Tear gas and pepper spray can have lasting health effects [View all]

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/tear-gas-pepper-spray-health-effects

“These are chemical weapons that are harmful to the human body and harmful to particularly vulnerable folks, like children,” says Asha Hassan, an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. “We know that tear gas causes tears, but it also causes other things that are a lot more severe,” she says — even death.
But the long-term health risks are poorly understood. No large, systematic studies have investigated the health problems that emerge long after exposure to these chemicals, says Anthony Szema, chair of the American Thoracic Society’s Section on Terrorism and Inhalation Disasters. Some research, though, has painted a picture of enduring repercussions. For weeks and even months after the immediate moments of exposure, crowd control agents can continue to sabotage the organs that allow us to breathe, pump blood and even make life.
Here’s a closer look at these chemicals and what’s known about their immediate and long-term health impacts.

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