How Painful Is Pepper Spray?

[progressoid]

How Painful Is Pepper Spray?

Pepper spray and other severe tactics have recently been used with disturbing frequency by police against Occupy protesters — young or old or pregnant — around the nation (see this Atlantic roundup). But the agent's misuse goes back much further: in the mid-1990s, the U.S. Department of Justice cited nearly 70 fatalities linked to pepper-spray use, according to an excellent post on the dangers of pepper spray by science writer Deborah Blum on Speakeasy Science.

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Getting pepper-sprayed is worse than getting maced — mace causes burning but no respiratory effects. Pepper spray can fell even people with a high tolerance for pain because it restricts the airway and leaves you gasping for breath. Even when pepper spray isn't inhaled, its effects on the skin and eyes can require hospital attention, causing intense burning pain, swelling, inflammation and redness.

Classified as a riot-control agent and banned for use in war by Article I.5 of the Chemical Weapons Convention, pepper spray is meant to be used against violent attackers who are resisting arrest and threatening physical harm to others. That doesn't apply to the passive protesters at U.C. Davis.

"Pepper spray should only be used when there's a clear threat to officers or severe-enough resistance — essentially, when the only alternative is more extreme force," John MacDonald, professor of criminology at the University of Pennsylvania, told our colleague Nick Carbone over at NewsFeed. "But if the only threat is time, then the best weapon to exercise is patience."

Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2011/11/22/how-painful-is-pepper-spray/#ixzz1eTCRq3nj

[Fire Walk With Me]

1. They are using weapons against us which are forbidden in combat.

They are truly at war with us. Worse than that, in perspective.

[CrispyQ]

9. +1

I watched a Rachel Maddow segment this morning about the 'non-lethal' weapons they have designed to use as 'crowd control.' The interview with the retired cop is so-so, but the first part is very good.

http://www.commondreams.org/video/2011/11/22

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. Very

It s not fun, neither is tear gas.

[texanwitch]

3. I got some on my leg once, it burned and hurt like hell.

The spot on my leg was very red, stayed red for a few days.

To have pepper spray in the eyes has to be so damn painful.

I can't watch the video anymore of the kids getting hit with pepper spray.

I would like to spray the cop the same way.

I hate bullies.

[Codeine]

4. I had a fair amount blow back on me in a self-defense incident.

Even that minor contact was really unpleasant. The fellow I doused was in agony.

[texanwitch]

5. Yep

To bad the wind wasn't blowing toward the coward cop.

The pain had to be so intense to get spayed so close in the eyes.

[-..__...]

6. "Pepper spray is some bad shit".

"Don't be a beech"...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8IGDIujijQ

[spin]

7. Try this experiment ...

Find an opened Tabasco bottle. Rub your finger around the top getting just a very little Tabasco on your finger. Touch your eye.

I love hot sauce and Tabasco is hardly hot to me. I can please a teaspoon of the stuff in my mouth and it has little effect.

One time at work in the cafeteria I used a large bottle of Tabasco sauce from the condiments table and got some of the sauce on my fingers. While I was eating I rubbed my eye. I was in tears for five minutes.

The stuff the cops spray is far more powerful than Tabasco sauce. Tabasco sauce has a Scoville rating of 2500 to 5000. Police grade pepper spray is rated at 5,300,000. (sources:http://www.tabasco.com/info_booth/faq/scoville_range.cfm http://healthland.time.com/2011/11/22/how-painful-is-pepper-spray/#ixzz1eTRsCQXt

[FarCenter]

8. It's "natural" and "organic".

[valerief]

10. Just like breathing carbon dioxide. nt

[deaniac21]

11. I have been pepper sprayed and was once given a concussion

by a drunk cop with a night stick. I preferred the pepper.

[npk]

12. It's not just being pepper sprayed

It's the quantity and potency that does the damage. Most cops wear a small bottle of pepper spray on their gun belt. This has a small quantity of the active chemical and the effects are normally mild with applying lots of water to the eyes and any skin area affected by the pepper spray. But when a large quantity of pepper spray is released at extremely closes range and has a much higher potency, such as the case in the UC Davis incident, the effects can be far worse. Because it is such a large amount of the chemical and it's at close range the person can experience rapid respiratory shock and severe irratation to the affected areas of the skin. Many people, especially people who have problems breathing from conditions such as asthma, can suffer respiratory failure. Though it's not common, in those extreme cases the person can suffer very serious medical problems and even death.

Pepper spray should be treated the same way a taser is treated. And most police departments put both pepper spray and a taser on the same level of force.

[mwrguy]

13. Here's a demo. Looks painful as hell.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkYdt-7MOUs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ri92rg22GnE