Subject:
Halabja, Iraq and what you wrote
Date:
Sun, 01 Mar 1998 18:58:39 -0700
From:
bill payne <billp(a)nmol.com>
To:
L E Banderet <lbanderet(a)natick-ccmail.army.mil>
Sunday 3/1/98 6:33 PM
Lou
Got your stuff on Saturday.
Patty and I both commented on the picture of your
lovely new wife.
And I was pleased that you had authored or co-authored
85 publications.
This is what I was supposed to train you for.
Patty and I watched 60 Minutes tonight and what happened in
Halabja, Iraq.
The IMMEDIATE and LONG TERM effects of a combination
mustard and sarin gas attack on genetics.
Last night I transcribed some of your and you co-authors' words.
Volume 9, Number 4, 1997
MILITARY PSYCHOLOGY
The Official Journal of the
Division of Military Psychology
American Psychological Association
Special Issue: Effects of Chemical Protective
Clothing of Military Performance
Guest Editors: Gerald P. Krueger and
Louis E. Banderet
Psychological Aspects of Chemical Defense and Warfare
James W. Stokes
U.S. Army Medical Department Center and School
Fort Sam Houston, Texas
Louis E. Banderet
U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine
Natick, Massachusetts
Concerns about chemical, biological, or radiation (CBR) weapons and
their potential for warfare can be very stressful. Such concerns
subject people to unfamiliar threats in highly ambiguous situations,
in which
people feel they may be wronged or they are helpless. Maladaptive
psychological overreactions or underreactions may result. Such
reactions to chemical warfare are illustrated with the experience from
World War
I, the 1991 Persian Gulf War, and the 1995 terrorist attack in the
Tokyo
subway. General principles of psychology suggest strategies and
tactics for training and materiel development that should enhance
military
performance and reduce maladaptive stress in CBR threat situations.
Some of these
practices may be relevant to nonmilitary law enforcement and relief
agencies
that manage CBR threats.
page 395.
Now I transcribe some of the more relevant stuff.
Effects of Chemical Protective Clothing on Military Performance:
A Review of the Issues
Gerald P. Krueger
Star Mountain, Inc.
Alexandria, Virginia
Lous E. Banderet
U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine
Natick, Massachusetts
This review in this special issue of Military Psychology on the
effects of chemical protective clothing (CPC) on military performance
provide a historical
perspective on continued anxieties over likely use of battlefield
chemical-biological weapons and summarizes significant concerns of
military personnel weaning CPC in
training and combat. This review describes pschophysiological
stresses such
protective ensembles have on personnel and how these affect military
performance, and it
summarizes major military psychological research program on the effect
of wearing CPC.
This article reviews what is known about wearing CPC, describes future
CPC
developments, and identifies domains for improved military training
with CPC.
MEDICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL EFFECT
OF C-B WEAPONS
There are many medical, physiological and psychological reactions from
exposure to chemical-biological (C-B) weapons. Many bio-warfare
agents and most
chemical weapons are designed to interfere with function of the
nervous system and to
disrupt normal control of vital organ systems that sustain life. For
example, the more
common chemical war nerve agents involve organophosphate compounds,
similar to
insecticides, that inhibit cholinesterase enzymes throughout the
body. Because cholinesterase
hydrolyzes acetylcholine where ever liberated, this inhibition
results in
excessive concentrations of acetylcholine at various sites - from the
ending of the
parasympathetic nerves to smooth muscles of the iris, ciliary body,
bronchi, gastrointestinal trace,
bladder, and blood vessels; to secretary gland of the respiratory
tract' and to endings of the
sympathetic nerves to sweat glands (Newhouse, 1987; Simmons et at
1989). Exposure to large
amounts of nerve agent may lead to loss of muscle control, twitching,
paralysis,
unconsciousness, convulsions, coma, and even death. The most common
cause of death after acute
exposure is respiratory arrest. Death may occur within minutes or
take several hours.
In terms of psychological functioning, moderate but nonlethal
exposure to nerve agent produces severe impairment in cognition,
vigilance, memory and
language. Acute intoxication produces confusion, drowsiness, and
difficulty in
concentration (Newhouse, 1987). These impairment make it difficult to
continue to perform may
soldier tasks. Effects on cognition may persist after only a slight
exposure.
Performance improvement appears to correlate with the body's
regeneration of
acetycholinesterase, usually requiring several months.
Neurophysychological testing (Newhouse, 1987) reveals that chronic
exposure to organophosphates significantly impairs higher mental
function
requiring use of the frontal lobes, particularly the left lobe.
Organophosphate poisoning
selectively impairs memory of recently learned information, and this
impairment is likely related to
cholinergic involvement in the memory processes. The effects include
defects in long-term
memory, visual searching, and response alteration - effects similar to
those caused by a frontal
lobotomy. In chronically exposed individuals, speed of task
performance and overall cognitive
efficiency also declines. Persistent visual impairments are reported
in workers poisoned with
anticholinesterase insecticides, and acute poisoning impair oculomotor
function.
Poisoning with nerve agents may also cause psychiatric disturbances
such as depression.
Use of C-B weapons results not only in large number of physical
casualties on the battlefield by in may psychological casualties as
well. Concern over the mere
threat that C-B weapons might be used raises battlefield anxiety of
combatants and can produce
a level of fear disproportionate to that evoked by countless
alternative conventional
battlefield means of killing or maiming, such a with guns, artillery,
and bombs. Such
anxieties can create large numbers of psychological stress casualties
contribution to unit
ineffectiveness on the battlefield and combat losses. Such adverse
emotions may also cause posttraumatic
stress disorders after combat ceases.
DEVELOPMENT OF COUNTERMEASURES
FOR THE COMBAT THEATER
Modern military forces recognize the C-B weapons can be the
attention-getting equivalent of a poor country's nuclear weapons.
Such weapons can be
counter-acted, however, and concerned nations prepare their forces to
preserve their health and
safety against C-B warfare. ...
THE THREAT OF C-B WARFARE
Although biological warfare was used centuries ago by the Romans and
was used in the 14th century by the Tartars, who catapulted
plague-infected bodies
into cities under siege (Hewish, 1997), military forces have made
scant use of
biological warfare in modern times. The more recent innovation of
chemical warfare dates to 1914
when the French used tear gas against unprotected German forces, who
in turn introduced
chlorine and phosgene in 1915 and mustard gas in 1917 against the
British, who sustained
14,000 casualties in 3 months (Hewish, 1997). May World Ware I
soldiers were grotesquely
injured or died in gas war trenches in France and Russia; Russia's
gas casualties exceed a
half million, including 50,000 fatalities (Westerhoff, 1980).
In 1925, many countries signed a Geneva Protocol prohibiting first
use of chemical and bacteriological weapons. However, during the
1930s, several
countries, notably Germany, encouraged chemists to develop chemical
weapons as a by-product of
insecticide research production. By World War II, Germany and powers
stockpiled huge
caches of chemical, but probably due to fear of in-kind retaliation,
chemical weapons were not
used in World War II.
After the war, Germany's organophoshporous arsenal fell into Russian
hands, and for the next 50 years, military forces relegated C-B
warfare efforts to relatively
quiet development programs for future battlefields.
Since World War II, C-B weapons have been employed several times on
a relatively small scale. In the 1970s, the Vietnamese used chemical
and "yellow rain"
biological agents in Cambodian jungles, the Soviets used chemical in
Afghanistan (U.S.
Department of State, 1980), Iraq used sulfur mustard and other
chemical in the Iran-Iraq
conflict (1979-1980), and Iraq used chemical in 1980 - this time
against its own people, the
northern Kurds (Stuteville, 1997).
There have been periodic threats to use chemical weapons on a grand
scale. In the 1970s, the Warsaw Pact possessed huge stockpiles of
chemical weapons (
mostly soman, cyanide, and mustard gas), and Soviet chemical warfare
teams openly
conducted extensive training in gas warfare tactics. Such readiness
for large scale C-B
warfare was underscored in the Persian Gulf War of 1991, as Iraq
threatened to use chemical
(sarin) and biologicals (anthrax spores) against coalition forces and
possibly against
neighboring cities in Saudi Arabia and Israel (Begley, Barry, &
Hager, 1991). By January 1991,
Saudi Arabia had predug 50,000 graves planned for burying civilian
(noncombat)
casualties expected to succumb to Iraqi chemical poisoning from
anticipated rocket attacks on
Saudi cities oraerosols drifting from the battlefields (Kaplan, 1991).
Although Iraq did not unleash such chemical, and the battles were
ultimately short, many U.S. military personnel may been exposed to
chemical during the
March 1991 destruction of Iraqi weapon stockpiled (mostly sarin) near
Khamisiyah,
Iraq (Stuteville, 1997). The U. S. government continue to investigate
whether exposures
to chemical agents may have contributed to the so-called Gulf War
illnesses
experienced by many U.S. military veterans of that encounter.
Exposure of soldiers to
multiple chemical and and environmental stressors may be linked to
psychophysiological
illnesses that manifest in symptomatology such as disabling fatigue,
insomnia, malaise, joint
and muscle pains, skin sores, hair loss, and gastrointestinal and
respiratory
difficulties (Brown & Priest, 1996). Others asset that U.S. military
personnel were exposed
to Iraq chemical warfare from Scud missiles, artillery and aircraft
(Stuteville, 1997)
PUBLIC CONCERN
Open, frank, public news of existent military chemical stockpiles,
proliferation of chemical or biological weaponry, and periodic
'saber-ratting' threats to use
such weapons amplify world public concerns over the enormity of what
someday could be a horrific
chemical or biological calamity. Unprotected civilian populations
fear they may be
deliberately attacked by chemical and biological weapons or
inadvertently by aerosol warfare
agents drifting into populated areas of a battlefield. Disastrous
incident like the one in
1984 at a chemical actory in Bhopal, India, which killed over 2,000
people and sickened
countless others, sensitized citizenry to the lethal potential of such
chemical
compounds. In 1995, terrorist attacks on the Tokyo subway, and news
media discussion of possible use
of nerve agents in terrorist disruption of public gathering like the
1992 and 1996
Olympics, heightened Public fears over such chemical incidents have
become almost visceral. News
of recent advances in genetic technologies (Dando, 1997) suggest use
of future
biological weapons with unprecedented insidiousness and specificity is
possible. Moreover,
the mass media and media expert sources remind the public that the
United States may not be
adequately prepared or trained to defend itself against chemical or
biological warfare (Beal,
1997). ...
I got a sick feeling when Hans Buehler phoned from Zurich on why he was
jailed in the Evin prison in Tehran.
You failed to mention the long-term effects of mustard-sarin.
Or how the suits were to protect against biological weapons.
I have an even more sick feeling now.
bill
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