Re: First Large Scale Chlorine Release -- 1915

["Mark Robinowitz" <mrobinowitz@igc.apc.org>]

> Date:          Wed, 8 May 1996 08:02:48 +0200 (MET DST)
> To:            mrobinowitz@igc.apc.org
> From:          Ferdinand.Engelbeen@ping.be (Ferdinand Engelbeen)
> Subject:       Re: First Large Scale Chlorine Release -- 1915
> Cc:            dioxin-l@essential.org

> >Mark Robinowitz wrote:
> 
> >On April 22, 1915, the German army released a huge chlorine cloud at
> >Ypres, France, that killed over 5,000 'Allied' soldiers and injured 10,000
> >more.  (It's possible that Germany would have won World War One if their
> >troops took advantage of the chaos they caused.)
> >
> >Mustard gas and phosgene, two other chemical weapons used in WW I, are
> >based on chlorine.  (Nerve gases are organic phosphorus compounds --
> >malathion is a diluted version of these much more dangerous, but not
> >bioaccumulative, poisons.)
> >....................
> 
> For your information:
> 
> The gas bottles were filled with a liquid mixture of chlorine and nitrogen
> peroxide and were brought in position by German Colonel Peterson and his
> 35th Engineers, called 'The Stinkpioneers'. They were meant to cover the
> frontline with 200 liter gas per stretching meter (orders of the Supreme
> commander General von Falkenhayn)!
> Before that, experiments had been carried out by the German Professor Haber with
> the brom-ethylacetate and chloracetone from the French grenades, later with
> the xylilbromide of the British and chlorine in combination with 'shrapnell-
> or splinter'-effect grenades. All these did not satisfy as had been shown by
> tests e.g. on the Russian front in Lodz.
> The 'chlorine' bottles were finally chosen because of their 'target': 'not
> to kill but to immobilise temporarily and to ensure that the effect would be
> gone after the short time needed by the own troups to break through the
> infected area without harming the own soldiers'. Due to this 'inefficiency
> to kill on the spot', the Germans replaced this weapon by phosgene and
> mustard gas (contain also carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and/or sulphur), and
> these really 'killed'! Thirty years later they have invented a still more
> efficient gas to kill millions of jewish people: Zyklon (cyanide: hydrogen,
> carbon and nitrogen, nothing to do with chlorine)!
>

actually most Nazi death camps used diesal engines to kill their victims, 
only a few used Zyklon-B, manufactured by the I.G. Farben chemical 
companies (BASF, Bayer, Hoechst)

the chlorine used at Ypres may not have been the state of the art 
technologically, but it did kill 5,000 people! 


> Besides this, it is ETHICALLY TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE to talk about
> 'bioaccumulation' and a sign of MACABRE CYNISM to use these many war victims
> as an argument for this discussion about chlorine, which is not even on the
> topics of this mailing-list.

without chlorine production, dioxins wouldn't be an issue

> 
> We urge you to come and visit the huge war cemeteries in our region and to
> claim your arguments against chlorine over here!

what, the descendents of Ypres are in favor of chlorine releases?
Much of the US production of chlorinated war gases were here in Maryland 
at the Aberdeen Proving Ground.  Tons of chlorinated mustard sits in 
stockpiles.



> Very true indeed, 500 million years of evolution can't be wrong! Learn
> about nature!

nature doesn't make "Wastes" nor does it make 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic 
acid, dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, chlorodifluoromethane, etc.
Without cheap and subsidized electricity, the chlor-alkali process would 
be even less common.



> 
> Ferdinand Engelbeen
> Chairman Chlorophiles
> 
> Ferdinand.Engelbeen@ping.be
> 
> 
>