Blythe Terrell

It's about whether tear gas can affect you over the long term.

Because there's this idea that you get tear gassed, it feels terrible, you have these awful symptoms in the moment.

But a few hours later, you know, you like start to feel better, you recover from that stuff.

Right.

But some research is suggesting that, you know, that's not always true.

I mean, for one thing, people get hit with these canisters, leading to injuries, blindness, even death.

And then from the gas, there are reports of ongoing respiratory problems, neurological problems.

And then after these events, people report mental health issues, PTSD.

Sure, yeah.

Which makes sense, right?

Like it's not just the tear gas.

If you're experiencing tear gas, there's probably a lot of other things going on that are going to potentially contribute to mental health issues, right?

But one of the things that caught my eye here is that we're actually starting to see more and more reports of health stuff that, like, you might not expect.

So, for example, researchers did a big survey of people in Portland, Oregon, after the 2020 protests.

I don't know if you remember.

There were, like, weeks and weeks of protests in Portland after George Floyd's murder.

Yeah.

And so a bunch of people reported symptoms that showed up hours or even days later, and

And one of the things that I thought was really interesting is that a lot of people reported gastrointestinal stuff, like diarrhea or cramping.

So about like almost 30% of the people who said that they had some delayed issues, some delayed effects, they experienced GI stuff.