The Chemist and Civilian Defense' T . D. STEWART

Cniversity of California, Berkeley, California

HIS symposium is being held to discuss the con- tnbutlon that chemists, as professional men, may T . .

make to civilian defense. At a time when every person desires to be of service, the man of professional training naturally feels that his talents should be put to direct use in the war effort. This spirit a t its worst is ex- emplified by members of a riding club out west who felt that since they knew the trails through the hills they could lead other citizens to safety in case of attack, provided the Government would furnish them with horses. At its best i t has found expression in the unselfish work of thousands of women who con- tribute their household skill in sewing and cooking and nursing.

The role of the chemist in civilian defense parallels his function in industry. As a technician he knows how to perform specific tasks; his knowledge and under- standing permit him to solve troublesome problems; as a man of judgment and with a capacity for leader- ship he may direct research and production. Civilian defense called for those same aptitudes. It asked for men familiar with chemical substances to operate sta- tions and detection devices; i t asked for ways and means to achieve protection against hazards not specifi- cally covered in the manuals; and finally it asked that the warden service be augmented by technically trained men to act as instructors and advisors in chemical warfare.

From the. attack on Pearl Harbor until after the Battle of Midway the Sau Francisco Bay area con- sidered itself the probable point of any enemy attack on the mainland. Industries, wharves, and arsenals spread for miles along a shore line outlined by the bay-perfect targets that could not be hidden. Army and Navy spokesmen began in January, 1942, to em- phasize the danger to come during the spring and summer, when a fog bank covers the ocean from Alaska

1 Paper presented in the "Symposium on Civilian Preparedness for Chemical Warfare" at the 105th meeting of the American - - Chemical Society at Detroit, Michigan, April 12-16, 1943. into the complicated &heme ofethings.

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to Mexico. Their thesis was that camers could hover off shore, send bombers to attack, and hide with impunity in the fog. In this interval the problem of civilian defense was to awaken residents to their danger and organize protection. It did so well in describing the impending hazards that many people refired to in- terior points; thousands flocked to volunteer their services as wardens, and a notable few called in alarm for the recall of the Navy to protect our homes, in- stead of seeking battle. In this atmosphere bordering on hysteria, gas warfare loomed as a frightful thing. In the training of block wardens, two evenings out of a total of about twelve were devoted to it. Officers of the Chemical Warfare Service gave a few lectures to selected groups, and these were supposed to act as instructors in their own communities.

In the preliminary training and organization, the chemists of the community as such had no part. Their availability for tasks requiring technical understanding was completely unknown to officials who had the re- sponsibility for organizing civilian defense. The reason for this seems to be twofold. In the first place the technical nature of the task was itself not recognized. Secondly, it has beeu evident that the choice of leaders for this public service has been based upon the accident of personal acquaintance or the prominence of an individual in his community. Aside from the over- time drafting of police and firemen, the men drawn upon to fill the emergency had previously shown a sense of public duty or a marked capacity for co- operative effort. Perhaps if some chemist had dis- played during previous years such interests and apti- tudes, he would have beeu drawn at the first into the planning of civilian protection.

I had the pleasure eventually of introducing several of our chemists to an harrassed officialdom, offering to take off their shoulders a distressing load. By that time such assistance was appreciated and the men appointed to this responsibilitv have admirably fitted

I t was no accident that protection against toxic gases in our sector was placed in the hands of the county health officer. He could be presumed to understand the physiological action of these substances, and he was virtually the only county official with a technical background. His first act was to appoint a committee charged with the organization of decontamination in case of an attack. It is understandable that the chair- man of this committee was also a physician. Other members included representatives of the various city services, such as inspectors of buildings and streets. But the committee also had a technical advisor and it was in this capacity that the chemists of the com- munity received representation in a matter that was peculiarly their own concern. Two problems con- fronted this committee. The h t was the action to be taken to protect a civilian population against gas; the second was the choice of personnel to assure that protection.

The original concept of decontamination centers was reviewed by this committee. Plans were drawn for such centers, placed within five-minute walks of each other. Lists of mat6riel were revised, and the pressing problem of manning the stations with trained personnel was studied. The plan was never completed, even though in principle i t carried out all the injunctions from headquarters. One reason for discarding i t was financial; each station required an expenditure of from one to two thousand dollars, and the individual cities held the purse strings. A better reason lay in the fact that the stations were essentially impractical for the intended purpose. The booklets and lecturers suggested that mustard gas should be washed off within ten minutes of exposure, and we were aware, from experiments on ourselves, that ten minutes was far too long a time to wait. In place of such stations we instituted a local campaign for self-aid, in which every home furnished the required facilities to anyone in need. We experimented with the rapid cleansing of large groups of people, on the theory that an en- forced evacuation of a residential area would require provision for cleansing and clothing of the evacuees.

Another problem that appealed to us as most pressing was that of detection of gas and alarms. So much had been said about gas and its horrors that the civilian population needed the assurance that no gas was present even more than it needed the warning of its presence. To expect each warden to be a cool-headed detector was expecting too much; to set up a central- ized, mobile detection unit struck us as equally im- practical as a first approach. So we suggested to the county authorities that we assemble and train war-gas officers, using the chemists of the community as a nucleus. They would have authority to sound alarms, and each man would use his independent judgment in the district to which he was assigned. Since min- utes were important, we visualized an immediate alarm being sounded a t any point, without reference to or per- mission from the central control, and without regard to alarms in neighboring districts. Residents would be

urged to trust the absence of an alarm as an indication of no gas. For this we needed men assigned to the one task, with no other duties to divert attention, and men of judgment, least apt to be confused by strange odors. Permission was granted to proceed with this plan in February, 1942, and a call was immediately issued to our membership for volunteers and training was begun.

A month later we were able to present to each city defense council a list of trained men from whom to choose the executives in charge of gas detection, warden training, and decontamination. Certain men were nominated by us and appointed. They are stiU functioning. One feature of our procedure is worthy of notice. These men were trained in a school author- ized by the head of the county defense council, but they had to function within the defense organization of the individual cities, whose warden training schools were already in operation. Part of our prohlem was to convince the city authorities that the plan of using men of special training in a task of a technical nature was sound. It helped to be able to say that we had already trained a nucleus from which to start and to he able to recommend deb i te men to head the groups. The prohlem was looming so large by that time that the concrete assistance offered was most eagerly ac- cepted.

The local war-gas officer had many problems besides the detection and warning of gas. One of them was the reconciliation of the OCD manual with local con- ditions. We were told in words and diagrams that the ideal place to he in an attack was between the fourth and tenth floors of a tall building. I t so happens that in our city of 100,000, there is just one building of more than four floors; residents in bungalows were con- demned. Moreover, the newspapers spread the word to go downstairs to avoid bombs and stay upstairs to avoid gas, a t a time and place when most of us lived in one-story dwellings. The idea of a gas-proofed shelter in each home was eventually recommended, with the natve suggestion that if a bomb blew out the windows of the room chosen for the shelter, one should promptly seek another room.

The list of things that the householder should have a t hand grew and grew, and our problem was to spread the gospel of simplicity of action. We sought to con- centrate on soap, rather than a particular kind of soap, for vesicant treatment; we urged the readily available household bleach--sodium hypochloriteinstead of chloride of lime, which was unobtainable, in quantity. We sought to dispel fear by passing samples of the war gases among the members of an audience and in- stilled respect by showing smaU bums. Every man who went through our schools was used as a guinea pig to demonstrate the effect of delay in washing off mus- tard gas, and to assure him that eithkr hypochlorite or soap, used liberally, could afford protection. We noted that any attempt to wash off only the spot where appli- cation had been made often resulted in spreading, whereas a liberal washing and thorough rinsing pro- duced no spreading. It is also clear to us that sodium

hypochlorite is far superior to lime bleach and more certain than just soap and water.

The effort required to teach a few hundred people a simple concept is very appreciable, but compared to the task of acquainting all the residents of a city with that same concept, i t is nothing. The last war showed clearly that what the army called "gas dis- cipline" among troops was the proper defense against the use of gas. Unfortunately, i t meant that a t least every corporal, if not every private, be alive to the hazard he was under and he prepared to do the proper thing. The action required in an army can be achieved by order, but among civilians it is either the result of self-confidence derived from constant reiteration of a single idea, or the result of trial by fire. It did not help to have several different agencies devising details and directions, none of whom had the single problem of civilian defense in mind.

Much of the confusion of thought that we all experi- enced last year was due to inappreciation of the prob- lem before us. First, we were given recipes for action that in too many cases proved inadequate;

second, revisions of these recipes were made offici- ally by those who bad no demonstrable basis for their conclusions. Avoidance of such incidents requires more than technical knowledge. It requires a keen appreciation of the circumstances under which a remedy or recipe is being used and a willingness to accom- modate technical procedure to expediency as governed by the problem and the people concerned.

As professional men we have much to Wer our respective communities. Our understanding of vapor pressure, diffusion, surface tension, solubility, oxida- tion, rate of hydrolysis, and indicators helps us to arrive a t a procedure for the cleansing of a sack of potatoes contaminated by mustard gas, but those factors are of little help in the comforting of our neighbors who want to know how a baby may be protected from a toxic gas, when they must themselves supervise that protection. Our skill as technicians must be surpassed by our skill in generating confidence in our judgment, and our technical ability upon occa- sion is worthless unless tempered by human under- standing.