1-25-21: Cleaning Up DHS Chemical Weapons in a Playground

Good morning, I’m here at the Cottonwood school, which is next to the ICE building, site of many Portland protests

I’m here with Dr @JuniperLSimonis to answer the most cheerful question possible: how badly contaminated is this K-8 school by dangerous and carcinogenic substances?

(Not quite true: the most cheerful possible question is what effect HC smoke and other chemical weapons have on children, a thing we may yet find out)

Federal Agents Used Toxic Chemical Smoke Grenades in Portland

I’m writing these tweets live, but by the time you read this the cleanup is over. That’s because the far right likes to come and harass this school whenever people do things like try to clean it of hazardous chemicals

Yes, really

Both sides tho, right?

The Cottonwood school gets far-right harassment because of their signs. These free speech advocates don’t like them. They’ve ripped them down so many times the school had to erect scaffolding behind the fence to hang them

The people who work at the school regularly clear the playground of pepper balls, both spent and unspent

They’ve also collected something they’ve described as “golf balls.” Dr. Simonis explains that this is a munition no longer manufactured and asks for pictures

Seems bad

The Cottonwood school is a tuition-free charter school that teaches K-8

They’ve had to lock down previously due to far-right counter-protests at the ICE building. Amanda McAdoo, the director of this school, tells us the BLM protesters have always been friendly

Things in this playground:

* A sandbox where kids dig with their hands
*An absorbant rope cargo net that kids climb
*A rock climbing wall
*An appalling number of chemical munitions

(Pics of all the munitions at the end of this thread)

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Amanda McAdoo, director of the Cottonwood school, tells us they’ve looked for another building without success. It was hard enough to find this building, she says

Chemical weapons are going to continue to be a problem here. It’s a very bad situation

If you’re wondering how it’s legal to have a jail next to a school, so is the school! They suspect it’s a legal loophole since no one is held overnight

Jake, the school PE teacher, shows Dr Simonis the softball-sozed munitions they’ve found in the playground. Dr. Simonis says these explode with enough force to split in half

Dr. Simonis has found duds on surrounding sidewalks–things that could explode in a curious child’s hands

Amanda tells us ICE had never–not once–reached out to the school about the chemical weapons soaking into their playground equipment

@JFlorencePDX, @R3volutionDaddy and I went next door to the ICE building. The person we talked to told us no one was available to take questions

As we talk about the situation with the school officials, before the search even atarts, Morgan from Team Raccoon finds a pepper balls in the leaves of–and I cannot emphasize this enough–this CHILD’S PLAYGROUND

It still has tear gas residue on it

(Someone is going to say “wELl mAyBE tHe pROtEsTeRS sHoULd sTOp prOtEStInG aT ICE”

Maybe ICE should stop using chemical weapons, how about that?

Maybe they should stop putting kids in cages

Maybe you should reassess your ideas about who’s responsible here)

The school workers ask if they can help. Dr. Simonis gratefully accepts, but emphasizes that anyone who helps needs chemical-resistant gloves, a respirator, and eye protection

For the heavy metals

In this playground

As people start to get to work someone threw this weird thing into the playground

Maybe a coincidence? Super weird for sure

Amanda and her son Robin start setting up a grid with orange flags so Juniper and the team can keep track of where they found what

@R3volutionDaddy picking up munitions just outside the school fence

That’s the ICE building in the background

@JuniperLSimonis holds up a tiny rubber pellet. This is buckshot, which comes out of those softball-sized munitions pictures upthread

These are the exact same size as salmon eggs. When these wash down storm drains and into the river, fish that eat salmon eggs think they’re food

Here’s how much buckshot we found just on this one playground after just 3 days of heavy action

Not only do these harm fish that eat them, they decompose and pollute the water. “Anyone who worries about plastic straws should also be worried about these,” Dr Simonis says

Everyone here–jpirnalists and volunteers alike–comb the playground for munitions

It’s like the worst game of Where’s Waldo

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We also find normal playground stuff, which somehow makes the chemical weapons even more heartbreaking

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Small, round objects covered in CS powder are bad for children, but that’s not even REMOTELY the worst thing in here

Here’s an OC grenade that rolled under thee fence and fumigated the entire playground on January 23rd

@JuniperLSimonis was there when the OC grenade entered the playground and, after ripping the DHS agents a new one, hopped the fence to retrieve it

But that’s not even remotely the worst thing they retrieved from the schoolyard after they got in

Someone said they saw a munition land on one of the shelter roofs in the playground, which are made of plastic siding. Juniper found a way up to a narrow ledge where they could maneuver to the roof and check

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Once on top, Dr. Simones saw it: a CS Triple Chaser canister burning its way through the plastic siding, surrounded by leaves and with a tree branch nearly touching the munition

Triple Chasers burn at 600 °C

Luckily it was pouring. What would have happened if it had been dry?

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While showing me the rooftop hole, Dr Simones noticed another scorchmark on this roof

We can’t prove it was a different munition of course, but why not? Why not two burned-out holes on a roof used to shelter children while they play and learn?

Meanwhile, volunteers take soil samples at grid intervals and also everywhere they find a munition. Carefully mark each one, document where it was found, and place it in the collection bucket

Dr. Simones will send only a few of these samples for testing at first–probably a diagonal row–for fast results

They’re especially interested in whether the soil contains chromium, zinc, aluminum, barium, and/or chlorate, all of which are bad for everyone but especially kids

What do heavy metals like chromium and zinc do to kids? They bioaccumulate in livers and kidneys, raising the chance of cancer later

Zinc can seriously impact bone growth, leaving these children with lifelong medical problems

Speaking of cancer, here are some spent pepper balls rounds we found

The red and black ones contain a mixture of OC and Pavan, a synthetic capcisin powder. These hurt

But it’s the purple and white ones that could give you cancer. Those are full of talc

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-causes/talcum-powder-and-cancer.html

These are “pogs”–cardboard separators found within munitions that keep chemicals from reacting until after ignition

I wonder how many trace chemicals are on these. I wonder what they do to the human body. I wonder what they do to kids who might find them while playing

Here’s a full picture of everything found on–and I know I keep saying this but holy shit–a CHILD’S PLAYGROUND

This is just 3 days’ worth out of 8 months’ unrest

This will keep happening

And in 20 years some major newspaper will do a big expose on all the health problems repeated exposure to chemical weapons did to kids, and everyone will be like “WE DIDN’T KNOW”

We DID know

The government just didn’t care

Originally tweeted by Laura Jedeed, Space Professional (@LauraJedeed) on January 25, 2021.