Mustard Gas?

Once a week I get the honor of reviewing reports from US poison centers that contain items of public health interest.  Included in that list are any weapons of mass destruction.  Without that layer of review those calls would go directly to the CDC and Homeland Security.  This is a 24 hour a day service, as are poison centers, with a two hour response time as a goal. 

Last evening I reviewed a call to a poison center.  An adult male in Florida with dyspnea who was exposed to mustard gas.  Yikes!  Mustard gas was used in WWI as a chemical warfare agent.  It was known to cause skin and eye blistering on contact.  Plus difficulty breathing on inhalation of high concentrations.  Nasty stuff.  It was used against the Kurds by Iraq.  It was also found in Iraq during the second gulf war.  

So how did a homeowner in Florida get exposed to mustard gas?  It turns out he purchased an insecticide at Home Depot.  When he used it he developed difficulty breathing.  He called Home Depot to find out what was in the product.  The ever bright clerk at Home Deport, clearly feeling some holiday mischief, told him that the product contained mustard gas. Nice.  It turns out the product was likely a pyrethroid insecticide. 

In the end the patient was fine.  I wonder if the Home Depot guy knows how close he came to having someone from the CDC or FBI knocking on his door.