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<font size="1"><a href="https://theintercept.com/2020/10/10/portland-tear-gas-chemical-grenades-protests/">https://theintercept.com/2020/10/10/portland-tear-gas-chemical-grenades-protests/</a>
</font><h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Toxic Chemical Smoke Grenades Used in Portland</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Sharon Lerner - October 10, 2020<br></div></div>
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<div class="gmail-content">
<div class="gmail-moz-reader-content gmail-reader-show-element"><div id="gmail-readability-page-1" class="gmail-page"><div><div><p><u>By the time</u>
she was standing in front of the federal courthouse on Lownsdale Square
on the night of July 25, Olivia Katbi Smith had already been exposed to
tear gas several times. On those previous occasions during the Black
Lives Matter protests in Portland, Oregon, this summer, being gassed had
been very unpleasant: leaving her coughing and making her eyes and nose
run and sting.</p>
<p>But this time, standing about 30 feet from the fence that was
surrounding the downtown courthouse, Smith felt suddenly and violently
worse than she ever had before. “I didn’t know if I was going to puke or
pass out,” she recalled recently. “I was stumbling, trying to get
away.” Smith, who is 28, was wearing goggles plus an N95 mask and
thought that whatever was making her ill might have been trapped inside
her mask. “So I made a really bad instinctual decision to take it off,”
she said. “And instead of bringing relief, it instantly felt so much
worse, like I was trapped in the air. It was overwhelming. I could not
breathe.”</p>
<p>Smith, like thousands of others in Portland, took to the streets in June to protest the <a href="https://theintercept.com/2020/05/29/george-floyd-minneapolis-police-reform/">suffocation and killing of George Floyd by a police officer.</a> By the beginning of July, the crowds had begun to thin somewhat. But after Trump decided to <a href="https://theintercept.com/2020/07/24/portland-federal-police-protests/">send federal law enforcement to the city</a>
that month, the number of protesters surged and violence escalated. And
according to interviews with more than a dozen people who attended the
protests and <a href="https://zenodo.org/record/4059329">research</a> by
the Portland-based Chemical Weapons Research Consortium, there was a
marked shift in the use of chemical munitions on the crowds in the
second half of July, as the federal agents released greater amounts and
different types of smoke and gas onto crowds that seemed to set off
severe and sometimes lasting health effects.</p>
<h3>Smoke Grenades</h3>
<p>The Portland Police Bureau began using tear gas on Black Lives
Matters protesters almost as soon as they first assembled in late May.
Mayor Ted Wheeler acknowledged that the city has used “CS” tear gas. The
commonly used formulation contains 2-chlorobenzalmalononitrile, a
compound that was designed to induce immediate pain but can also have <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/tear-gas-is-way-more-dangerous-than-police-let-on-especially-during-the-coronavirus-pandemic">long-term effects</a>, including <a href="https://www.hindawi.com/journals/tswj/2014/963638/">chronic bronchitis</a>. In early September, Wheeler ordered the police to stop using it. Tear gas is <a href="https://www.un.org/disarmament/wmd/bio/1925-geneva-protocol/">banned</a> in war but can be used to disperse crowds of civilians.</p></div><div><div><p><img src="https://theintercept.imgix.net/wp-uploads/sites/1/2020/10/IMG_20200816_013936-225x300.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&q=90" alt="IMG_20200816_013936" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="225" height="300"></p><p class="gmail-caption">Unexploded smoke grenade recovered from July 16 protests in Portland by a front-line protester and medic.</p>
<p class="gmail-caption">
Photo: Courtesy of Juniper Simonis</p></div></div><div><p>After
federal agents from the Department of Homeland Security descended on
Portland in July in a mission dubbed “Operation Diligent Valor,” the use
of chemical irritants to control, drive away, and confuse protesters
and obscure the actions of law enforcement grew and intensified. Among
the products that federal agents appear to have used during the
military-style crackdown is a hexachloroethane “smoke grenade”
manufactured by a company called Defense Technology and <a href="https://www.defense-technology.com/product/maximum-smoke-hc-military-style-canister/">sold as</a>
“Maximum HC Smoke.” Volunteers for the Chemical Weapons Research
Consortium collected 20 canisters from the protest area that are the
size and shape of the smoke grenades, at least five of which still had
Defense Technology labels on them. The group also analyzed the chemical
residue on one of the recovered spent canisters and found it contained
chemicals known to be released by the smoke grenades.</p>
<p>Juniper Simonis, a scientist and researcher with the Portland-based group, said that they were also able to <a href="https://zenodo.org/record/4059330#.X37EtZNKjep">track</a>
the use of the “HC” bombs or grenades through video and photographs
because of their distinctive burning patterns. “No other type of
munition they used burns like it,” said Simonis, who described the smoke
bombs as giving off “visible heat” for one-and-a-half to two minutes.</p>
<p>The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to inquiries from
The Intercept about its agents’ use of hexachloroethane “smoke
grenades” and other kinds of crowd control weapons on protesters in
Portland. Defense Technology referred questions about the use of the
grenade to its parent company, the Safariland Group, which did not
respond.</p>
</div><div><p>The HC smoke bomb, which was developed
in the 1930s to disperse people and conceal actions on the battlefield,
is particularly dangerous to health and the environment. The
Military-Style Maximum Smoke HC grenade from Defense Technology is “very
toxic to aquatic life with long-lasting effects” and is “suspected of
causing cancer,” according to the grenade’s <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/7223062-Defense-Technology-1083-Military-Style-Maximum.html">safety data sheet</a>. Environmental effects of the smoke bombs include defoliation of trees and a long-term reduction in their growth.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/sh/5eja6iep1idenc4/AADN1aTIleMKitUtQnFMJ-qMa/Product%20Sheets?dl=0&preview=48183.pdf&subfolder_nav_tracking=1">health effects</a>
of hexachloroethane include nausea, vomiting, central nervous system
depression, and kidney and liver damage, according to the compound’s <a href="https://pim-resources.coleparmer.com/sds/48183.pdf">material safety data sheet</a>.
Zinc chloride, a compound released by the grenades in even greater
amounts than hexachloroethane, has “long-lasting effects” on aquatic
life, according to its manufacturer’s <a href="https://beta-static.fishersci.com/content/dam/fishersci/en_US/documents/programs/education/regulatory-documents/sds/chemicals/chemicals-z/S25635.pdf">safety data sheet.</a> The toxic compound also causes <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15563650.2016.1271125">fever, chest pain, and liver damage</a> and is associated with anorexia, fatigue, and weight loss.</p>
<p>Although the grenade’s manufacturer, Defense Technology, markets it
as “military style,” the Department of Defense appears to have begun
phasing out the smoke bomb years ago because it was incredibly
dangerous. A 1994 <a href="https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a277838.pdf">report</a>
of the U.S. Army Biomedical Research and Development Laboratory notes,
“Exposure of unprotected soldiers to high concentrations of HC smoke for
even a few minutes has resulted in injuries and fatalities.”</p>
<p>The Department of Defense did not respond to an inquiry about whether it had discontinued use of HC smoke grenades. But a 2012 <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/7222570-2012-Hexachoroethan-SERDP-Report.html">report</a>
by the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program, the
Department of Defense’s environmental program, indicates that the U.S.
military was at the time exploring the adoption of several less toxic
“obscurants” because of the serious breathing difficulties, swelling of
the lungs, severe liver problems, and death associated with the
grenades. The SERDP report notes that those health issues “pose a threat
to the health of the war fighters that are exposed to this smoke during
training and combat.”</p></div><div><div><div><p><img alt="" src="https://theintercept.com/wp-uploads/sites/1/2020/10/IMG_3166-1000x800.jpg" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="452" height="362"></p><p><img alt="" src="https://theintercept.com/wp-uploads/sites/1/2020/10/image62-1000x799.jpg" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="452" height="361"></p></div></div><p><span>(Left/top)
After a reaction has stopped, HC canister shows charred remains and
(right/bottom) HC ordnance off-gassing Zinc Chloride mid-deployment.</span><span>Photo: Courtesy of Sarah Riddle.</span></p></div><div><h3>Immediate and Lasting Effects</h3>
<p>Protesters who were exposed to chemical gas and smoke during the
standoffs with federal agents in Portland report a constellation of
immediate and enduring effects not usually associated with tear gas,
including vomiting, hair loss, inability to eat, and inability to focus
or “brain fog.” Some of the symptoms are consistent with those the
military and the chemical manufacturers have linked to both
hexachloroethane and zinc chloride.</p>
<p>Many people were instantly sickened by the chemical cloud. “I vomited
and the people around me were vomiting as well,” said a medic who goes
by Opal Hexen. “A whole block of people was throwing up into their
respirators,” said Hexen, who was also wearing a respirator that covered
much of her face. “At that point, I felt like I had to take it off to
vomit,” she said. “And when I did, I had a blinding, choking feeling. My
whole body started shaking. I couldn’t see, and I couldn’t process
anything.”</p>
<p>Laura Jedeed, who went to the majority of protests in July, didn’t
vomit but wanted to. “There’s a gag reflex,” she said of her immediate
reaction to the substance that federal agents sprayed into the air.
While she had been exposed to tear gas from the Portland Police Bureau
on several occasions, “whatever the feds were putting out there felt a
lot worse,” said Jedeed. “It burns like you’re on fire for 24 hours.”
The night after being exposed, Jedeed slept clutching frozen cans to
cool her hands. “And for about a day after, I’d get a gag reflex when I
was swallowing.” Long after that, she struggled to eat and by August had
lost 10 pounds.</p>
<p>Although Jedeed served in the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division and was
deployed twice to Afghanistan, she said the ordeal of being exposed to
chemicals “felt more like combat than anything I experienced in the
military.”</p>
<p>Others also reported being uninterested in or repelled by food, and
weight loss that persisted for days and sometimes weeks after the
initial exposure. Mac Smiff, a music journalist and regular at the
protests, began to find it difficult to eat in late July after being
repeatedly exposed to tear gas and smoke bombs lobbed by federal agents.
By early August, he had dropped from 193 to 181 pounds and recently
said that he has yet to regain the weight.</p>
</div><p><a href="https://theintercept.com/collections/protests-for-black-lives/"><span><span><img alt="Protests for Black Lives" src="https://theintercept.imgix.net/wp-uploads/sites/1/2020/07/GettyImages-1218280802-crop-promo.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&q=90&fit=crop&w=440&h=220" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="440" height="220"></span></span><span><span></span></span></a></p><div><p>The
harms caused by the chemical agents are among the many physical
injuries that resulted from the clashes with federal agents and local
police in Portland. In a <a href="http://www.phr.org/Portland">report</a>
released Thursday, Physicians for Human Rights documented a “consistent
pattern of disproportionate and excessive use of force” by both
Portland Police Bureau officers and federal agents during the protests
throughout June and July. The report details brutal injuries from rubber
bullets, other impact munitions, and tear gas canisters thrown at
protesters in the city, which has logged <a href="https://2020pb.com/">more instances</a>
of police brutality during this summer of protest than any other U.S.
city. The report also noted that the number of serious injuries from
these “kinetic impact projectiles” in Portland increased after federal
agents arrived in July. Nationwide, the group has <a href="https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/29cbf2e87b914dbaabdec2f3d350839e">confirmed</a> 115 head injuries during the protests following George Floyd’s death between May 26 and July 27.</p>
<p>Nate Cohen was one of the people in Portland whom federal agents shot
with a tear gas canister in July. Cohen was working as a medic around 1
a.m on July 26. And although U.N. guidance says governments have to
protect medical personnel so that protesters have timely access to
emergency medical services, and Cohen was wearing seven visible red
crosses at the time, he said he felt clearly targeted at close range by
the federal agents. The American Civil Liberties Union is representing
Cohen and several volunteer street medics in a <a href="https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-sues-feds-portland-police-attacking-medics-protests">lawsuit</a> against
the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Marshals Service, and the
city of Portland for targeting them at the protests.</p>
</div><blockquote><span></span><p>“Tear gas canisters are not designed and explicitly not meant to be shot at human beings.”</p></blockquote><div><p>“Tear
gas canisters are not designed and explicitly not meant to be shot at
human beings,” said Cohen, who has a chronic heart condition that has
worsened since the incident and now has a canister-shaped scar on his
chest. While local police also used gas canisters as ballistic weapons,
the federal agents used them differently, according to Cohen. “The
Portland Police Bureau usually shot them into the air,” he said. “The
feds were shooting them at people.”</p>
<p>And that’s only one of several ways that chemical crowd control
weapons were misused to potentially dangerous effect. While Portland
police did consistently use tear gas, the federal agents used far more
of it. “The amount of tear gas that they used, especially in late July,
was so extreme relative to normal procedures that we have no idea what
that level of exposure does to people,” said Cohen.</p>
<p>The fact that several of the tear gas canisters recovered after the
protests showed that the products had expired long ago raises further
questions, according to Cohen. “These were 10 to 15 years past their
throw-out dates,” he said. “None of us have any clear idea of what
happens to CS gas after it begins to break down.”</p></div><div><h3>Uncharted Territory</h3>
<p>Perhaps the biggest question about the chemicals is which ones
exactly the agents released and in what quantities. Anita Randolph had
gotten somewhat accustomed to being gassed by Portland police before she
was doused with chemicals by federal agents in late July. “We had
learned pretty quickly that you can get used to the sting that comes
along with it,” Randolph said of the gas released by the local police.
“But when the feds started tear gassing, it was painful.” Even though
she was wearing a gas mask and had covered her body from head to toe,
Randolph found herself suddenly and painfully unable to breathe after
being surrounded by a haze from canisters the agents had shot near her.
“I dropped to my knees,” she said. “I could not walk or stand up to the
point where people had to help me.”</p>
<p>The aftereffects lasted markedly longer than when she had been gassed
in the past. “I had a mental fog for almost a week afterward,” said
Randolph, who is a neuroscientist and board member of <a href="https://www.dontshootpdx.org/">Don’t Shoot Portland</a>.
In addition to being confused, unable to focus, and struggling with
memory, Randolph had several severe migraines and vomited twice during
the weeks after her exposure. For days, she was so sick she was unable
to leave her bed. Many of the friends Randolph was gassed with told her
they were also having symptoms — including some that she didn’t have.</p>
<p>One thing they all shared was the question of what exactly they had been exposed to. “What <em>was</em> that?” Randolph and her friends began asking each other.</p>
<p>According to the Physicians for Human Rights report, the use of
chemical irritants “where there is not sufficient toxicological
information available to confirm that it will not cause unwarranted
health problems” is probably unlawful.</p>
<p>“It’s absolutely unacceptable that we don’t know what was used,” said
Dr. Michele Heisler, medical director at Physicians for Human Rights.
According to Heisler, international principles require law enforcement
to provide information on the composition of any chemical irritants
used. “But, in Portland, there was no information provided.”</p>
<p>For people who were exposed, questions about their health are
compounded by the use of potentially multiple unknown chemicals. “What
happens if, in the space of two minutes, you breathe HC gas then another
gas and then another gas?” asked Cohen. “I don’t think anybody knows. I
think we’re in uncharted territory as to what the implications are.”</p>
<p>Life in this uncharted territory can be scary. Mac Smiff, who is
still trying to regain the weight he lost since July, worries about the
possibility that he and others who spent time in the fog of chemicals
that blanketed Portland this summer may have an increased cancer risk.
“I was just talking to a friend whose mom has cancer about how many of
us have been exposed to things that may be carcinogens,” said Smiff.
“There are still so many questions we were exposed to.”</p>
<p>Randolph, the neuroscientist, is worried about lasting mental health
effects. “Being gassed is traumatic,” she said. “And seeing all that
violence happen, a lot of people will be reaching out for mental health
support — for anxiety, depression, and mood disorders.”</p>
<p>While most of the tactical federal agents withdrew from Portland in
late July, a protester who goes by Jack Tudela believes she was again
exposed to the toxic chemicals when she was attending a protest at an
ICE facility on September 18. Since July, Tudela had already experienced
some disturbing symptoms she tied to the chemicals used by the federal
agents. She usually likes to keep her nails long but recently began to
notice that her nails were turning brittle and breaking off. She was
also beginning to lose her waist-long, black hair. After she showered, <a href="https://twitter.com/MsLucky420/status/1311443948246691840">clumps of hair</a>
came off in her comb. And Tudela, who has a seizure disorder that is
controlled by medicine, said she experienced more frequent mild seizures
after the gassing incidents. Like many other women who protested in
Portland, Tudela also noticed changes in her <a href="https://www.opb.org/article/2020/07/29/tear-gas-period-menstrual-cycle-portland/">menstrual cycle</a> after being exposed to chemicals at the protests.</p>
<p>Tudela’s exposure at the September protest may further exacerbate and
prolong all of the symptoms she is experiencing. “They unleashed so
much gas that night,” she said. Tudela went to that protest to draw
attention to reports that ICE had performed <a href="https://theintercept.com/2020/09/15/hysterectomies-ice-irwin-whistleblower/">hysterectomies</a>
on women in their custody without their consent. And, as she
expected, after the chemical-laden confrontation, she experienced some
of the same reactions she had at previous protests, including burning in
her lungs, nausea, vomiting, difficulty focusing, and an aversion to
food. Still, she said, expressing outrage over the violation of others’
bodies was worth the risks to her own.</p></div></div></div></div>
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