons of the stuff to be ready for use in Europe the following year. The end of war came just as the first shipment was being prepared. It was dumped into the sea, but not forgotten. Joel A. Vilensky tells the intriguing story of the discovery and development of lewisite and its curious history. During World War II, the United States produced more than 20,000 tons of lewisite, testing it on soldiers and secretly dropping it from airplanes. In the end, the substance was abandoned as a weapon because it was too unstable under most combat conditions. But a weapon once discovered never disappears. It was used by Japan in Manchuria and by Iraq in its war with Iran. The Soviet Union was once a major manufacturer. Strangely enough, although it was developed for lethal purposes, lewisite led to an effective treatment for a rare neurological disease.
Author: Institute of Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 030904832X
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 448
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Book Description
Recently, World War II veterans have come forward to claim compensation for health effects they say were caused by their participation in chemical warfare experiments. In response, the Veterans Administration asked the Institute of Medicine to study the issue. Based on a literature review and personal testimony from more than 250 affected veterans, this new volume discusses in detail the development and chemistry of mustard agents and Lewisite followed by interesting and informative discussions about these substances and their possible connection to a range of health problems, from cancer to reproductive disorders. The volume also offers an often chilling historical examination of the use of volunteers in chemical warfare experiments by the U.S. militaryâ€"what the then-young soldiers were told prior to the experiments, how they were "encouraged" to remain in the program, and how they were treated afterward. This comprehensive and controversial book will be of importance to policymakers and legislators, military and civilian planners, officials at the Department of Veterans Affairs, military historians, and researchers.
Author: Alan J. Feister
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 9780849342578
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 390
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Book Description
This book provides a comprehensive review and analysis of the acute toxic effects of sulfur mustard (mustard gas); the injuries that this compound produces in skin, eye, airway, and other tissues; and possibilities for the prevention of these injuries through pharmacological intervention. The book takes a multidisciplinary approach and is intended for all biomedical researchers interested in combatting the effects of chemical weapons, as well as those who have a general interest in the basic processes underlying cell death and tissue injury. Drawing on an extensive base of scientific literature, including many government research reports that are difficult or impossible for most researchers to obtain, the book covers the pathological features of acute mustard injury, sulfur mustard's toxicodynamics, its chemistry, its molecular and cellular mechanisms of injury, the inflammatory mechanisms involved in injury, prophylactic and therapeutic approaches to prevention of injury, and experimental models of mustard injury.
Author: Geoff Plunkett
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780987427908
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 772
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Book Description
As the Japanese swept south towards Australia in late 1941, they carried chemical weapons, already used with deadly effect in China. Forced to counter the chemical warfare threat, Australia covertly imported 1 million chemical weapons and hid them. Plunkett tells the story of the importation, storage, and live trials of the deadly weapons.
Author: L. F. Haber
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191512311
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 430
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Book Description
The author examines fully the military role of chemical warfare and its effects on the people, industries, and administrations on both sides; he also considers the growing moral problems it created. The launching of an entirely new weapon that did not discriminate between soldiers and civilians raised complex issues which were debated endlessly between the wars and which, in recent years, have led to agreement among the powers not to use chemical or biological warfare.
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309168163
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 516
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Book Description
This report reviews documents on acute exposure guideline levels (AEGLs) for nerve agents GA (tabun), GB (sarin), GD (soman), GD, and VX, sulfur mustard, diborane, and methyl isocyanate. The documents were developed by the National Advisory Committee on Acute Exposure Guideline Levels for Hazardous Chemicals (NAC). The subcommittee concludes that the AEGLs developed in those documents are scientifically valid conclusions based on data reviewed by NAC and are consistent with the NRC reports on developing acute exposure guideline levels.
Author: Jonathan Tucker
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0307430103
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 476
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Book Description
In this important and revelatory book, Jonathan Tucker, a leading expert on chemical and biological weapons, chronicles the lethal history of chemical warfare from World War I to the present. At the turn of the twentieth century, the rise of synthetic chemistry made the large-scale use of toxic chemicals on the battlefield both feasible and cheap. Tucker explores the long debate over the military utility and morality of chemical warfare, from the first chlorine gas attack at Ypres in 1915 to Hitler’s reluctance to use nerve agents (he believed, incorrectly, that the U.S. could retaliate in kind) to Saddam Hussein’s gassing of his own people, and concludes with the emergent threat of chemical terrorism. Moving beyond history to the twenty-first century, War of Nerves makes clear that we are at a crossroads that could lead either to the further spread of these weapons or to their ultimate abolition.
Author: Bruce Cumings
Publisher: Modern Library
ISBN: 081297896X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 322
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Book Description
A BRACING ACCOUNT OF A WAR THAT IS EITHER MISUNDERSTOOD, FORGOTTEN, OR WILLFULLY IGNORED For Americans, it was a discrete conflict lasting from 1950 to 1953. But for the Asian world the Korean War was a generations-long struggle that still haunts contemporary events. With access to new evidence and secret materials from both here and abroad, including an archive of captured North Korean documents, Bruce Cumings reveals the war as it was actually fought. He describes its origin as a civil war, preordained long before the first shots were fired in June 1950 by lingering fury over Japan’s occupation of Korea from 1910 to 1945. Cumings then shares the neglected history of America’s post–World War II occupation of Korea, reveals untold stories of bloody insurgencies and rebellions, and tells of the United States officially entering the action on the side of the South, exposing as never before the appalling massacres and atrocities committed on all sides. Elegantly written and blisteringly honest, The Korean War is, like the war it illuminates, brief, devastating, and essential.
Author: Jennet Conant
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 1324002514
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 400
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Book Description
The gripping story of a chemical weapons catastrophe, the cover-up, and how one American Army doctor’s discovery led to the development of the first drug to combat cancer, known today as chemotherapy. On the night of December 2, 1943, the Luftwaffe bombed a critical Allied port in Bari, Italy, sinking seventeen ships and killing over a thousand servicemen and hundreds of civilians. Caught in the surprise air raid was the John Harvey, an American Liberty ship carrying a top-secret cargo of 2,000 mustard bombs to be used in retaliation if the Germans resorted to gas warfare. When one young sailor after another began suddenly dying of mysterious symptoms, Lieutenant Colonel Stewart Alexander, a doctor and chemical weapons expert, was dispatched to investigate. He quickly diagnosed mustard gas exposure, but was overruled by British officials determined to cover up the presence of poison gas in the devastating naval disaster, which the press dubbed "little Pearl Harbor." Prime Minister Winston Churchill and General Dwight D. Eisenhower acted in concert to suppress the truth, insisting the censorship was necessitated by military security. Alexander defied British port officials and heroically persevered in his investigation. His final report on the Bari casualties was immediately classified, but not before his breakthrough observations about the toxic effects of mustard on white blood cells caught the attention of Colonel Cornelius P. Rhoads—a pioneering physician and research scientist as brilliant as he was arrogant and self-destructive—who recognized that the poison was both a killer and a cure, and ushered in a new era of cancer research led by the Sloan Kettering Institute. Meanwhile, the Bari incident remained cloaked in military secrecy, resulting in lost records, misinformation, and considerable confusion about how a deadly chemical weapon came to be tamed for medical use. Deeply researched and beautifully written, The Great Secret is the remarkable story of how horrific tragedy gave birth to medical triumph.
