Rick Dahms
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THE TONS OF TEAR GAS and pepper spray Seattle police used on demonstrators and bystanders alike at the anti-WTO demonstrations last December contained chemicals implicated in lung problems, eye damage, and even death. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the effects of these chemical weapons are not always confined to 15 or so minutes of intense pain and incapacitation. According to manufacturers' documents, military research, and medical literature, each of these agents carries short- and long-term health risks; various formulations contain potential carcinogens.
Tear gas and pepper spray may cause health problems even when used within guidelines on healthy people. But in Seattle, as elsewhere, law enforcement violated manufacturers' warnings and inevitably sprayed vulnerable populations such as people with diabetes, asthma, allergies, or heart problems, as well as pregnant women, children, and the elderly. "It was like a war zone," says Russell Sparks, a student from Bellingham who helped block an intersection on December 1. "The police rolled up in humvees, and I heard the clink, clink of cops jogging toward us. Within seconds the area was filled with gas and the air was pure white all around. I coughed and coughed. I felt like I was on fire, my friend and I both became hysterical. He fell down. A middle-aged man near me passed out, eyes open, shaking, dry heaving, twitching in the shoulders. A woman passed out face down. I tried to help, but my eyes were burning and I was screaming for medical help."
Three days later, Sparks still felt "serious flu symptoms, phlegmy, tired, fatigued, problems with eyes focusing, burning, slightly nauseous. I felt like it went into every pore." He wasn't alone. The persistence and severity of symptoms widely reported by demonstrators and hapless bystanders gave rise to speculation that some "mystery gas" had been used. Rumors of nerve gas spread like a toxic cloud across the Internet.
In fact, the tear gases and pepper sprays used in Seattle have been shown to cause temporary blindness, respiratory problems, vomiting, diarrhea, fatigue, and disorientation. Symptoms may linger for days in otherwise healthy individuals. Out of 187 North Carolina corrections officers exposed to pepper spray under controlled conditions for training purposes, according to a Duke University Medical Center study, eight had symptoms persisting for more than a week, including eye problems, chest problems, headaches, and disorientation.
More seriously, reports by the Army and in prestigious medical journals about some of the chemical weapons used in Seattle have warned of respiratory arrest, pulmonary edema, and acute elevation in blood pressure associated with risk of stroke and heart attack. Military and industrial sources also point to the possibility of cancer, birth defects, and DNA damage.
WHILE TEAR GAS and pepper spray are banned from use in war by an international treaty, domestic use is legal and nearly ubiquitous in the United States. The advantages of these "nonlethal" technologies, police say, include fewer deaths and serious injuries to officers and suspects, a more benign image for departments, and less litigation. Currently, more than 90 percent of the country's police departments issue pepper spray to their officers, according to the Justice Department, and many departments store tear gas for use in crowd control or riot situations.
Despite widespread use, none of the agents sold for police purposes is monitored, tested, or regulated by any government agency for consistency, purity, toxicity, or even efficacy. Dr. Howard Hu, a Harvard University epidemiologist, says that the extent of ill effects from these chemicals is unknowable since no rigorous, independent follow-up studies have been conducted on exposed populations. Little has changed since 1989, when Hu wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Association, "There is an ongoing need for investigation into the full toxicological potential of tear gas chemicals and renewed debate on whether their use can be condoned under any circumstances."
Because they are treated as weapons, police-grade products "fall between regulatory cracks," says Raymond Downs, program manager in science and technology at the National Institute for Justice. "Police are at the mercy of manufacturers," Downs adds, in that they have to rely solely on makers' claims for the safety of the chemical weapons themselves and for the wide variety of solvents and propellants routinely added to turn the active ingredients into aerosols.
Those claims may not be all that reliable. In a 1995 report, the Army warned that "manufacturer literature . . . is often misleading, incomplete, or inaccurate," and in some cases "manufacturers refuse to disclose the components of [their] products." Indeed, Def-Tec, one of the country's largest suppliers, declines to release information on concentration of pepper and tearing chemicals in its dozen products deployed in Seattle. It also won't disclose which solvents or propellants were incorporated, except to refer to three generic product-safety data sheets that the Seattle police are required by law to release.
When it comes to health aspects of any of the chemical weapons, used either singly or in combination, Downs notes, "there is almost no independent research going on."
Zarc International, which makes only pepper spray products, alleges in its literature that the tear gases its competitors make promote cancer and cause allergic reactions and eye injuries. Def-Tec, a division of Armor Holdings, which manufactures both pepper spray and tear gas, denies any safety problems. "We know of tens of thousands of times that these have been deployed without any incident," says Dave Dubay, director of research for the Casper, Wyoming-based company.
