Teargas: a booming market in repressing dissent | Anna Feigenbaum

To weapons companies, Turkish protests sit alongside terrorism as another sales opportunity. It's time to stop the mass poisoningIn the wake of the protests in Turkey, much has been written and said about the iconic "woman in the red dress" pictured in Istanbul's Gezi Park. But there's another story in the photograph that has been circulating around the globe. What do we know about the spray can in the policeman's hand?First developed for domestic markets in the 1920s, teargas dispensers expanded from first world war grenades to a series of other hand-held contraptions. Everything from fountain pens to police batons were designed to shoot out spurts of poison. Early industry leader, Lake Erie Chemical Company, promoted its gas as "an irresistible blast of blinding choking pain". These weapons quickly caught on, bought in bulk by police departments, colonial outposts and prison security guards.In the 1960s mace sprays came on to the market following advancements in aerosol technologies. Lake Erie again led the way, packaging its product with holsters designed by Smith & Wesson. But it wasn't until Kamran Loghman worked with the FBI to develop a weapons-grade pepper spray that teargas really caught on as an everyday control agent.By 1991 Loghman's invention was on the utility belts of police across the United States. Soon after, similar sprays reached Canada and the UK, with growing exports elsewhere. It didn't take long before legal cases arose from sprays being abused during ...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Comment World news guardian.co.uk Protest Technology UK news Weapons technology UK security and counter-terrorism Turkey Science Comment is free Source Type: news