Term Effects of the Chemical Warfare Agent Sulfur Mustard

Long-Term Effects of the Chemical Warfare Agent Sulfur Mustard 

KAI KEHE DIRK STEINRITZ, FRANK BALSZUWEIT, AND HORST THIERMANN  

The military use of CWAs is banned and nearly all nations have signed the Chemical Weapons Convention. Therefore, the use of CWAs in a war becomes very unlikely. However, the situation has changed with respect to asymmetric 

Chemical Warfare Toxicology, Volume 1 Fundamental Aspects Edited by Franz Worek, John Jenner, and Horst Thiermann The Royal Society of Chemistry 2016 Published by the Royal Society of Chemistry, www.rsc.org 

Recently, epigenetic changes after SM poisoning were proposed to account for late effects. Perturbation of the epigenetic code may explain the longterm effects, which cannot be explained by SM-induced mutations alone. 

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Smith, K.J., Hurst, C.G., Moeller, R.B., Skelton, H.G., Sidell, F.R. (1995). Sulfur mustard its continuing threat as a chemical warfare agent, the cutaneous lesions induced, progress in understanding its mechanism of action, its long-term health effects, and new developments for protection and therapy. J. Am. Acad. Dermatol. 32 16S-16. 

Sulfur mustard (SM) is unique among chemical warfare agents because of the large number of reports of its effects in man. The majority of these reports are of its effects after release on the battle field, and give a description of the types of effect and their time course from exposure to resolution of the injury. However, SM is also one of the few chemicals that have been the subject of tests on humans to determine how toxic they are in terms of the doses or dosages that produce toxic effects. Unlike reports of accidental or battlefield exposures, these trials were carried out in chambers under controlled, or at least carefully recorded, conditions, usually with analytical confirmation of chamber concentrations. Many of the reports of these trials, which were elassified at the time they were produced, have now been released into the public record and are available for scientific review. This chapter reviews those reports that are now available to the general public in addition to the work already published. Volunteer trials were carried out in the USA, UK, India and Australia. The reports of these trials that have been released to the public record are held by the Defense Technical Information Service... 

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