Toxic Exposures : Mustard Gas and the Health Consequences of World War II in the United States / Susan L. Smith.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Smith, Susan Lynn, 1960- author.

Series:

Critical issues in health and medicine.

Critical Issues in Health and Medicine

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Gases, Asphyxiating and poisonous.

Chemical weapons--United States--Testing.

Chemical weapons.

Mustard gas--Toxicology.

Mustard gas.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (209 pages)

Place of Publication:

New Brunswick, NJ : Rutgers University Press, [2017]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Mustard gas is typically associated with the horrors of World War I battlefields and trenches, where chemical weapons were responsible for tens of thousands of deaths. Few realize, however, that mustard gas had a resurgence during the Second World War, when its uses and effects were widespread and insidious. Toxic Exposures tells the shocking story of how the United States and its allies intentionally subjected thousands of their own servicemen to poison gas as part of their preparation for chemical warfare. In addition, it reveals the racialized dimension of these mustard gas experiments, as scientists tested whether the effects of toxic exposure might vary between Asian, Hispanic, black, and white Americans. Drawing from once-classified American and Canadian government records, military reports, scientists' papers, and veterans' testimony, historian Susan L. Smith explores not only the human cost of this research, but also the environmental degradation caused by ocean dumping of unwanted mustard gas. As she assesses the poisonous legacy of these chemical warfare experiments, Smith also considers their surprising impact on the origins of chemotherapy as cancer treatment and the development of veterans' rights movements. Toxic Exposures thus traces the scars left when the interests of national security and scientific curiosity battled with medical ethics and human rights.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

List of Abbreviations

Introduction: Health and War Beyond the Battlefield

Part I. Preparation for Chemical Warfare

Chapter 1. Wounding Men to Learn: Soldiers as Human Subjects

Chapter 2. Race Studies and the Science of War

Part II. Toxic Legacies of War

Chapter 3. Mustard Gas in the Sea Around Us

Chapter 4. A Wartime Story: Mustard Agents and Cancer Chemotherapy

Conclusion: Veterans Making History

Notes

Index

About the Author

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 04. Sep 2019)

ISBN:

9780813586120

0813586127

9780813586113

0813586119

OCLC:

965738181