Toxic Weapons

In 1972, more than 100 countries including the U.S. signed the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, and Stockpiling of Biologic and Toxic Weapons and Their Destruction — a measure designed to limit further development or use of biological and chemical weapons. Unfortunately, the accord has been breached several times. 

Rapid advances in chemistry during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, coupled with the success of mustard gas as a toxic weapon in World War I, attracted attention to the warfare potential of chemical agents. This led to support for research on lethal nerve agents during and immediately after World War II. The research was followed by the development of treatment methods, and prominent among these was the use of cholinesterase reactivators to reverse the lethal effects of anticholinesterase nerve gases. 

D.K. Clark, Effectiveness of Toxic Weapons in the Italian-Ethiopian War, Bethesda Operations Research Office (1959), p. 20. 

The toxicity of plants, venoms, and other poisons used in armaments posed perils to those who wielded them, and the mythology and the history of poison weapons is rife with examples of accidental self-injury and unintended collateral damage. The use of windborne toxins also involved blowback problems, as acknowledged by Kautilya in his Arthashastra. He cautioned that protective salves and other remedies must be applied before deploying poisonous smokes. Toxic weapons are notoriously difficult to control and often resulted in the destruction of noncombatants as well as soldiers, especially in siege situations. 

Thus, it was only with the beginning of World War I when another aspect of the industrial revolution in chemistry had this effect.10 As Robinson points out, the technology initially responsible for bringing toxic weapons out from their prehistory was the large-scale liquefaction of chlorine gas and its packaging into pressure cylinders. 11... 

Has this concept and this attitude been reflected in our military planning and our military preparations If, in an effort to make the most of our military expenditures we have failed to stock up to the fullest requirements in the matter of toxic weapons on the premise that such weapons might not be used again, as they were not used in World War II, we may have made a major military decision on the basis of a fatally unsound assumption.122(p3)... 

J.J. Fialka, Fighting Dirty Western Industry Sells Third World the Means to Produce Poison Gas , The Wall Street Journal, 16 September 1988, pp.Al, A22, See also W. Tuohy, German Curbs Unlikely to Halt Toxic Weapons , Los Angeles Times, 26 January 1989, part 1, p.8. 

The evidence regarding trichothecene mycotoxins was further undermined by reports from Canada and Britain. A Canadian study published in February 1986 was cited as supporting the US charges, but although low levels of tricothecene were reported in the samples tested the study failed to reach any conclusion about the use of toxic weapons. The report, which described Fusarium as ubiquitous also pointed out the difficulty of establishing comparisons with naturally occurring tricothecene levels. ... 

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