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TEARS OF RAGE
By Allan Nairn
THE ISRAELI ARMY may be exposing Palestinians to potentially lethal doses
of American-made tear gas, according to a training manual compiled by
the company that supplies the gas.
"Firing one Federal No. 230 Flite-Rite [tear gas projectile] in a room
[eight-feet by eight-feet by seven-feet]," the manual warns, "could endanger
the life of an average subject if he stayed in the room for seven minutes."
The manual was prepared by Federal Laboratories, the principal U.S. supplier
of tear gas grenades and canisters to the Israeli military.
Since the uprising in the occupied territories began last December, Israeli
troops frequently have been observed throwing tear gas canisters into
inhabited homes and stores. American doctors who have studied the gas
say that Palestinians exposed in the open air may be suffering respiratory
damage as well.
Palestinian human rights groups claim that at least 32 Palestinians have
died from tear gas related injuries. This April, two deaths from tear
gas were reported in the Gaza Strip within a two-day period. One of the
deaths--a 21-year-old man who died after being tear-gassed in the Shati
refugee camp--has been acknowledged by the Israeli army.
Burl Alison, a vice president of TransTechnology, the Sherman Oaks, California
conglomerate which owns Federal Laboratories, describes tear gas as "a
humane product ... the best thing that's been developed for crowd control
and by far the safest." Alison, however, acknowledges that deaths can
occur "if a [gassed] person is in a very enclosed area."
Close Quarters
During a visit to the West Bank town of Ramallah this January, Monitor
reporters saw Israeli troops launch tear gas canisters into mosques, stores
and small stone cottages.
A delegation of American doctors that recently returned from the occupied
territories reported receiving "frequent and detailed reports that soldiers
were deliberately throwing tear gas canisters into the houses of refugees
... particularly during night-time raids on sleeping communities, and
into small stores [and] health clinics."
The doctors also reported that gas thrown into hospitals in the territories
has posed "a severe respiratory threat to inpatients and required the
urgent evacuation of some wards."
Members of the delegation, which was sponsored by the Boston- based Physicians
for Human Rights, also told of an incident witnessed by Harvard professor
Gene Sharp in which "soldiers tossed a tear gas grenade through the window
of a small apartment in the Old City of Jerusalem from which there presently
emerged five small children gasping and choking."
The delegation, which included Drs. Jennifer Leaning of Harvard and Jack
Geiger of the City University of New York Medical Center, also heard reports
of large drums of tear gas being dumped from hovering helicopters. They
saw one such empty canister--two and a half feet tall and 18 inches in
diameter--at the headquarters of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency
(UNRWA) in the Gaza Strip.
Federal Laboratories' tear gas canisters are a common sight on the streets
of the occupied territories. Spent cylinders and grenades litter the streets
after demonstrations and army raids, lying side-by-side with half-onions
and bottles of cologne used by residents to counteract the fumes. Many
of the projectiles carry the explicit warning: "Should not be fired directly
at persons as death or injury may result. For outdoor use only."
Asked about reports that the Israeli Army is disregarding these warnings,
Alison told the Monitor that Federal Labs had heard news accounts of tear
gas deaths but had no plans to curtail shipments to the Israelis.
"We've offered to conduct training if desired but once the product leaves
us there's not a way for us to monitor it and we leave it to the State
Department to decide politically because we're not more than a manufacturing
company," Alison said.
Spurred by protests from Arab-American groups and inquiries from news
reporters, the president of TransTechnology wrote to Israeli Prime Minister
Yitzhak Shamir in early April, expressing concern about the reports that
Israel is misusing tear gas.
"Examples of injuries to civilians and children in situations not involving
crowd control are cited and are reprehensible, if true," wrote Dan McBride,
the company's president.
McBride told Shamir that the U.S. government was responsible for preventing
such abuses. "We have no way of determining whether these incidents are
isolated or more widespread," he wrote. "Therefore, we must rely on the
... State Department to monitor the proper usage of our products and we
will continue to do so."
Tear gas shipments by U.S. firms are licensed by the State Department's
Office of Munitions Control, which has authorized the sale of some 120,000
projectiles to Israel since the uprising began last December.
Tear gas is often described as relatively harmless. In a March interview
with New York radio station WBA/Pacifica, Federal Laboratories President
Dr. Dennis Constantine said the gas "is not lethal. It is considered as
being an irritant and there are no permanent serious effects because of
its use. Anything can be lethal if used improperly. A spray deodorant
can be lethal if used improperly."
Lethal Possibilities
The Federal Laboratories "Riot Control" manual describes the dangers differently.
"Since juries have become more and more insistent that even homicidal
gunmen must not be killed unintentionally," the manual states, "an officer
using chemical agents must keep in mind the lethal possibilities of high
concentrations of CN and CS [two different types of tear gas]."
The manual recommends that officers get used to the gas by heating on
a hotplate "small capsules containing small quantities of the chemical"
in a 10-foot by 10-foot room. These capsules, however, contain only a
fraction of the 25 grams of CS or CN enclosed in the average tear gas
projectile.
The manual recognizes that releasing a real gas weapon in such a room
could be deadly for those inside. "We do believe," it says, "that a hazardous
overdose could be created by the release of several projectiles or of
even one full-sized grenade in a closed room." Such an overdose, the manual
states, "can cause serious illness or possibly even death."
The manual includes formulas for calculating the "median lethal dosage"
of CS and CN, expressed as the number of minutes it would take to "kill
50 percent of an exposed group of persons." In the example quoted at the
beginning of this article, a Federal Laboratories No. 230 Flite-Rite projectile
containing 25 grams of CN gas can be expected to kill half the inhabitants
of an eight-foot by eight-foot by seven-foot room in seven minutes. They
would be expected to live 18 minutes if the CS gas were used instead.
Doctors familiar with tear gas note that these formulas were devised
by extrapolating from animal studies and assume that the people exposed
will be normal, healthy adults. Effects can be more severe--and death
can come sooner--for infants, the elderly and people with respiratory
problems. Many of the deaths reported among Palestinians have fallen within
these categories.
Dr. Howard Hu of the Harvard School of Public Health said that although
research in the field is lacking, he knew of at least one case in the
medical literature where an infant exposed to "a relatively low concentration"
of tear gas in the open air died of pulmonary edema.
"In Vietnam," Hu said, "hundreds of people were killed by acute tear
gas inhalation. When the gas reaches high concentrations, as it can in
closed spaces, it will cause fatal pulmonary edema. Basically it will
burn up the lungs and the lungs will fill up with water."
Leaning, who visited the West Bank and Gaza with the Physicians for
Human Rights delegation, said that Israeli army tactics often exposed
families to tear gas for extended periods of time. "People were kept inside
because of curfews," she said. "It made it difficult for them to flee
the homes that had been tear- gassed or they would have to re-enter the
homes, so there would be a persistent exposure ... [during] which the
worst consequences can occur."
Leaning told of receiving "three separate corroborated reports of tear
gas use in [hospitals] where the ... gas had been thrown into the courtyard
or the main inside entryway and had seeped through the ducts and ... caused
problems in the maternity and neonatal wards."
Other Effects
The gas also can have other effects apart from its ability to kill. Hu,
who was part of a delegation examining the use of tear gas in South Korea,
did a survey of shopkeepers on streets where police were teargassing demonstrators
and found "a high prevalence of people with longstanding respiratory symptoms."
"We saw a lot of people who had skin burns," Hu said. "We saw one case
of a woman who probably either inhaled or ingested tear gas and suffered
an intestinal perforation. We took testimony from physicians who said
(balance of article omitted here; unscannable)
Allan Nairn is a freelance writer based in New
York City and a frequent contributor to the Monitor.
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