Agents of chemical warfare: sulfur mustard

Hazardous materials. Disaster medical planning and response

Hazardous materials offer a variety of unique challenges to emergency personnel. These agents have immense economic impact, but when mishandled, they become notorious for turning contained accidents into disasters involving the entire community. During a hazmat accident, the victims often ignore the rules of the disaster plan by seeking out the nearest hospital for medical care, regardless of that institution's capabilities. Health care workers rushing to the aid of contaminated individuals, without taking appropriate precautions (i.e., donning PPE), potentially make themselves victims. Disaster preparedness requires planning, policy, and procedure development, hazard analysis, training, and the availability of personal protective equipment for all responding personnel. Presently, the level of hazmat preparedness varies greatly among different hospitals, EMS and fire services, and disaster response teams. These differences in hazmat preparedness can be linked to a variety of factors (lack of awareness, funding, and support) and controversies (types of PPE and level of training required) which have prevented the establishment of a national hazmat policy for most of these organizations. Despite these difficulties, emergency departments continue to be the primary provider of care to contaminated individuals. As a result, emergency physicians must work with their hospital to implement a hazmat decontamination program in order to appropriately care for these individuals. The appendix to this article presents a list of recommendations for hospital hazmat preparedness. It is modeled after existing CDC and OSHA guidelines.

A serious skin sulfur mustard burn from an artillery shell

Despite the Geneva Protocol of 1925 and the Paris Conference on Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in 1989, sulfur mustard and other chemical weapons continue to pose a hazard to both civilians and soldiers. The presence of artillery shells containing sulfur mustard, both in waters where these shells were dumped and in old battlefields, presents a problem in times of peace, especially for those who collect wartime memorabilia. Past literature has reported several hundred incidents involving fishermen who inadvertently pulled leaking shells aboard their fishing vessels, thereby exposing themselves to the vesicant chemical. Other literature reports exposure to children who found the chemical shells in old battlefields. The purpose of this article is to report the first case of a serious sulfur mustard burn that occurred after removing the detonator from an old artillery shell in a historic battle field near Verdun, France. The circumstances surrounding the injury, the diagnosis and management of injuries secondary to sulfur mustard, and the long-term consequences to the patient are presented and discussed. Although skin grafting has been used in the management of other chemical burn injuries, this report is the first to describe the need for split-thickness skin grafts in the management of a patient with sulfur mustard burns.