Welcome to another deep dive. I'm so glad you
could join us today because we are looking at
something that is, frankly, going to completely
flip your perspective on modern history. Yeah,
it really is a mind -bending topic. Right. Let
me start you off with a seemingly contradictory
question. How could one of the most feared, gruesome
weapons in human history also be responsible
for saving millions of lives? I mean, it sounds
like an impossible paradox. But the history we're
looking at today is just full of these dark unexpected
turns. Exactly. So our mission today is to explore
the surprisingly complex and honestly ongoing
legacy of sulfur mustard. And we are relying
on a comprehensive set of historical and scientific
excerpts compiled from the Wikipedia article
on mustard gas. And we have a massive timeline
to cover here. Everything from strange laboratory
accidents to trench warfare and then to a truly
shocking medical breakthrough. That paradox is
exactly why we're unpacking this today. And to
help synthesize all this intense history, I've
got my co -host here, the calm voice of reason.
I will do my best to keep us on track. There's
a lot to get through. OK, let's unpack this.
And I think we need to start by setting the record
straight right out of the gate. Yeah, the name
itself. Yeah, the name mustard gas is actually
a massive misconception. It's technically incorrect,
isn't it? It is. It's a total misnomer because
it is almost never a gas when it's deployed.
Wait, really? Not at gas at all? No. It is actually
dispersed as a fine mist of liquid droplets.
And when this compound is pure, it's completely
colorless. But - That's not how it looked on
the battlefield. No, in warfare it's usually
deployed in impure forms or it's mixed with other
chemicals. So it takes on this yellow -brown
color. And then there's the smell, which according
to the source doesn't actually come from mustard
at all. Right, there is no actual mustard in
mustard gas. But it gets its name because that
viscous liquid gives off an odor that resembles
mustard plants or garlic or horseradish. And
that mild smell is your only warning. Which is
terrifying. Because the way this weapon works
is essentially a sneak attack on the human body.
The insidious nature of sulfur mustard comes
down to its high lipophilicity. Which means it's
fat soluble, right? Exactly. It is highly fat
soluble. And because human skin is very rich
in lipids or fats, the agent absorbs into the
body incredibly rapidly. But you don't feel it
right away. That's the terrifying part. It often
doesn't elicit any immediate symptoms at all.
You might not feel anything for up to 24 hours.
So just to translate this for you listening,
imagine you encounter this mild garlic smell.
You feel completely fine. You go about your day.
But you are not fine. Right. A day later, your
DNA itself is actively malfunctioning. The physical
reality of that delay is staggering. On a microscopic
level, your body is under siege while you think
you're perfectly safe. What's fascinating here
is the underlying cellular toxicity. How does
it actually work once it's inside you? So, sulfur
musters belong to a class of chemicals known
as alkylating agents. Okay, alkylating agents.
Right. Once it hits the moisture in your body,
it undergoes a specific chemical reaction. It
drops chloride ions to form what are called cyclic
sulfonium ions. That sounds complicated. What
does that mean in practical terms? Basically,
it transforms into a highly reactive molecular
magnet. It immediately hunts down the DNA in
your cells and permanently binds to the nucleotides.
So it's essentially throwing a chemical wrench
right into the gears of your DNA. That is a perfect
way to visualize it. And once the DNA is permanently
alkylated or damaged, the cell can no longer
divide. Which means the cell is basically doomed.
Exactly. It leads to one of two outcomes, either
immediate programmed cell death, which is known
as apoptosis, or if the cell somehow survives,
that damaged DNA leads to mutations and the development
of cancer later in life. And the physical effects
of that cellular death are just horrific to read
about. They really are. The text details how
victims experience this intense itching. and
then that turns into massive pus -filled blisters
anywhere the liquid or vapor touched the skin.
It can even cause a process called melanogenesis,
which actually turns a patient's skin different
colors. And it goes far beyond just skin contact.
Much further, if 80 % of the agent evaporates,
10 % stays in the skin, and the other 10 % is
absorbed directly into the bloodstream. And if
you inhale it? If inhaled, it causes bleeding
and blistering right inside the respiratory system.
It damages the mucous membranes and causes your
lungs to fill with fluid. A condition the source
calls pulmonary edema. Right. You are effectively
drowning in your own fluids. The damage to the
eyes is equally severe. It starts with conjunctivitis,
like pink eye, but then the eyelids swell completely
shut. Leading to temporary blindness. And in
severe cases, the source says it ulcerates the
cornea so badly that victims literally need corneal
transplants. It's devastating. There is a chilling
quote in our sources from a British nurse who
treated World War I soldiers. What did she say?
She noted, quote, Gas burns must be agonizing
because usually the other cases do not complain,
even with the worst wounds. But gas cases are
invariably beyond endurance, and they cannot
help crying out. That paints such a grim picture.
And remembering that there is no antidote makes
it all the more terrifying. Protection relies
entirely on keeping it off your skin in the first
place. Which brings us to a huge question. How
did this nightmare even come to be? Surprisingly,
it wasn't invented as a weapon. Right. No one
sat down and intentionally tried to invent a
weapon of mass destruction. It started as a laboratory
curiosity. We can trace the timeline all the
way back to 1822. Over a century before the World
Wars. Yes. A French chemist named César -Montsouet
-Despretz synthesized it. But he didn't even
notice it was dangerous. And then we fast forward
to 1860. A British scientist named Frederick
Guthrie synthesized it. And get this, he actually
tasted it. He tasted it. He tasted it. And he
just noted that it was, quote, irritating. I
mean, he is incredibly lucky. That same year,
Albert Nieman, who was actually a pioneer in
cocaine chemistry, he also made it. And he was
the first to record its blister -forming properties.
But it still wasn't weaponized at that point.
No, the real turning point comes decades later,
in 1886. With Victor Meyer. Right. Meyer synthesized
a much purer version of the compound, and the
purity meant the adverse health effects were
suddenly much more severe. So severe that his
assistant was badly burned by it. But Meyer actually
suspected the assistant might just be suffering
from psychosomatic symptoms, like a mental block
making him think he was burned. To prove it wasn't
just in the guy's head, Meyer tested this pure
compound on laboratory rabbits. And of course,
most of the rabbits died. The toxicity was undeniably
real. But we are still not at the weapon stage
yet. The final piece of the puzzle falls into
place in 1913. An English chemist named Hans
Thatcher Clark was working in Berlin. He was
working with Emil Fischer, right? Yes. Clark
replaced one of the ingredients in Meyer's formulation
with hydrochloric acid. And while he was working,
one of his flasks broke. And Clark was hospitalized
for two months with severe burns. Two months
in the hospital from one broken flask. That is
an incredible level of toxicity from a simple
lab accident. And then Fischer reports this accident.
He reported it to the German Chemical Society,
and according to Meyer, it was that specific
report that inadvertently sent the German Empire
down the path to developing chemical weapons.
They realized the immense destructive potential
of what Clark had accidentally unleashed. And
they already had the means to mass produce it.
Because one of the key ingredients, 2 -chloroethanol,
was readily available from the German dye industry.
Which all culminates on July 12th, 1917. The
German army deploys it for the first time against
British and Canadian troops near Ypres, Belgium.
Which is why the French called the agent Yprite.
And the Germans called it Lost, that's L -O -S
-T, which was a combination of the last names
of Lommel and Steinkopf, the scientists who developed
the large -scale production method. What is crucial
to understand about its deployment in World War
I is the strategic intent. Because it wasn't
just about killing as many people as possible,
was it? Surprisingly no. It was actually lethal
in only about 1 % of cases. Wait, if it was only
lethal in 1 % of cases, why was it considered
so strategically valuable? Was it just about
overwhelming the medical tents? That is a large
part of it, yes. Creating chaos. But its primary
military value was as an incapacitating agent
and an area denial weapon. Area denial. Meaning,
it stops the enemy from occupying a space. Exactly.
It would linger in the cold, muddy soil of the
trenches for weeks. And this created a uniquely
terrifying hazard. The text notes a detail about
life in the trenches that just stuck with me.
The Soosterains. Yes. Soldiers would get the
agent on their clothing while outside in the
freezing cold. But because it was cold, the mustard
agent remained a stable liquid on their uniforms.
Then, those soldiers would retreat into the enclosed,
warm underground subways and birthing areas.
The Soosterines. Right. And as their clothes
warmed up in that confined underground space,
the liquid mustard agent would vaporize. So the
environment itself triggers the weapon. It becomes
an airborne toxic agent, poisoning everyone trapped
inside the bunker with them. It's a weapon that
literally turns your own uniform against you
and your friends. It's horrifying. And here's
where it gets really interesting. And honestly,
deeply unsettling. Because the timeline shifts
to World War II. As if trench warfare wasn't
horrific enough. Right. The onset of World War
II pushed the desperation for military advantage
into even darker territory. Specifically, classified
human testing. We are looking at sources detailing
secret experiments conducted by the United States
military on its own people. The declassified
records from this period show that during and
after World War II, the US military tested sulfur
mustards on up to 60 ,000 of its own servicemen.
60 ,000. And there was a specific race -based
component to these trials? Yes. The testing was
heavily segregated. African -American servicemen
were tested in separate trials alongside white
men to see if their skin color afforded them
any natural immunity to mustard gas and lewisite.
They also tested knee -sized servicemen? Japanese
Americans, some of whom had literally just been
released from internment camps. They were tested
to determine the susceptibility of Japanese military
personnel to these chemical agents. The text
also notes that Puerto Rican subjects were specifically
singled out for testing as well. To understand
the physical reality of these tests, we have
to look at the account of Rollin Edwards. He
was one of the test subjects. His quote in the
source material is incredibly hard to shake.
He stated, quote, It felt like you were on fire.
Guy started screaming and hollering and trying
to break out. He goes on to say, it took all
the skin off your hands. Your hands just rotted.
Your hands just rotted. This raises an important
question about the ethical boundaries of wartime
science. How far is too far? Exactly. The sheer
desperation for military advantage led to these
classified operations, and they were kept secret
for decades. Even after these experiments were
finally declassified in 1993, the Department
of Veterans Affairs routinely denied compensation
claims from the victims. The aftermath is just
tragic. The text mentions, the VA promised to
contact 4 ,000 surviving test subjects, but they
only ended up reaching 600. Leaving thousands
without any help. You have all these men, some
who are only 19 at the time, left plagued by
skin cancer, severe eczema, leukemia, and chronic
breathing problems. And the U .S. wasn't alone
in doing this? No. Australia also conducted tropical
tests. They tested volunteer service members
on the Brook Islands to simulate Pacific Island
conditions. Which resulted in severe injuries
for those men as well. It's a stark reminder
of the collateral damage of weapons programs.
It extends far beyond the actual battlefield.
It affected the very people the military was
meant to protect. Now we arrive at the pivot,
the most shocking twist in this entire deep dive.
The medical breakthrough. Yes. How on earth did
this horrifically destructive weapon, a chemical
that rots your skin and damages your DNA, how
does that become a medicine? The clues were actually
there from the very beginning. Going back to
World War I. Right. In 1919, shortly after the
First World War ended, researchers from the University
of Pennsylvania performed autopsies on 75 soldiers
who had died from mustard agent exposure. And
what did they find? When they examined the bodies,
they found something unusual, drastically decreased
white blood cell counts. So the mustard agent
was suppressing blood formation. Exactly. A process
called hematopoiesis. But nobody connected the
dots right away. No. The science just sat there.
It took another world war to push the research
forward. During World War II, the American Office
of Scientific Research and Development funded
the biology and chemistry departments at Yale
University to study chemical warfare. And while
Yale was conducting this research in the lab,
a parallel real -world tragedy occurred. On December
2nd, 1943. Yes. There was a devastating air raid
on the port of Bari, Italy. The attack destroyed
an allied ship. So an allied ship is bombed in
Italy. It's a tragedy. But how does that connect
back to the chemical research at Yale? Because
that specific ship, the SS John Harvey, was secretly
carrying a massive stockpile of mustard gas.
When the ship was destroyed, the mustard gas
was released into the water and the air. It was
a chaotic disaster. 83 people were killed and
628 were hospitalized. And this is where the
medical observation happens. Right. The doctors
treating the survivors of the Bari disaster noticed
the exact same phenomenon that the autopsy doctors
had seen in 1919. A massive plunge in the victim's
white blood cell counts. Yes. This is the light
bulb moment. The medical teams are looking at
these crashing white blood cell numbers and realizing
This chemical does something very specific to
the body's ability to produce these cells. If
we connect this to the bigger picture, it is
one of the most brilliant syntheses in medical
history. How so? Remember that chemical wrench
we talked about earlier? The one that hunts down
DNA, damages it, and stops the cell from dividing.
The exact mechanism that makes it a weapon. Yes.
The scientists at Yale realized... That cancer
fundamentally is just a problem of unchecked
rapid cell division. Right. So if mustard agents
are so incredibly effective at throwing a wrench
into cell division and destroying white blood
cells, perhaps they could be used intentionally
to destroy out -of -control white blood cells.
Like the kind you see in lymphoma or leukemia?
That is just incredible. They focused on a related
compound called nitrogen mustard, specifically
one known as HN2. And what happened? In December
of 1942, this compound was secretly administered
to a human patient with lymphoma, and it worked.
HN2, which is also known as chormethine or meclorethamine,
became the very first cancer chemotherapy drug.
It really did. The foundation of modern oncology.
A field of medicine that has saved countless
millions of lives worldwide was born directly
from the horrors of World War I autopsies and
a bomb ship in World War II. It's hard to wrap
your head around. Chemotherapy is, quite literally,
a chemical weapon repurposed to fight the war
inside the human body. By targeting those rapidly
dividing cancer cells. It's a profound realization.
And while chloromethene has largely been replaced
by safer chemotherapy drugs today, the whole
mechanism of using toxic compounds to target
rapidly dividing cancer cells all started with
the study of mustard gas. So what does this all
mean for us today? Well, we have this miraculous
medical legacy. But we also have to deal with
the physical legacy of the weapons themselves.
Right, you don't just throw away thousands of
tons of mustard gas. Actually, for decades, that's
almost exactly what they did. Wait, really? The
disposal methods were almost as hazardous as
the weapons themselves. The primary solution
after World War II was ocean dumping. Just putting
it on ships and tossing it overboard? Yes. For
instance, in 1946, Canada took 10 ,000 drums
of mustard gas. That's 2 ,800 tons. They loaded
them onto 187 boxcars and then buried them at
sea on a barge 40 miles south of Sable Island.
And the U .S. did this too. The U .S. Army created
at least 26 chemical weapons dumping sites in
the ocean off the coast of at least 11 different
states. When did they stop doing that? It wasn't
until 1972 that the U .S. Congress finally banned
the practice of ocean disposal. The consequences
of that dumping are still washing up on our shores
today. There is a detail from the text that is
genuinely terrifying. The Baltic Sea Amber. Yes.
After World War II, Germany dumped a massive
amount of weapons into the Baltic Sea. Among
these were weapons called Spruebuch 37. Which
were essentially spray cans. Right. But these
cans contain mustard gas mixed with a thickener.
giving it the consistency of tar. And when those
specific weapons sit in seawater, only the outer
layer of that viscous mustard agent hydrolyzes.
Meaning it reacts with the water and breaks down.
Exactly. That leaves a hardened amber -colored
crust on the outside. But inside that crust,
the enclosed mustard gas is perfectly preserved.
It's completely active and just as lethal as
the day it was manufactured. And they look exactly
like lumps of natural amber. To this day, fishermen
in the Baltic Sea will pull these lumps up in
their dragnets. Thinking it's amber. Yeah, they
think it's amber. They might grab it with their
bare hands or accidentally break it open. And
the moment that crust breaks, they're exposed
to fully active decades -old mustard gas. The
source notes that between 1966 and 2002, fishermen
in the Bornholm region found about 700 chemical
weapons, mostly containing mustard gas. In 2010,
a clamming boat off Long Island, New York, pulled
up World War I shells. The fishermen had to be
hospitalized with severe blistering and respiratory
irritation. It is a lingering environmental minefield.
Thankfully, there is a cleanup effort. The Chemical
Weapons Convention of 1993 banned the development,
production, and stockpiling of these agents.
And there has been a massive global effort to
destroy the remaining stockpiles safely, usually
through incineration or chemical neutralization.
But it takes a remarkably long time to execute
that cleanup. India declared its stockpiles and
managed to destroy them by 2009. And the United
States. The U .S. only just destroyed its final
declared stockpile of mustard weapons on June
22, 2023. at the Pueblo Chemical Depot in Colorado.
That is over a century after the weapon was first
used in the trenches of Ypres. Over a century.
And even with the declared stockpiles gone, the
unexploded shells remain scattered across the
globe. Right. They're still being found on farms
in Belgium. In 2014, they found 200 bombs meant
for the Battle of Passchendaele. They're found
during mining surveys in Queensland, Australia.
They were even found buried in a residential
neighborhood in Washington, D .C. In a residential
neighborhood. Yes. And that cleanup wasn't completed
until 2021. Wow. Let's take a step back and look
at the incredible arc we've covered today. It
really is vast. We started with a harmless looking
liquid synthesized by accident in a 19th century
lab. We watched it become a horrific area denial
weapon in the muddy trenches of World War One.
We covered the secretive race -based human testing
during World War II. And then that unbelievable
pivot where the suppression of white blood cells
led to the miraculous birth of cancer chemotherapy.
And finally, we confronted the reality that this
environmental hazard is still lurking in our
oceans and buried under our cities today. It
is a vast and complicated legacy. It is. And
I want to leave you with one final forward -looking
concept from the source material to ponder on
your own. What's that? While the massive warehouse
-sized stockpiles have finally been destroyed,
the invisible remnants of this agent remain in
the soil and the water. To combat this, scientists
are currently developing tutting -edge technology.
Like what? It's a portable immunochromatographic
assay. What exactly does that do in the field?
It is a highly sensitive diagnostic tool. It's
similar in design to a rapid test that's specifically
engineered to detect microscopic, oxidized degradation
products of sulfur mustard right there in the
soil. So you don't have to wait for a lab. Exactly.
It eliminates the need for expensive, time -consuming
lab tests. It allows teams to instantly read
the presence of these toxic metabolites. That's
incredible. It's a profound realization when
you think about it. The chemical war isn't actually
over. It has just shifted from the battlefield
to the molecular level. Wow. Today we are using
advanced science to hunt down the microscopic
ghosts of World War I, ensuring we protect unsuspecting
civilians before these silent remnants can find
them. Hunting down the microscopic ghosts of
World War I. That is a powerful thought. It really
is. Thank you so much for joining us on this
deep dive today. We hope exploring these sources
has given you a whole new perspective on the
history beneath our feet and the unexpected origins
of the medicines in our hospitals. It's been
a journey. Keep questioning the history of the
world around you and we'll see you next time.