Mustard gas

[unipus]

I need someone to learn me up on mustard gas and other persistent agents. How long is it dangerous/lethal for? Does it degrade if exposed to snow and rain? Does it soak into different materials? (particularly important: COAL. What happens to coal that is coated in mustard? What if you were to burn it?)

[swaghauler]

Both the CDC and OSHA have EXTENSIVE information on all forms of chemical poisoning. You can just go to the CDC's website and look them up yourself or the same with OSHA. Just search HAZMAT in OSHA.

Mustard Gas is a semi-persistent agent that causes burns on the skill, blurry vision, and scarring of the lungs. It is NOT very lethal with only a 5% fatality rate on the battlefield. A gas mask and normal clothing will protect you against this threat (although clothing will need to be discarded to avoid recontamination). Exposed skin may develop burns or blisters if concentrations of the gas are high. The main danger is from scarring in the lungs. This may lead to fluid buildup in the lungs (pulmonary edema) which CAN kill. I'd say it's an *EASY Test of CON (2 X CON) to avoid death.

Mustard gas normally smelled like mustard or garlic but newer versions CAN be odorless. The toxin can persist for up to 3 days (compared to 4 to 6 hours for most modern blood and nerve agents). It CAN be confused with its identically-performing, but more lethal (*ROUTINE test of CON to survive) "cousin" CHLORINE GAS poisoning. But unlike Chlorine gas, Mustard gas NEVER occurs naturally.

There is no known antidote for either and treatment involves washing the afflicted area with water and drinking a fluid to bind the substance IF it was ingested. The most common fluid used would be MILK to help neutralize the Mustard gas's effects.

JJ Keller produces books on HAZMAT for the Trucking and Materials Handling Industries. I'd get a copy of one of their HAZMAT books (as cheap as $5 new at truckstops) for a reference. Also, note that possession of these books is MANDATORY for any Trucker hauling HAZMAT in the US.

*Under my system, you would roll a 1D10 with 10 indicating a failure. Routine Tests are 1.5 x Skil or Attribute so a Routine Con check would be 8 or less for a 5 CON.

[Tegyrius]

My knowledge is specific to the sulfur mustard formulations ("H," "HD," "HT") used in the U.S. Army's chemical weapons stockpile, so I may be off on some details for other formulations. Where possible, the following is double-checked against my hazard analysis training materials from 2013. All of the following is available in open sources; my work was civilian-side local .gov and I did not hold a clearance.

Mustard has low volatility and high persistence, which means it doesn't evaporate readily and it sticks around for a while. It's not as long-lived as the persistent nerve agent VX but it's not far off. It is denser than water (about 1.3x), freezes at 58ºF, has a flash point of 221ºF, and is fairly viscous. One of my instructors compared its visible physical properties to thin maple syrup.

The HD formulation is purified/distilled H; physical properties are similar. HT is a mixture of HD and a diluent; it has a lower freezing temperature and is even less volatile than H/HD. The mustard/garlic/horseradish odor of H is due to impurities which the distillation process removes from HD.

Mustard exposure may take from 2 hours to upwards of 24 hours to manifest symptoms. As Swag noted, unlike nerve agents, blister agents do not have counter-agents. Decontamination and treatment of symptoms form your medic's course of action. For exposure survivors, it's also a very potent carcinogen - beyond the scope of most campaigns, but perhaps a factor for roleplaying concerns.

Residual U.S. Army inventory as of 2013 was 105mm artillery projectiles (H and HD), 155mm artillery projectiles (H and HD), and 4.2" mortar projectiles (HD and HT). When stored, they were unfused and without propellant but did contain agent and bursting charges. It was noted in my training that in a storage fire, the projectiles would rupture from vapor pressure before the bursting charges detonated from the heat. Other delivery systems may have existed prior to my time in the program, but any such items were out of inventory before the late '80s and so not a factor for us. Likewise, our work was concerned solely with U.S. inventory, so I have no information on other nations' chemical munitions.

The munitions were designed so that when fired, the bursting charge ruptures the case, producing aerosol/droplets. Initial exposure hazard is from skin and eye contact with this splash. There is a possibility of a secondary downwind vapor hazard from evaporation after the aerosol is deposited on surfaces; I believe this is more likely with higher surface temperatures. My training was not overly-concerned with long-distance airborne plumes of mustard due to the droplets' weight; nerve agents tend to go much farther in air than mustard. Mustard evaporation is slow, so surface contamination does linger.

Over long storage periods (i.e., decades), mustard settles and solidifies. One of the technical challenges facing the disposal teams at the last stockpile sites is that their projectiles have been stored in the same orientation for so long that the chemical agent has formed a solid "heel" in each projectile. It can't be poured out - individual rounds have to be destroyed in a blast chamber.

I can't find a reference for it in my materials, but my recollection is that mustard decays faster under direct sunlight (i.e., UV radiation) and can be fiendishly persistent if left in a dark environment without airflow. The specific example given was battlefield contamination of WWI trenches that were subsequently filled in, resulting in soil still contaminated in the modern era. This 2007 report from the UK MoD goes into some detail on the issue of mustard's persistence when buried.

I am neither a chemist nor a plume modeling expert. However, based on the above, my response to your specific question is that coal exposed to mustard would at least retain surface contamination, particularly if someone popped a mustard munition over a coal pile and the aerosolized droplets settled on the surface and then migrated into the dark center of the pile. Burning the coal would probably release some of the mustard as vapor, yielding vapor exposure in the downwind exhaust plume. In cool air or on cool surfaces, you might also see the vapor re-condense to liquid droplets and generate some level of surface contamination. Your combustion chamber is also likely to be contaminated, and if you're handling the coal with manual labor, gods help your stokers.

Originally Posted by swaghauler

JJ Keller produces books on HAZMAT for the Trucking and Materials Handling Industries. I'd get a copy of one of their HAZMAT books (as cheap as $5 new at truckstops) for a reference. Also, note that possession of these books is MANDATORY for any Trucker hauling HAZMAT in the US.

Coincidentally, I had cause to pull my ERG off the shelf today. We had a minor chlorine issue in our AO and I took the opportunity to do an airborne plume education session with my new-ish deputy.

- C.

[Vespers War]

Originally Posted by swaghauler

The toxin can persist for up to 3 days (compared to 4 to 6 hours for most modern blood and nerve agents).

3 days is its persistence in the open in summer. In wooded areas in summer, its persistence was up to 7 days. Cool weather persistence is longer, up to several weeks in cold wooded areas for WWI-era HS gas. It has a relatively high freezing point of 44-45 degrees Fahrenheit (7-8 Celsius), so frozen mustard could persist until thawed (including sticking to boots and then being warmed inside, thus gassing a shelter).

Standard treatment for skin was to wash the affected area with kerosene and then with soap and water; dichlordiethyl sulphide will dissolve in kerosene, gasoline, acetone, or alcohol. The downside was that this needed to be done within a few minutes or else the mustard would already have sufficiently penetrated the skin to still cause damage.

There were also anti-gas ointments. Ointment, anti-gas, No. 1 was 50% white petroleum jelly and 50% supertropical bleaching powder (30% bleaching powder) were also issued for trench use, but since they needed to be washed off after use to avoid skin irritation, they were somewhat questionable in effectiveness. Ointment No. 2 was Chloramine-T in a vanishing cream base that didn't need to be washed off but was a mild irritant.

Lethality was only around 2% for mustard; the 5% number was the permanent casualty rate for all gases, and phosgene was easily the most lethal overall. British records of all gas victims show 3% fatality, 2% permanent invalidity, and 70% physically fit for duty within 6 weeks, with chlorine having the longest average recovery time in hospital (60 days) and phosgene and mustard being shorter (45.5 and 46 days respectively). Fatalities dropped off as protective equipment improved, going from 4.5% in 1915-17 to 2.3% in 1918.

Lethality also widely varied by means of projection. Cloud gas started at 3.6% in late 1915 using chlorine and rose to 19.6% by August 1916 as chlorine was replaced by phosgene. It then fell off as protective equipment improved, as clouds were usually easy to observe in time to don protective gear. Gas shells only had around a 2.5% fatality rate because they had difficulty achieving sufficient density. They were more of a harassing weapon and a way of reducing effectiveness by forcing defenders to mask up. More lethal were the phosgene projectors (Livens or gaswerfer). Of their casualties, 18.2% were lethal from late 1917 to mid 1918. This was because they were relatively quiet and put a high concentration of gas in a small area quickly.

For overall effect, "General Description of War Gases" summarizes nicely:

The main features of mustard gas vapour casualties may be briefly summarized as follows:

(a) An insidious onset, with a latent period of two to 48 hours according to the concentration of the gas and the duration of exposure.

(b) Injury to the eyes, varying from simple conjunctivitis of a temporary nature to a severe keratitis and grave secondary septic complications.

(c) Laryngitis, involvement of trachea and bronchi, and possibly necrosis of the mucous membrane leading to severe bronchitis or broncho-pneumonia.

(d) Early nausea or persistent vomiting, accompanied by epigastric pain.

(e) Erythema of the skin - early in the case of exposed areas or of hot, moist surfaces-which may proceed to vesication or excoriation, and may be followed by secondary septic infection.

(f) Slow healing of the blistered, devitalized areas and pigmentation of the ensuing scar.

Neutralization of mustard was with 3% sodium sulfide (bleaching powder) in water, steam, or gaseous chlorine(!) to break down the chemical. It would be time-consuming but not impossible to clean contaminated coal.

[3catcircus]

Would you *need* to decon coal when the Army has been incinerating it as a means of disposal for decades? Unless you're worried about poisoning coal workers...

[Tegyrius]

Originally Posted by 3catcircus

Would you *need* to decon coal when the Army has been incinerating it as a means of disposal for decades?

There's a difference between the Army's disposal processes (timed, controlled, and monitored incineration with decontamination of solid waste products and exhaust filtering of gases and particulates) and just throwing contaminated material into a steam locomotive and hoping for the best.

(I'm aware of the incineration process as historical fact but it was before my time in the program. The disposal process at Pueblo and Blue Grass began with the detonation chambers I mentioned in my preceding post, which operated at around 1100ºF. After the bursting charge deflagrated, the resulting gases were subject to both chemical treatment and filtration, while the metal scrap underwent separate chemical decontamination. That process was adopted because of the aforementioned solidification in those stockpiles' older projectiles.)

Unless you're worried about poisoning coal workers...

Well, if you don't have a limitless supply of coerced labor, you're going to run out of coal workers sooner or later...

- C.

[3catcircus]

Originally Posted by Tegyrius

There's a difference between the Army's disposal processes (timed, controlled, and monitored incineration with decontamination of solid waste products and exhaust filtering of gases and particulates) and just throwing contaminated material into a steam locomotive and hoping for the best.

(I'm aware of the incineration process as historical fact but it was before my time in the program. The disposal process at Pueblo and Blue Grass began with the detonation chambers I mentioned in my preceding post, which operated at around 1100ºF. After the bursting charge deflagrated, the resulting gases were subject to both chemical treatment and filtration, while the metal scrap underwent separate chemical decontamination. That process was adopted because of the aforementioned solidification in those stockpiles' older projectiles.)



Well, if you don't have a limitless supply of coerced labor, you're going to run out of coal workers sooner or later...

- C.

Yeah, I had the sick thought floating in my head that an unscrupulous army or local warlord could use POWs or any truculent locals as slave labor...

I could see some of the former pact entities doing this, but moreso in China, Africa/Middle East, and even Latin America.