Talk:Mustard gas

message: mustard gas does have an odor, it is one that made people tear and start to bleed from the inside.  Coughing and vomiting came after being exposed to the poison
There is something not quite right here: it the first section, Mustard gas is said to be odorless, while further down in the article is "has a distinct odor", these two don't mix.
Also I am in doubt whether the first statement of Mustard gas being odorless is really true, as far as I know the name does NOT come from the color of the substance, but from a very light odor resembling mustard or garlic. I will try to find references on this.
:I changed the statement about odorlessness a bit to correspond with the source mentioned in the link at the bottom. -- Jörgen Nixdorf
:There is still the odorless...smells like mustard inconsistancy in the first two sentences.  Can someone competent fix this?69.207.22.219 06:05, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It also says that they are colourless and then that they're yellow-brown coloured in the next sentence.  I'm assuming that one means in its purified form and the other in its common form (whatever that might be) but I'm not changing the article on the basis of a guess...Chris 12:52, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Odor 

message: How the compound with single bonds only can be polymerised?
--Grzes 01:23, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Polymerisation 

message: I just noticed, www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Mustard-gas has the exact same data for mustard gas as wikipedia does. Who has the rights to this?
Some guy posted this in the article, thinking it was the discussion.
* This data was copied directly from us (from me, in fact: I wrote most of that text). If you're skeptical, take a look at their main page Of course, they're allowed to do that under the GNU Public License, so long as they don't try to sell it. – ClockworkSoul 13:19, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: *Actually, they can sell it all they like— that is part of the nature of the GNU license: that it is free for anyone to use for any purpose, including possible commercial reuse.  But they are not free to do so without giving proper credit to the original source.  KDS4444 (talk) 18:57, 28 March 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  This was in the article 

message: Mustard gas redirects here.  I think it's safe to say that many, many more people are going to be searching for that term than this one, looking for information on its use as a weapon.  And yet this article only mentions its military use at the very end of the second paragraph, almost in passing!  I think that, at the very least, if mustard gas is going to redirect here it should be the primary focus of the first paragraph.  In general, though, I think that they should either be seperate articles or placed at mustard gas; aren't articles supposed to be placed under the name by which they're more commonly called? --Aquillion 00:38, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article focus 

message: In the external links section, two references were named which contain errors, I have moved them here:
*Bristol University - Basic Chemical Overview
:This reference has several errors in it: 
:# The Fredrick Guthrie synthesis should be from ethylene and SCl2, not ethylene and Cl2 as stated.
:# The hydrolysis reaction pathway produces two molecules of HCl and the last one produced is H2O, not three molecules of HCl as shown in the reference.
:# The molecular structure given for nitrogen mustard (N-mustard) is not correct. The nitrogen atom should have a hydrogen bonded to it.
:# The bulleted item describing HT at the beginning of the article suggests that T is a nitrogen mustard, this is incorrect. T is a sulfur mustard, specifically Bis[1(2-chloroethylthio)ethyl] ether, according to Department of the Army Field Manual (DA FM) 3-9, Potential Military Chemical/Biological agents and compounds, 1990.
*Organic chemistry of mustard gas
:This reference also has an error in it: in the sentence on synthesis of mustard gas, the phrase "sulfur monochloride, S2Cl2" should be "sulfur dichloride, SCl2"
Maybe someone can find better references for this?  --Dirk Beetstra T C 15:26, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removed some external links 

message: I have corrected the entry for the chemical composition of HT in the first part of the article. As pointed out by Beetstra, HT is a mixture of bis(2-chloroethyl) sulfide and bis[2-(2-chloroethylthio)ethyl]ether. See article http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/MHMI/mmg165.pdf. --Cwcchemist 15:35, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Corrections to HT 

message: I have been warned that stuff that looks like amber can be mustard gas.
But how could it be mistaken for ambergris? There are no sperm whales in the Baltic sea and ambergris should be completely unknown. Amber is frequently found in the southern Baltic. Amber would make sense, ambergris not.
           --88.115.120.116 21:12, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ambergris? 

message: Is this really a valid source?  The link provided is filled with historical inaccuracies, typos, original research, and personal bias. --NEMT 22:52, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  CBWinfo.com 

message: Wilhelm Steinkopf (* 1879, † 1949) and W. Lommel--Stone (talk) 10:25, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Lost

message: I think this should be moved a couple of sections down. It should logically be presented after the effects and the history of the compound have been introduced. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 12:02, 12 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Moving "Forumations" section down 

message: Does anyone have the first names for Lommel and Steinkopf?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.60.13.45 (talk) 00:42, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Names 

message: There's an apparent contradiction in that "Hun stuff" is defined in the article as a crude mixture made by the Levinstein Process - yet the Germans, as the honorary Huns, are described using a different process with a different precursor.  Even the British are described, at the end of the war, as beginning to synthesize the compound by yet another synthesis.  So we have in the article that neither the Germans nor anyone in World War I used the formulation of the compound that is named as "Hun stuff" ... which seems odd. Wnt (talk) 23:15, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: The Germans never reffered to it as "Hun Stuff", their codenames for the agent were "LOST" and "Gelbkreuz" respectively. As the imperial german army/artillery first used mustard agent shells in the night of 12-13 July 1917 in the Ypres Salient area, mainly concentrating on the British/Commonwealth positions in the northern part of the Salient, they deployed some 50,000 shells (75 and 105 mm caliber mainly). Some of these shells gone dud and were recovered in the following days by the Brits as the devastating delayed effects became clear (this single attack alone caused many thousand casualties on the British side and postponed the planned allied offensive in that summer for 2-3 weeks). These dud shells were easily recognised because of the yellow cross marking they had and were sent to Porton Down for further investigation. Soldiers dreaded this new agent, giving it the colloquial name Hun Stuff, which was swiftly used in official reports (as "H.S.", or later simply "H"). Analyse in Porton Down identified the agent in few days as bis(2-chloroethyl)sulfide. Efforts were made to get the production on allied side running in an industrial scale to be able to retaliate in kind, but they failed to accomplish that for almost a year following. One of the reasons was that neither British nor French or American industry at that time could reach to the massive scale production of 2-chloroethanol/ethylene chlorohydrine (Bayer AG manufactured this precursor even before WW I in a kiloton-year-scale as a intermediary product for the dye industry, so that they could later rapidly divert these existing capacities for a large scale produciton of sulfur mustard); the Allies focused on the "direct" method of addition of sulfur chloride on ethene, which was however not mastered until well into 1918 and yielded a crude product, containing on average ~70% HD, which was not as effective and storage-stable as the highly pure (over 95% HD, the rest being mainly the even more toxic T) german agent. Therefore towards the end of the war, the crude british product was labeled "H"/HS", due to need for rapid buildup of a stockpile that could be used straigthforward on the front. Only after the end of the war, the Brits, Americans and the French began to further purify this agent by vacuum-distilling it, resulting in HD/Pyro. Cheers--93.192.168.250 (talk) 20:29, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Huns never used Hun stuff? 

message: This sentence, in the introduction, is not actually true. Mustard gases are sometimes used in organic syntehsis. Sulfur and nitrogen mustards are also an innovative field for the development of anti-tumoral drugs. (source: "Organic Chemistry", aut.: Brown, Foote, Iverson) Giupio 14:26 april 9, 2009  —Preceding undated comment added 12:28, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  "No use other then chemical warfare" 

message: The following has been removed from the "Mechanism of toxicity" section because it is more appropriate here:
:Mechanism is wrong! See http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tox.2005.06.014
I don't have access to the article, so I can't verify the claim. I'll leave it to the chemists among us to check this.—Tetracube (talk) 20:21, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mechanism 

message: Thsi source seems to be outdated: 
http://www.cbwinfo.com/Chemical/Blister/HD.shtml
Especially datas about using sulphur gas in Poland 1939 are good for nothing. It seems to be a copied from "SIPRI" publication: "The Problems of Chemical and Biological Warfare, t. I, The Rise of CB Weapons", Sztokholm 1971, p. 154-155.
This is copied from Mathias Kräutlera and Karl Springenschmidt book "Es War ein Edelweiss. Schicksal und Weg der zweiten Gebirgsdivision", Graz-Stuttgart 1962), p. 20-21.
And news here are taken straight from German war-propaganda.
This is explained in this division commander - general Valentin Feurstein - "Irrwege der Pflicht 1938-1945" (München-Wels 1963) p. 13.
So-
"In 1939, Polish troops used chemical training mines containing diluted mustard agent to mine a bridge near Jaslo, injuring 14 German soldiers. It is unclear..."
It is clear now. Polish Army had some gas bombs in depots, Germans found a lot of them, but not in Jaslo. Polish units defending the city (1. pulk KOP) was a reserve units without regular chemical platoon and was not prepared for chemical warfare. 
Somebody had to be real moron, to mine a bridge.
Using chemical in the middle of the mountain river?
Here is a text - unfortunately in Polish:
http://www.schwrp-wroc.com/dodatki/biuletyn/biuletyn2/uzyciebrchemicznej.htm
Here is a picture of so-called "cemical explosion":
 http://audiovis.nac.gov.pl/obraz/216/h:436/
There is an article about this accident: Robert Michulec, "Gazem w 1939 roku", Magazyn Wojna! Nr.5/6 2004r. str. 22. but not online :(
T.Pawlowski  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.222.38.29 (talk) 19:55, 28 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Some sources seems to outdated 

message: In the Nitrogen mustard article it mentions that "It is a common myth that the drug mustine was developed after a war accident in 1943 in Bari, Italy"  They cite an article that mentions that a group at Yale was performing classified human clinical trials of nitrogen mustards in the fall of 1942, a year before the incident at Bari. But, muddling the issue, in this article a cited book (Author: Faguet, Guy B.) that focuses on the Bari incident but also acknowledges that there were previous experiments and also mentions that during WWI doctors noticed decreased white cell counts in exposed soldiers. The book summarizes that after the war ended the combination of the Bari aftermath and the subsequently declassified human clinical trials lead to the development of the first anti-cancer drugs.
Based on the combination of these sources and the medical significance of the development of the first anti-cancer drugs I would suggest creating a new section after Use and before Disposal expanding on the development of mustards into anti-cancer drugs. Additionally, I would suggest updating the Nitrogen mustard article to discuss both events (the Bari incident and the Yale trials. As it is, the articles seem to be in competition with each other over which event was the "true" inspiration. Finally, on the Air Raid on Bari talk page someone suggested adding a section to that article about the development of anti-cancer drugs. Perhaps adding a blurb in the Bari page that links back to this page and it's (soon to be) expanded section about drug development. Falconerd (talk) 06:15, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Inconsistency with Nitrogen Mustard article 

message: Why have so many useful photos with explanatory captions been deleted? A picture is worth a thousand words and some things can't be adequately described using text. If it's a question of having a neat & tidy layout for this Wikipedia article, then surely the photos could be moved to a separate "gallery" section at the end. Here are examples of the photos I'm talking about e.g. one of the deleted photos actually shows what mustard gas looks like. Hopefully, someone can explain the logic behind deleting the only free-use photo of mustard gas available on the web depicting the Wikipedia subject being described because frankly, I'm puzzled:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Toxic_gas_set_(CAIS)_bottle_containing_sulfur_mustard_(HD).jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MustardGasBurns2.JPG
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MustardGasChemicalBurns.JPG
Nabokov (talk) 12:24, 16 October 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Unecessary deletion of photos

message: What was the involvement of the Bush Administration in the use of mustard gas in the Gulf War?  I recall from televised coverage that the Administration sponsored the use of nerve gas and bulldozing techniques of large populations, ending the war.  This is not listed in your account.  Please verify. 
75.198.149.142 (talk) 21:33, 9 December 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: IMHO there's no need to verify such total nonsense. Regards, Lost Boy (talk) 11:57, 11 December 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Use of mustard gas under the Bush Administration 

message: The recent attack against the children in the school seems to be Mustard Gas.
Anyone want to follow up with the research and addition ?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.110.121.208 (talk) 17:42, 30 August 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Probable use by Syria against school recently 

message: The list of uses since WWI includes a use by United Kingdom against the Red Army in 1919; the cited link is dead. Why was the UK fighting the Red Army in 1919? Marnanel (talk) 02:22, 8 November 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Oversimplified, the Imperial Britain as well as the other Entente Powers and their allies were hostile towards the Bolsheviki and their Revolution, for a number of reasons, among others: the Powers being inherently antirevolutionary, the Royals being Tzars family, the Bolsheviki signing a separate peace with the German Empire in Brest-Litovsk, March 1918, providing the German Army with substantial reserves for the Spring Offensive 1918 on the Western Front etc. p.p..  See the article Allied_intervention_in_the_Russian_Civil_War for the start.  Cheers,--46.223.137.198 (talk) 04:39, 13 February 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Use by the United Kingdom against the Red Army in 1919 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: I encountered the "citation needed" mark here through Citation Hunt. I've managed to find this entry in the IUPAC gold book that defines "mustard", but I don't have the wherewithal to determine whether that definition matches the one in the article. The other information seems quite general and may need multiple sources. —Ifandonlyif0 (talk) 18:03, 22 August 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sourcing second paragraph of "Mechanism of cellular toxicity" 

message: i found this source for the etymology of the term :
https://www.acs.org/content/dam/acsorg/education/resources/highschool/chemmatters/gc-mustard-gas-personal-safety-and-natl-security.pdf
 "It is called mustard gas because impure forms of the gas have an odor that resembles that of mustard. The name is somewhat misleading because at room temperature the substance is actually a liquid, not a gas."  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Olshevsky (talk • contribs) 15:50, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  etymology 

message: I think this page would significantly benefit from explaining why the cyclization product is the active alkylating agent. Basic organic chemistry principles suggest that the non-cyclized version should be plenty effective as an alkylating on its own. This raises the question "why isn't it the active alkylating agent?" Although I have not had the chance to find primary sources on this specific case, the answer can once again be found in basic ochem principles. Intramolecular reactions like this (which aren't sterically hindered) are essentially always faster than their intermolecular counterparts. This is because molecules are constantly vibrating and wiggling. It is much more kinetically favorable for one part of a molecules to bump into another part of the same molecule than for two individual molecules to bump into each other just right. This is because the distances are much shorter and there are fewer barriers (like solvent molecules) in the way. I don't have the time to make this change to the article, but I highly recommend someone make it. It's an important fundamental concept to understand if you want to understand the reactivity of these complexes. I'm sure there's even a name for it if someone wants to find out what that is. Science Is My Life (talk) 01:01, 23 March 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Kinetic explanation for cyclization 

message: Does anyone know what are the exact products when normal mustard gas reacts with chloramine-T? DASL51984 (Speak to me!) 11:29, 21 February 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Decontamination reaction with Chloramine-T 

message: I think that most editors would agree that this article is very complicated, consisting of some advanced chemistry (including a "chembox"), lots on the chemical weapon theme and discussions of wounds, hefty discussion of the biology (mustards have non-weapons applications, BTW), and then diverse derivative of the parent bis(2-chloroethyl)sulfide and ways that these things are delivered on the battlefield.  
My idea is not going to make a complex topic easy to read, but I think that some splitting would help.
Proposal: to create an article on the main chemical Bis(2-chloroethyl)sulfide.  This smallish article would have the "chembox", describe how this stuff is made, and its basic organic chemistry.  It could also list analogues of bis(2-chloroethyl)sulfide.  I just dont think that most readers of mustard gas are keen to dig into thorny organic chemistry.--Smokefoot (talk) 22:35, 7 December 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: Support - readers would definitely benefit by having the nitty gritty information of the chemistry and its use in science, warfare, etc separated. i really oughta emphasize, though, that there certainly should be an article that has the thorny organic chemistry of mustard gas. Ayyydoc (talk) 18:34, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

text: --Smokefoot (talk) 03:11, 28 December 2022 (UTC)
thread_title: Split proposal