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Chemical warfare ( CW) involves using the toxic properties of chemical substances as Chemical weapon. This type of warfare is distinct from nuclear warfare, biological warfare and radiological warfare, which together make up CBRN defense, the military acronym for chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (warfare or weapons), all of which are considered "weapons of mass destruction" (WMDs), a term that contrasts with conventional weapons.
The use of chemical weapons in international armed conflicts is prohibited under international humanitarian law by the 1925 Geneva Protocol and the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907. The 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention prohibits signatories from acquiring, stockpiling, developing, and using chemical weapons in all circumstances except for very limited purposes (research, medical, pharmaceutical or protective).
About 70 different chemicals have been used or were stockpiled as chemical warfare agents during the 20th century. The entire class, known as Lethal Unitary Chemical Agents and Munitions, has been scheduled for elimination by the CWC. Disarmament lessons from the Chemical Weapons Convention
Under the convention, chemicals that are toxic enough to be used as chemical weapons, or that may be used to manufacture such chemicals, are divided into three groups according to their purpose and treatment:
Chemical weapons are divided into three categories: The Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) at a Glance
Multiple international treaties were passed banning chemical weapons based upon the alarm of nations and scientists. This however did not prevent the extensive use of chemical weapons in World War I. Chlorine, among other chemicals, was used by both the Allied and Central Powers powers to try to break the stalemate of trench warfare. Though largely ineffective over the long run, it decidedly changed the nature of the war. In many cases the gasses used did not kill, but instead horribly maimed, injured, or disfigured. Some 1.3 million gas casualties were recorded, which may have included up to 260,000 civilian casualties.
The interwar years saw the occasional use of chemical weapons, mainly to put down rebellions."Chemical Weapons" in Historical Dictionary of Ethiopia, 2d ed. (eds. David H. Shinn & Thomas P. Ofcansky: Scarecrow Press, 2013).
However, Nazi Germany extensively used poison gas against civilians, particularly Jews, in the Holocaust. Vast quantities of Zyklon B and carbon monoxide gas were used in the systematic extermination of some three million victims. This remains the deadliest use of poison gas in history.Patrick Coffey, American Arsenal: A Century of Weapon Technology and Strategy (Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 152–154.James J. Wirtz, "Weapons of Mass Destruction" in Contemporary Security Studies (4th ed.), ed. Alan Collins, Contemporary Security Studies (Oxford University Press, 2016), p. 302.
The Cuban intervention in Angola saw limited use of . (2025). 9781431401857, Jacana Media (Pty) Ltd. ISBN 9781431401857
Terrorist groups have also used chemical weapons, notably in the Tokyo subway sarin attack and the Matsumoto incident.Seto, Yasuo. " The Sarin Gas Attack in Japan and the Related Forensic Investigation." The Sarin Gas Attack in Japan and the Related Forensic Investigation. Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, June 1, 2001. Web. February 24, 2017.
During the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russia has been reported to deploy CS gas through K-51 grenades dropped by unmanned drones. On 13 December 2024, the Ukrainian military stated that over 4,800 incidents involving chemical weapons against Ukrainian forces have been record since the war began, which resulted in over 2,000 Ukrainian soldiers having been hospitalized, and 3 deaths. The use of gas was often hidden by heavy Russian "intense artillery, rocket, and bomb attacks”, forcing Ukrainian soldiers out of their positions. They saw less use of chemical gas in cold weather, as it reduced the effectiveness of the K-51 gas grenades. A recent US aid package to Ukraine included "nuclear, chemical and radiological protective equipment".
| + Chemical warfare technology timeline | ||||
| 1914 | Chlorine Chloropicrin Phosgene Sulfur mustard | Wind dispersal | Gas masks, urine-soaked gauze | Smell |
| 1918 | Lewisite | Chemical shells | Gas mask Rosin oil clothing | Smell of geraniums |
| 1920s | Projectiles with central bursters | CC-2 clothing | ||
| 1930s | G-series nerve agents | Aircraft bombs | Blister agent detectors Color change paper | |
| 1940s | Missile warheads Spray tanks | Protective ointment (mustard) Collective protection Gas mask w/ whetlerite | ||
| 1950s | ||||
| 1960s | V-series nerve agents | Aerodynamic | Gas mask w/ water supply | Nerve gas alarm |
| 1970s | ||||
| 1980s | Binary munitions | Improved gas masks (protection, fit, comfort) | Laser detection | |
| 1990s | Novichok agent |
Although crude chemical warfare has been employed in many parts of the world for thousands of years, "modern" chemical warfare began during World War I – see Chemical weapons in World War I.
Initially, only well-known commercially available chemicals and their variants were used. These included chlorine and phosgene gas. The methods used to disperse these agents during battle were relatively unrefined and inefficient. Even so, casualties could be heavy, due to the mainly static troop positions which were characteristic features of trench warfare.
Germany, the first side to employ chemical warfare on the battlefield, simply opened canisters of chlorine upwind of the opposing side and let the prevailing winds do the dissemination. Soon after, the French modified artillery to contain phosgene – a much more effective method that became the principal means of delivery.
Since the development of modern chemical warfare in World War I, nations have pursued research and development on chemical weapons that falls into four major categories: new and more deadly agents; more efficient methods of delivering agents to the target (dissemination); more reliable means of defense against chemical weapons; and more sensitive and accurate means of detecting chemical agents.
The earliest target of chemical warfare agent research was not toxicity, but development of agents that can affect a target through the skin and clothing, rendering protective gas masks useless. In July 1917, the Germans employed sulfur mustard. Mustard agents easily penetrate leather and fabric to inflict painful burns on the skin.
Chemical warfare agents are divided into lethal and incapacitating categories. A substance is classified as incapacitating if less than 1/100 of the lethal dose causes incapacitation, e.g., through nausea or visual problems. The distinction between lethal and incapacitating substances is not fixed, but relies on a statistical average called the .
Agents classified as nonpersistent lose effectiveness after only a few minutes or hours or even only a few seconds. Purely gaseous agents such as chlorine are nonpersistent, as are highly volatile agents such as sarin. Tactically, nonpersistent agents are very useful against targets that are to be taken over and controlled very quickly.
Apart from the agent used, the delivery mode is very important. To achieve a nonpersistent deployment, the agent is dispersed into very small droplets comparable with the mist produced by an aerosol can. In this form not only the gaseous part of the agent (around 50%) but also the fine aerosol can be inhaled or absorbed through pores in the skin.
Modern doctrine requires very high concentrations almost instantly in order to be effective (one breath should contain a lethal dose of the agent). To achieve this, the primary weapons used would be rocket artillery or bombs and large ballistic missiles with cluster warheads. The contamination in the target area is only low or not existent and after four hours sarin or similar agents are not detectable anymore.
By contrast, persistent agents tend to remain in the environment for as long as several weeks, complicating decontamination. Defense against persistent agents requires shielding for extended periods of time. Nonvolatile liquid agents, such as and the oily VX nerve agent, do not easily evaporate into a gas, and therefore present primarily a contact hazard.
The droplet size used for persistent delivery goes up to 1 mm increasing the falling speed and therefore about 80% of the deployed agent reaches the ground, resulting in heavy contamination. Deployment of persistent agents is intended to constrain enemy operations by denying access to contaminated areas.
Possible targets include enemy flank positions (averting possible counterattacks), artillery regiments, command posts or supply lines. Because it is not necessary to deliver large quantities of the agent in a short period of time, a wide variety of weapons systems can be used.
A special form of persistent agents are thickened agents. These comprise a common agent mixed with thickeners to provide gelatinous, sticky agents. Primary targets for this kind of use include airfields, due to the increased persistency and difficulty of decontaminating affected areas.
There are other chemicals used militarily that are not scheduled by the CWC, and thus are not controlled under the CWC treaties. These include:
Some examples are given below:
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Although there have been many advances in chemical weapon delivery since World War I, it is still difficult to achieve effective dispersion. The dissemination is highly dependent on atmospheric conditions because many chemical agents act in gaseous form. Thus, weather observations and forecasting are essential to optimize weapon delivery and reduce the risk of injuring friendly forces.
World War I saw the earliest implementation of this technique. The actual first chemical ammunition was the French 26 mm cartouche suffocante rifle grenade, fired from a flare gun. It contained of the tear-producer ethyl bromoacetate, and was used in autumn 1914 – with little effect on the Germans.
The German military contrarily tried to increase the effect of by adding an irritant – dianisidine chlorosulfonate. Its use against the British at Neuve Chapelle in October 1914 went unnoticed by them. Hans Tappen, a chemist in the Heavy Artillery Department of the War Ministry, suggested to his brother, the Chief of the Operations Branch at German General Headquarters, the use of the tear-gases benzyl bromide or xylyl bromide.
Shells were tested successfully at the Wahn artillery range near Cologne on January 9, 1915, and an order was placed for howitzer shells, designated 'T-shells' after Tappen. A shortage of shells limited the first use against the Russians at the Battle of Bolimów on January 31, 1915; the liquid failed to vaporize in the cold weather, and again the experiment went unnoticed by the Allies.
The first effective use were when the German forces at the Second Battle of Ypres simply opened cylinders of chlorine and allowed the wind to carry the gas across enemy lines. While simple, this technique had numerous disadvantages. Moving large numbers of heavy gas cylinders to the front-line positions from where the gas would be released was a lengthy and difficult logistical task. Stockpiles of cylinders had to be stored at the front line, posing a great risk if hit by artillery shells. Gas delivery depended greatly on wind speed and direction. If the wind was fickle, as at the Battle of Loos, the gas could blow back, causing friendly fire.
Gas clouds gave plenty of warning, allowing the enemy time to protect themselves, though many soldiers found the sight of a creeping gas cloud unnerving. This made the gas doubly effective, as, in addition to damaging the enemy physically, it also had a psychological effect on the intended victims.
Another disadvantage was that gas clouds had limited penetration, capable only of affecting the front-line trenches before dissipating. Although it produced limited results in World War I, this technique shows how simple chemical weapon dissemination can be.
Shortly after this "open canister" dissemination, French forces developed a technique for delivery of phosgene in a non-explosive artillery shell. This technique overcame many of the risks of dealing with gas in cylinders. First, gas shells were independent of the wind and increased the effective range of gas, making any target within reach of guns vulnerable. Second, gas shells could be delivered without warning, especially the clear, nearly odorless phosgenethere are numerous accounts of gas shells, landing with a "plop" rather than exploding, being initially dismissed as dud high explosive or shrapnel shells, giving the gas time to work before the soldiers were alerted and took precautions.
The major drawback of artillery delivery was the difficulty of achieving a killing concentration. Each shell had a small gas payload and an area would have to be subjected to saturation bombardment to produce a cloud to match cylinder delivery. A British solution to the problem was the Livens Projector. This was effectively a large-bore mortar, dug into the ground that used the gas cylinders themselves as projectiles – firing a cylinder up to . This combined the gas volume of cylinders with the range of artillery.
Over the years, there were some refinements in this technique. In the 1950s and early 1960s, chemical artillery rockets and cluster bombs contained a multitude of submunitions, so that a large number of small clouds of the chemical agent would form directly on the target.
Most thermal dissemination devices consist of a bomb or projectile shell that contains a chemical agent and a central "burster" charge; when the burster detonates, the agent is expelled laterally.
Thermal dissemination devices, though common, are not particularly efficient. First, a percentage of the agent is lost by incineration in the initial blast and by being forced onto the ground. Second, the sizes of the particles vary greatly because explosive dissemination produces a mixture of liquid droplets of variable and difficult to control sizes.
The efficacy of thermal detonation is greatly limited by the flammability of some agents. For flammable aerosols, the cloud is sometimes totally or partially ignited by the disseminating explosion in a phenomenon called flashing. Explosively disseminated VX will ignite roughly one third of the time. Despite a great deal of study, flashing is still not fully understood, and a solution to the problem would be a major technological advance.
Despite the limitations of central bursters, most nations use this method in the early stages of chemical weapon development, in part because standard munitions can be adapted to carry the agents.
This technique eliminates many of the limitations of thermal dissemination by eliminating the flashing effect and theoretically allowing precise control of particle size. In actuality, the altitude of dissemination, wind direction and velocity, and the direction and velocity of the aircraft greatly influence particle size. There are other drawbacks as well; ideal deployment requires precise knowledge of aerodynamics and fluid dynamics, and because the agent must usually be dispersed within the boundary layer (less than above the ground), it puts pilots at risk.
Significant research is still being applied toward this technique. For example, by modifying the properties of the liquid, its breakup when subjected to aerodynamic stress can be controlled and an idealized particle distribution achieved, even at supersonic speed. Additionally, advances in fluid dynamics, , and weather forecasting allow an ideal direction, speed, and altitude to be calculated, such that warfare agent of a predetermined particle size can predictably and reliably hit a target.
If all the preventive measures fail and there is a clear and present danger, then there is a need for detection of chemical attacks, collective protection, and decontamination. Since industrial accidents can cause dangerous chemical releases (e.g., the Bhopal disaster), these activities are things that civilian, as well as military, organizations must be prepared to carry out. In civilian situations in developed countries, these are duties of HAZMAT organizations, which most commonly are part of fire departments.
Detection has been referred to above, as a technical MASINT discipline; specific military procedures, which are usually the model for civilian procedures, depend on the equipment, expertise, and personnel available. When chemical agents are detected, an alarm needs to sound, with specific warnings over emergency broadcasts and the like. There may be a warning to expect an attack.
If, for example, the captain of a US Navy ship believes there is a serious threat of chemical, biological, or radiological attack, the crew may be ordered to set Circle William, which means closing all openings to outside air, running breathing air through filters, and possibly starting a system that continually washes down the exterior surfaces. Civilian authorities dealing with an attack or a toxic chemical accident will invoke the Incident Command System, or local equivalent, to coordinate defensive measures.
Individual protection starts with a gas mask and, depending on the nature of the threat, through various levels of protective clothing up to a complete chemical-resistant suit with a self-contained air supply. The US military defines various levels of MOPP (mission-oriented protective posture) from mask to full chemical resistant suits; are the civilian equivalent, but go farther to include a fully independent air supply, rather than the filters of a gas mask.
Collective protection allows continued functioning of groups of people in buildings or shelters, the latter which may be fixed, mobile, or improvised. With ordinary buildings, this may be as basic as plastic sheeting and tape, although if the protection needs to be continued for any appreciable length of time, there will need to be an air supply, typically an enhanced gas mask.
In some cases, it might be necessary to neutralize them chemically, as with ammonia as a neutralizer for hydrogen cyanide or chlorine. Riot control agents such as CS gas will dissipate in an open area, but things contaminated with CS powder need to be aired out, washed by people wearing protective gear, or safely discarded.
Mass decontamination is a less common requirement for people than equipment, since people may be immediately affected and treatment is the action required. It is a requirement when people have been contaminated with persistent agents. Treatment and decontamination may need to be simultaneous, with the medical personnel protecting themselves so they can function.
There may need to be immediate intervention to prevent death, such as injection of atropine for nerve agents. Decontamination is especially important for people contaminated with persistent agents; many of the fatalities after the explosion of a WWII US ammunition ship carrying sulfur mustard, in the harbor of Bari, Italy, after a German bombing on December 2, 1943, came when rescue workers, not knowing of the contamination, bundled cold, wet seamen in tight-fitting blankets.
For decontaminating equipment and buildings exposed to persistent agents, such as blister agents, VX or other agents made persistent by mixing with a thickener, special equipment and materials might be needed. Some type of neutralizing agent will be needed; e.g. in the form of a spraying device with neutralizing agents such as Chlorine, Fichlor, strong alkaline solutions or enzymes. In other cases, a specific chemical decontaminant will be required.
One of the earliest reactions to the use of chemical agents was from Rome. Struggling to defend themselves from the , Germanic peoples tribes poisoned the wells of their enemies, with Roman jurists having been recorded as declaring "armis bella non venenis geri", meaning "war is fought with , not with ." Yet the Romans themselves resorted to poisoning wells of besieged cities in Anatolia in the 2nd century BC.Mayor 2003
Before 1915 the use of poisonous chemicals in battle was typically the result of local initiative, and not the result of an active government chemical weapons program. There are many reports of the isolated use of chemical agents in individual battles or , but there was no true tradition of their use outside of incendiaries and smoke. Despite this tendency, there have been several attempts to initiate large-scale implementation of poison gas in several wars, but with the notable exception of World War I, the responsible authorities generally rejected the proposals for ethical reasons or fears of retaliation.
For example, in 1854 Lyon Playfair (later 1st Baron Playfair, GCB, PC, FRS (1818–1898), a United Kingdom chemist, proposed using a cacodyl cyanide-filled artillery shell against enemy ships during the Crimean War. The British Ordnance Department rejected the proposal as "as bad a mode of warfare as poisoning the wells of the enemy."
In 1997, future US Vice President Dick Cheney opposed the signing ratification of a treaty banning the use of chemical weapons, a recently unearthed letter shows. In a letter dated April 8, 1997, then Halliburton-CEO Cheney told Sen. Jesse Helms, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, that it would be a mistake for America to join the convention. "Those nations most likely to comply with the Chemical Weapons Convention are not likely to ever constitute a military threat to the United States. The governments we should be concerned about are likely to cheat on the CWC, even if they do participate," reads the letter, published by the Federation of American Scientists.
The CWC was ratified by the Senate that same month. In the following years, Albania, Libya, Russia, the United States, and India declared over 71,000 metric tons of chemical weapon stockpiles, and destroyed a third of them. Under the terms of the agreement, the United States and Russia agreed to eliminate the rest of their supplies of chemical weapons by 2012, but ended up taking far longer to do so as shown in the previous and following section of this article.
As of July 2011, Russia has destroyed 48 percent (18,241 tons) of its stockpile at destruction facilities located in Gorny (Saratov Oblast) and Kambarka (Udmurt Republic) – where operations have finished – and Schuch'ye (Kurgan Oblast), Maradykovsky (Kirov Oblast), Leonidovka (Penza Oblast) whilst installations are under construction in Pochep (Bryansk Oblast) and Kizner (Udmurt Republic). As August 2013, 76 percent (30,500 tons) were destroyed, and Russia leaves the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) Program, which partially funded chemical weapons destruction.
In September 2017, OPCW announced that Russia had destroyed its entire chemical weapons stockpile.
From May 1964 to the early 1970s the U.S. participated in Operation CHASE, a United States Department of Defense program that aimed to dispose of chemical weapons by sinking ships laden with the weapons in the deep Atlantic. After the Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act of 1972, Operation Chase was scrapped and safer disposal methods for chemical weapons were researched, with the U.S. destroying several thousand tons of sulfur mustard by incineration at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, and nearly 4,200 tons of nerve agent by chemical neutralisation at Tooele Army Depot.
The U.S. began stockpile reductions in the 1980s with the removal of outdated munitions and destroying its entire stock of 3-Quinuclidinyl benzilate (BZ or Agent 15) at the beginning of 1988. In June 1990 the Johnston Atoll Chemical Agent Disposal System began destruction of chemical agents stored on the Johnston Atoll in the Pacific, seven years before the Chemical Weapons Treaty came into effect. In 1986 President Ronald Reagan made an agreement with German Chancellor Helmut Kohl to remove the U.S. stockpile of chemical weapons from Germany. In 1990, as part of Operation Steel Box, two ships were loaded with over 100,000 shells containing Sarin and VX were taken from the U.S. Army weapons storage depots such as Miesau and then-classified FSTS (Forward Storage / Transportation Sites) and transported from Bremerhaven, Germany to Johnston Atoll in the Pacific, a 46-day nonstop journey.The Oceans and Environmental Security: Shared U.S. and Russian Perspectives.
In the 1980s, Congress, at the urging of the Reagan administration, provided funding for the manufacture of binary chemical weapons (sarin artillery shells) from 1987 until 1990, but this was halted after the U.S. and the Soviet Union entered into a bilateral agreement in June 1990. In the 1990 agreement, the U.S. and Soviet Union agreed to begin destroying their chemical weapons stockpiles before 1993 and to reduce them to no more than 5,000 agent tons each by the end of 2002. The agreement also provided for exchanges of data and inspections of sites to verify destruction.Andrew Glass, Deal reached curbing chemical weapons, June 1, 1990, Politico (June 1, 2017). Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the U.S.'s Nunn–Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program helped eliminate some of the chemical, biological and nuclear stockpiles of the former Soviet Union.
The United Nations Conference on Disarmament in Geneva in 1980 led to the development of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), a multilateral treaty that prohibited the development, production, stockpiling, and use of chemical weapons, and required the elimination of existing stockpiles.Jonathan B. Tucker, Case Study 4, U.S. Ratification of the Chemical Weapons Convention, Case Studies Series, Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction, National Defense University (December 2011). The treaty expressly prohibited state parties from making reservations (unilateral caveats). During the Reagan administration and the George H. W. Bush administration, the U.S. participated in the negotiations toward the CWC. The CWC was concluded on September 3, 1992, and opened for signature on January 13, 1993. The U.S. became one of 87 original state parties to the CWC. President Bill Clinton submitted it to the U.S. Senate for ratification on November 23, 1993. Ratification was blocked in the Senate for years, largely as a result of opposition from Senator Jesse Helms, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. On April 24, 1997, the Senate gave its consent to ratification of the CWC by a 74–26 vote (satisfying the required two-thirds majority). The U.S. deposited its instrument of ratification at the United Nations on April 25, 1997, a few days before the CWC entered into force. The U.S. ratification allowed the U.S. to participate in the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the organization based in The Hague that oversees implementation of the CWC.
Upon U.S. ratification of the CWC, the U.S. declared a total of 29,918 tons of chemical weapons, and committed to destroying all of the U.S.'s chemical weapons and bulk agent.Owen LeGrone, U.S. Begins Final CW Destruction, Arms Controls Today, Arms Control Association (July/August 2019). The U.S. was one of eight states to declare a stockpile of chemical weapons and to commit to their safe elimination. US Chemical Weapons Stockpile Elimination: Progress Update, Arms Control Association (September 23, 2021). The U.S. committed in the CWC to destroy its entire chemical arsenal within 10 years of the entry into force ( i.e., by April 29, 2007), However, at a 2012 conference, History of U.S. Chemical Weapons Elimination, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (January 6, 2014). the parties to the CWC parties agreed to extend the U.S. deadline to 2023. By 2012, stockpiles had been eliminated at seven of the U.S.'s nine chemical weapons depots and 89.75% of the 1997 stockpile was destroyed. Army Agency Completes Mission to Destroy Chemical Weapons , USCMA, January 21, 2012 The depots were the Aberdeen Chemical Agent Disposal Facility, Anniston Chemical Disposal Facility, Johnston Atoll, Newport Chemical Agent Disposal Facility, Pine Bluff Chemical Disposal Facility, Tooele Chemical Disposal Facility, Umatilla Chemical Disposal Facility, and Deseret Chemical Depot. The U.S. closed each site after the completion of stockpile destruction. In 2019, the U.S. began to eliminate its chemical-weapon stockpile at the last of the nine U.S. chemical weapons storage facilities: the Blue Grass Army Depot in Kentucky. By May 2021, the U.S. destroyed all of its Category 2 and Category 3 chemical weapons and 96.52% of its Category 1 chemical weapons. The U.S. is scheduled to complete the elimination of all its chemical weapons by the September 2023 deadline. In July 2023 OPCW confirmed the last chemical munition of the U.S., and that the last chemical weapon from the stockpiles declared by all States Parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention was verified as destroyed.
The U.S. has maintained a "calculated ambiguity" policy that warns potential adversaries that a chemical or biological attack against the U.S. or its allies will prompt a "overwhelming and devastating" response. The policy deliberately leaves open the question of whether the U.S. would respond to a chemical attempt with nuclear weapon retaliation. Commentators have noted that this policy gives policymakers more flexibility, at the possible cost of decreased strategic unpreparedness.
The use of by the U.S. military during the Vietnam War has left tangible, long-term impacts upon the Vietnamese people and U.S. veterans of the war. The government of Vietnam says that around 24% of the forests of Southern Vietnam were defoliated and up to four million people in Vietnam were exposed to Agent Orange. They state that as many as three million people have developed illness because of Agent Orange while the Red Cross of Vietnam estimates that up to one million people were disabled or have health problems associated with Agent Orange. The United States government has described these figures as unreliable.
During the war, the U.S. fought the North Vietnamese and their allies in Laos and Cambodia, dropping large quantities of Agent Orange in each of those countries. According on one estimate, the U.S. dropped of Agent Orange in Laos and in Cambodia.Nature, 17 Apr. 2003, "The extent and patterns of usage of Agent Orange and other herbicides in Vietnam", Vol. 422, p. 681The Atlantic, 20 Jul. 2019, "The U.S.'s Toxic Agent Orange Legacy: Washington Has Admitted to the Long-Lasting Effects of Dioxin Use in Vietnam, But Has Largely Sidestepped the Issue in Neighboring Cambodia and Laos" Because Laos and Cambodia were officially neutral during the Vietnam War, the U.S. attempted to keep secret its military involvement in these countries. The U.S. has stated that Agent Orange was not widely used and therefore hasn't offered assistance to affected Cambodians or Laotians, and limits benefits American veterans and CIA personnel who were stationed there.
Anti-agriculture
Herbicidal warfare
Although herbicidal warfare use chemical substances, its main purpose is to disrupt agricultural food production and/or to destroy plants which provide cover or concealment to the enemy.
Anti-livestock
During the Mau Mau Uprising in 1952, the poisonous latex of the African milk bush was used to kill cattle.
See also
Notes
Further reading
External links
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