Tear gas during COVID-19 is a public health disaster
Protesters in Washington, D.C. faced off with canisters of tear gas at the end of May. (Koshu Kunii/Unsplash/)Grey clouds waft over scattering crowds in the footage from Seattle this past Sunday. The yells and screams of police and protesters alike are punctuated by shots of flare guns. Eventually, the street empties out, but the haze of tear gas continues to swirl under the lights.As more and more dissidents take to the streets in solidarity with Black Lives Matter, US police have unleashed some dangerous crowd-control tools, possibly exacerbating the continued health risks of COVID-19. Cities like Seattle are still seeing hundreds of new cases each week—and doctors worry that dispersing mass amounts of tear gas could needlessly damage people’s lungs and cause greater risk of virus exposure.“The coronavirus is still quite active … and we will likely see a rise in cases,” says Anna Nolan, a pulmonologist at New York...