Lewisite - History

History

Lewisite was first synthesised in 1904 by Julius Arthur Nieuwland during studies for his PhD. His method involved reacting acetylene with arsenic trichloride in the presence of an aluminium chloride catalyst . Exposure to the resulting compound made Nieuwland so ill he was hospitalized for a number of days.

Lewisite is named after the US chemist and soldier Winford Lee Lewis (1878–1943). In 1918 Dr John Griffin (Julius Arthur Nieuwland's thesis advisor) drew Lewis's attention to Nieuwland's thesis at Maloney Hall, a chemical laboratory at The Catholic University of America, Washington DC. Lewis then attempted to purify the compound through distillation but found that the mixture exploded on heating until it was washed with HCl.

It was developed into a secret weapon at(a facility located in Cleveland, Ohio (The Cleveland Plant) at East 131st Street and Taft Avenue) and given the name "the new G-34" to confuse its development with mustard gas. Production began at a plant in Willoughby, Ohio on November 1, 1918. It was not used in World War I, but experimented with in the 1920s as the "Dew of Death."

After World War I, the US became interested in lewisite because it was not flammable. It had the military symbol of M1 up into World War II, when it was changed to L. Field trials with lewisite during World War II demonstrated that casualty concentrations were not achievable under high humidity due to its rate of hydrolysis and its charactistic odor and lacrymation forced troops to don masks and avoid contaminated areas. The United States produced about 20,000 tons of lewisite, keeping it on hand primarily as an antifreeze for mustard gas or to penetrate protective clothing in special situations.

It was replaced by the mustard gas variant HT (a 60:40 mixture of sulfur mustard and O Mustard), and declared obsolete in the 1950s. It is effectively treated with British anti-lewisite (dimercaprol). Most stockpiles of lewisite were neutralized with bleach and dumped into the Gulf of Mexico, but some remained at the Deseret Chemical Depot located outside of Salt Lake City, UT, although as of January 18, 2012 the last of the global stockpile there was destroyed.

In 2010, lewisite was found in a World War I weapons dump in Washington, DC.