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The medium is the message. A chemical warfare agent dressed in civilian clothes. "The content of any medium is always another medium." - Marshall McLuhan Tear gas, deemed a ‘less-lethal’ weapon and ‘riot control agent,’ exempts it from chemical weapons protocols. This means it can be used on city streets by domestic police forces, but not by soldiers in a war zone. Tear gases are solid chemicals administered as a fine dust or aerosol spray instead of true gases. At higher concentrations, loss of the outer layer of the cornea may occur. Its first major use was August 1914 when French troops fired methylbenzyl bromide grenades into German trenches. By the 1920s, it was common in American police arsenals; and a prominent weapon against American citizens who were part of the 1930s labor movement. The Bonus Army In the summer of 1932, an election year at the onset of the Great Depression, veterans traveled from across the country to march on Washington DC to collect up to $625 ($9,100 today) in promised bonus compensation for their service in world war i. The "Bonus Army" likely numbered between 20,000 and 40,000. President Hoover, who refused to speak with the group, had the doors of the White House chained shut and claimed the members were mainly communists and ex-convicts "bent on raising public disturbance." On the night of July 28, US military utilized tear gas and tanks on unarmed citizens in the Bonus Army camp across the Potomac River in Anacostia Flats. By morning, the camp was burned to the ground and later demolished. Anacostia Flats is now home to US Park Police headquarters. Limited research and flawed guidelines serve to legitimize tear gas as a crowd control technique, while obscuring the dangers it poses, such as potential lethal injuries caused by heavy, fast-moving pyrotechnic canisters, or the physiological effects of chemical irritants. The built environment amplifies harm as architecture and infrastructure are weaponized. Cities are often leveraged as strategies to trap, overwhelm, or target civilians. Given the tendency of police forces to deploy tear gas in unnecessary quantities, and the severe effects the irritant can have on vulnerable populations, the ‘safety’ of the weapon is a convenient fiction. In April, the first nationwide study of the relationship between exposure to air pollution and COVID-19 death rate was released. The results indicate long-term exposure to fine particle matter increases vulnerability to the most severe COVID-19 outcomes. They found higher COVID-19 death rates in the Mid-Atlantic, upper Midwest, and Gulf Coast regions; moreover, Black Americans are at higher risk of COVID-19 deaths. In Louisiana, Black residents represented 70% of COVID-19 deaths despite being 32% of the population. Recent studies have even used historic data to show relationships between air pollution from coal burning and deaths in the 1918 Influenza pandemic. Reckless at best. Consciously destructive at worst. On March 26, 2020, the EPA announced a sweeping relaxation of environmental rules in response to the pandemic, allowing power plants, factories, and other facilities to decide for themselves if they could meet legal requirements on reporting air and water pollution. This policy ends on August 31, 2020. The Clean Air Act requires refineries to monitor benzene levels at their fencelines (no more than 9 micrograms per cubic meter). In October 2019, Pasadena Refining Systems in Texas reported benzene levels at their fenceline averaged 565 micrograms per cubic meter. In the US, 12,500 high-risk chemical facilities put 39% of the population (over 120 million people) at constant risk of chemical disaster. Full vulnerability zones can extend up to 25 miles in radius. Fenceline zones around hazardous facilities are mainly Black, Latino, and impoverished communities who face disproportionate risk. Pesticides are not pesticides. They are petrochemical biocides. The pesticide fumigant metam-sodium, once exposed to the environment, degrades into methyl isothiocyanate — a type of tear gas. Likewise, biocides also have roots in weapons-grade poison adapted from chemicals engineered during world wars I and II. The organophosphates parathion and malathion, for example, are nerve gases. They are chemical weapons in diluted form. There is a strong correlation between pregnant women’s exposure levels to organophosphate pesticides and their children’s neurodevelopment. In 2012, nearly 8.5 million pounds of metam-sodium was sprayed across California. The San Joaquin Valley in California, which is expected to undergo a doubling in population by 2050, makes up about 1% of the nation’s farmland but produces 25% of its food supply. More homes and schools will continue to find themselves amid the fields, the margin between them and industrial production ever shrinking. In the past, police have been able to win the media war. By firing tear gas, they turn protests into screaming mobs who leave no trace of bloodshed or overt violence: only disheveled looking crowds. Police protocol for decontaminating tear gas and mace exposure is extremely meticulous, yet there are no provisions for decontaminating exposure to public and private spaces — parks, water supplies, homes, and so on. Most canisters have clear warning of serious injury or death if aimed at people, and firing should be at high angles from minimum distances. Yet nothing about the weapon’s design ensures use per these guidelines. Dangerous abuse is as simple as lowering the angle of the weapon or advancing a few steps too close to protesters before firing. There are no legally enforced, wide-scale regulations. "Tear gas does more than killing. It is designed to torment people, to break their spirits, to cause physical and psychological damage." — Anna Feigenbaum

The information presented here is adapted from these sources:

ARC2020: Agricultural and Rural Convention
Pesticides, Tear Gas and History | From WW1 to Today’s Streets

Environmental Integrity Project
Re: Letter Objecting to Blanket EPA Waivers for Polluters During Coronavirus Crisis and Calling for EPA to Protect Public Health

Environmental Justice for All
Life at the Fenceline: Understanding Cumulative Health Hazards in Environmental Justice Communities

Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health
Exposure to air pollution and COVID-19 mortality in the United States: A nationwide cross-sectional study

National Archives: Hoover Heads
Bonus Army

National Park Service
Bonus Expeditionary Forces March on Washington

Science Direct
Capsicum Oleoresin

SITU NYC
Choking Dissent: How Tear Gas is Used to Crush Protests

Takepart
How Keeping Your Food Bug-Free Is Hurting Countless Women

Truthout
Trump’s EPA Is Unleashing the Pollution That Makes Us Vulnerable to COVID-19

United States Environmental Protection Agency
COVID-19 Implications for EPA’s Enforcement and Compliance Assurance Program
COVID-19 Implications for EPA’s Enforcement and Compliance Assurance Program: Addendum on Termination

US History
The Bonus March

Vox
The disturbing history of how tear gas became the weapon of choice against protesters
Running on Cargo