Confessions of An Environmental Student: Chemical Warfare

Friday 29 August 2014

Chemical Warfare - What is it?

The Nobel Peace Prize 2013 awarded to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) was announced on 11 October 2013 which was last year but it is brought into the limelight on internet in Malaysia recently when Mohd Nasarudin Mohd Yusof, one of the members of OPCW was discovered as a Malaysian. OPCW is an organisation established in 1997 with 190 Member States today to implement the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) to prevent the misuse of Chemistry in warfare. According to the OPCW website, the Convention contains four crucial provisions:

destroying all existing chemical weapons under international verification by the OPCW
monitoring chemical industry to prevent new weapons from re-emerging
providing assistance and protection to States Parties against chemical threats
fostering international cooperation to strengthen implementation of the Convention and promoting the peaceful use of Chemistry

Chemical warfare icon.
(Image taken from Icon Finder website)

We might be not familiar with chemical warfare in Malaysia but I am sure that most of us have heard of the sinister Agent Orange used by the United States military during Vietnam War to destroy trees foliages that provide covers for the enemies. This example of chemical warfare has portrayed the impacts of chemical weapon usage towards not only the human health, but also the environment. Compared to the spraying of chemical insecticides for example, chemical used in warfare comes in gallons, an amount so huge that can create mass destruction which might last for a very long time. Before the implementation of CWC, Geneva Protocol was signed in 1925 to prohibit the use of chemical and biological weapons due to their horrifying impacts on human and environment. The first use of chemical agents in war was during the World War I while one of the most recent ones was in 1995, the attack on the Tokyo Subway.

Although the target of the chemical used is human, it is unavoidable that the chemical released brings an impact on the surroundings. Plants might not be able to survive with the presence of the huge amount of foreign chemicals. Animals, which are biological organisms like us, suffer from the effects of mustard gas and cyanide (types of chemical agents used in warfare) as well. Not all the chemicals are deadly, but they will certainly cause lots of sufferings such as blister and chocking. The chemicals might seep into the soil and linger around for a long time, causing the effects to persist for generations. In the past, even after the war ended, the elimination of the unwanted chemical weapons was done by dumping all the toxic chemicals into the ocean, which was the cheapest way to get rid of them. The chemical that was enclosed in bullet or shell eventually leaks due to erosion and gets carried away by ocean waves to everywhere.

War is never a good thing. At least the banning of chemical and biological warfare is a step forward to a better life in terms of humanity.