Chlorine: Old chemical scourge raises new fears

updated 4:09 p.m. ET Feb. 22, 2007

CAIRO, Egypt - When Iraqi insurgents this week blew up trucks carrying chlorine, the attacks conjured up frightening images of chemical warfare and soldiers choking to death on the battlefields of Belgium in World War I.

The explosions also raised concerns the insurgents in Iraq have the know-how and flexibility to adopt new tactics, including the pursuit of chemical bombs in an increasingly deadly and chaotic war.

Chlorine gas attacks the eyes and lungs within seconds, causing difficulty in breathing and skin irritation in low-level exposure. Inhaled at extremely high levels, it dissolves in the lungs to form hydrochloric acid that burns lung tissue, essentially drowning a person as liquid floods the lungs.

The tactic has been used at least three times since Jan. 28, when a truck carrying explosives and a chlorine tank blew up in Anbar province. More than a dozen people were reported killed in the Anbar attack.

On Tuesday, a bomb planted on a chlorine tanker left more than 150 villagers stricken north of Baghdad. The following day, a pickup truck carrying chlorine gas cylinders was blown apart in Baghdad, killing at least five people and sending more than 55 to hospitals gasping for breath and rubbing stinging eyes.

Then Thursday, U.S. troops uncovered a chemical munitions plant near Fallujah, with three vehicle bombs being assembled, including a truck bomb, about 65 propane tanks and “all kinds of ordinary chemicals,” said U.S. military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell.

Caldwell said he thought insurgents were planning to mix chemicals with explosives, although it was not clear if chlorine gas was present.

Insurgents not experts — yet
Despite fears over the new tactic, some experts note the insurgents so far are not expert at it, meaning they may be causing widespread fear but not mass casualties.

Steve Kornguth, director of the biological and chemical defense program at the University of Texas in Austin, said the Iraq explosions are not “chlorine bombs.”

“They are putting canisters of chlorine on trucks with bombs, which then puncture the canisters and release the chemical,” Kornguth said. “But it hasn’t been very effective because the high temperature created by the bombs oxidizes the chemical, making it less dangerous.”

Instead of dispersing chlorine gas — which causes death by inhalation — the heat from the explosion can render the gas nontoxic, Kornguth said.

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