Handbook of Chemical and Biological Warfare

摘要

Chemical and Biological warfare is not a new phenomenon. It has been employed for centuries as a threat and during combat: during World War Ⅰ the French employed tear gases, ethyl bromoacetate and chloroacetone; after World War Ⅰ chemical agents were even occasionally used to subdue populations and suppress rebellion; in 1919 during the Russian Civil War, the Royal Air Force dropped arsenic gas during the British intervention; by the late 1930's chemical warfare had been revolutionised by the discovery of the nerve agents tabun and sarin and millions of innocent civilians were killed by hydrogen cyanide gas during World War II; in 1940, the Japanese Army Air Force adopted ceramic bombs full of fleas carrying the bubonic plague, while In Britain, the 1950s saw the weaponisation of plague, brucellosis and tularemia; and early on in the 1980 Iran-Iraq War, Iraq began to employ mustard gas. As such incidents of decontamination date back centuries with calcium oxide (lime) being recognised as a decontaminant in early times.