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tazzygirl -> RE: Video - Pepper Spray Incident Debunked (11/25/2011 6:10:02 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: lovmuffin
quote:
ORIGINAL: Lucylastic
There have been deaths attributed to pepper spray, but calling it wussy while sititng at a computer desk is easy
I doubt any deaths from that wussy stuff. It just didn't seem they were gaggin and chokin like I would have expected from a stronger product.
Blum notes that in a 1995 report [PDF], the American Civil Liberties Union of California cited 26 deaths between 1993 and 1995 possibly linked to pepper-spray use by police (that's 1 death for every 600 uses); most deaths involved people who had underlying health problems like asthma. And in 1999, following an incident in which California police officers dipped cotton swabs into pepper spray and then forced them into the eyes of anti-logging protesters, the ACLU asked an appeals court to declare the use of pepper spray to be dangerous and cruel.
How painful is getting pepper-sprayed? For starters, as Blum points out, police-grade pepper spray gets 5,300,000 Scoville heat units on the Scoville scale of pepper hotness. Compare that to 350,000 Scoville units for the habanero. (Pepper spray — or OC spray, as it's also known — contains the same compound that makes peppers hot, capsaicin, in a super-concentrated extract called oleoresin capsicum.)
In most cases, pepper spray is non-lethal, but it is known to cause irreparable harm or, as we've noted, death. According to a 2004 paper by researchers at the University of North Carolina School of Public Health and Duke University Medical Center, high-dose exposure to OC spray can produce "adverse cardiac, respiratory, and neurological effects, including arrhythmias and sudden death"; acute exposure also causes "nausea, fear and disorientation." Wrote the researchers:
Respiratory responses to OC spray include burning of the throat, wheezing, dry cough, shortness of breath, gagging, gasping, inability to breathe or speak (due to laryngospasm or laryngeal paralysis), and, rarely, cyanosis, apnea, and respiratory arrest. Nasal application of capsaicin causes sneezing, irritation, and reflex mucus secretion. Its inhalation can cause acute hypertension (similar to ammonia inhalation), which in turn can cause headache and increase the risk of stroke or heart attack.
Getting pepper-sprayed is worse than getting maced [PDF] — 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."
Following the misuse of pepper spray at U.C. Davis, one of the university's faculty members, Nathan Brown, an assistant professor of English, called for the resignation of the school's chancellor, Linda P.B. Katehi, for issuing the order to police to clear the quad of student protesters. In an open letter, he described the force (some of which you don't see in the video) used by police against the students, peacefully protesting in solidarity with the Occupy movement:
Without any provocation whatsoever, other than the bodies of these students sitting where they were on the ground, with their arms linked, police pepper-sprayed students. Students remained on the ground, now writhing in pain, with their arms linked.
What happened next?
Police used batons to try to push the students apart. Those they could separate, they arrested, kneeling on their bodies and pushing their heads into the ground. Those they could not separate, they pepper-sprayed directly in the face, holding these students as they did so. When students covered their eyes with their clothing, police forced open their mouths and pepper-sprayed down their throats. Several of these students were hospitalized. Others are seriously injured. One of them, forty-five minutes after being pepper-sprayed down his throat, was still coughing up blood.
Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2011/11/22/how-painful-is-pepper-spray/#ixzz1em0Vp4jm
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