Chemical Warfare and Chemical Terrorism: Psychological and Performance Outcomes

Abstract

The battlefields of the late 20th century have come to include a significant new health threat: the use of modern chemical weapons. The potential to cause large numbers of serious casualties among deployed and deploying military forces and among civilian populations provides a stark reminder to medical planners of the limits of military and civilian medicine. However, medical countermeasures to these chemical warfare agents (CWAs) have been, and continue to be, developed. These CWAs, their countermeasures, and their health care implications are described in the articles of this special issue. These articles suggest likely psychological, physiological, and neurological effects that will be encountered should these agents be employed against U.S. forces on the integrated battlefield or against homeland facilities. Also suggested are countermeasures that U.S. forces and medical teams may use to protect or treat our forces or citizens undergoing such CWA attacks. Knowledge of the behavioral effects of the CWAs and of their medical countermeasures is imperative to ensure that military and civilian medical and mental health organizations can deal with possible incidents involving weapons of mass destruction. This first study, in contrast to the remaining studies in this special issue, focuses on the psychological factors in chemical warfare and terrorism. It also serves as an overview of the remaining articles in this special issue.