Mustard Gas

Hazardous Chemical Mustard Gas Imagine sitting in a trench during World War 1 with your fellow soldiers and someone shouts, “Incoming!” you duck deeper into the trench and fumble for your helmet, not realizing that it could be your last seconds on this earth. Instead you smell a pungent mustard aroma, struggling to breath, it subsides after a couple of minutes. Without knowing it you have been exposed to a new chemical used by the Germans, code named LOST, which referred to the last names of the two chemical engineers, Wilhelm Lommel and Wilhelm Stenkopf who developed the cytotoxic agent which will become to known as Mustard Gas. Mustard gas has a variety of health effects as well as an interesting history of its discovery and use in the world. The first use of mustard gas as a chemical weapon was during the battle of Ypres, Belgium in 1914. The German Imperial Army and the Allied forces had been in a stale mate for months. During that time battles were fought in trenches with both sides trying to gain ground, but ended up with many casualties and barely any ground taken from the enemy. To counter act this ongoing stale mate both sides would attempt to bomb
The main method to weaken opposing forces was to call in artillery barrages. The new chemical shells contained mustard gas and when on impact there would not be much of an explosion and the gas would be dispersed in the surrounding area. As from the name, Mustard Gas has a distinct smell of mustard or garlic. Many of the soldiers were not aware they were exposed to the gas because the human nose adapts quickly to a smell and after some minutes it would seem that the smell would be gone. Only a few fatalities actually occurred from mustard gas. Only 5% of the exposed soldiers during world war 1 died from the amount they were exposed to. Mustard Gas was mainly used to incapacitate enemy