Please, please, please don’t pour milk on peoples’ faces who have been sprayed with any kind of chemical irritant. Milk, for a variety of reasons, may provide a momentary relief but is dangerous for our bodies in the long run. It can trap particles against your skin for longer prolonging your exposure to the chemicals, cause infections, and put bacteria in your eyes and face. Which is the opposite of what you need when dealing with chemical exposure. Additionally, the thick white substance will mark them clearly to the cops.
1. A clean water bottle with a sport top cap that will allow you to control the stream of water
2. Have your comrade kneel, ask if they have contacts in. If they do - have them take it out. I know it’s painful but contacts need to come out.
3. Ask them to try and keep their eyes open/blinking while you rinse them out. You are physically pushing the particles out of their eyes, which is easier when their eyes are open. Blinking will help too as you do this. That is our bodies natural way to clear out irritants.
4. Use a diagonal motion starting at the bridge of the nose and use a steady stream of water to flush out towards the corner of eyes away from face. You are physically removing the chemical irritants for someone’s faces. Repeat on other side.
5. You may need to do this multiple times. IT IS WORTH IT. Think of it like an eye wash in your high school chemical class. This is actually removing the irritants from your face.
6. Contact free spray water in their mouths and if you can have them rinse their mouth and spit far away from you (this is tough with COVID).
7. When they get home do not wear contaminated clothes into the house as much as possible. Put them straight into a washer at high heat. Run an empty cycle between to get rid of the chemicals.
8. Get in the shower right away. Use sturdy soap and let the water run off of your body. Do your best to avoid contaminated water entering your face or genital areas. That is not comfortable.
9. Drink LOTS of water, rest, and listen to your body afterwards. These chemicals impact us and you will need time to recover and heal.
Thousands of Puerto Ricans marked May Day by joining a general strike in the capital of San Juan to protest austerity measures, from the closing of public schools to increases in university tuition. When protesters tried to converge on the building where the federal financial oversight board has its offices, police fired tear gas and pepper spray.
Protester Raina Ramírez, a chemistry student, described the violence:
“The police surrounded us. They blocked us from each side, and they didn’t let us through. They began throwing tear gas at us, and I couldn’t get out. I have asthma. And with that and running away, my asthma situation became more difficult.“
Second in a series of comics i did with @this.is.ysabel to add to your Street Medic resources. This one’s about teargas. Feel free to share as you deem helpful. Happy early Juneteenth. Happy Pride. Black Lives Matter. Black Trans Lives Matter.
In the Palestinian village of Bilin – near the West Bank city of Ramallah – residents have planted flowers in hundreds of spent Israeli tear gas grenades collected after clashes with Israeli security forces.
The garden is “meant to show that life can spring from death.”
For the first time, a resident of Nabi Saleh was killed in the weekly demonstrations, and it came as a shock to villagers and international activists alike [credit: Lazar Simeonov]
