Gary XIII 
GAS CLEANSING STATIONS 
Uy 
William H. Cary, Jr. 
Sanitary Engineer (R)» USPHS 
Sixth and Seventh Civilian Defense Regions 
For the sake of clarity I want to repeat what has already been said 
in regard to decontamination and cleansing and the definition of 
those two terms. The term decontamination is used in referring to 
the removal or neutralization of chemical agents that have contaminated 
inanimate objects—streets, open areas, buildings, and vehicles. The 
removal or neutralization of a chemical agent on a person is termed 
cleansing, as we noted this morning in the discussion on the gas 
cleansing stations. 
The facilities I am going to discuss will be devoted to the 
use of injured persons who in addition have been contaminated with a 
vesicant. 
The ordinary citizen, that is, the ambulatory patient or the person 
who is uninjured and is a chemical casualty, will have to apply self- 
aid in his home or at some place that has been established in the 
sector by the Warden. Each Warden's post is supposed to be provided 
with soap and water so that the Warden can cleanse himself if he 
becomes a chemical casualty. If an incident occurs in his neighbor- 
hood, it is very likely that he will have to do that. In case the 
post itself is an incident, that is, destroyed by either a fire bomb 
or a high explosive bomb, the Warden is going to need some alternate 
place to go. He is going to have to make arrangements with the 
janitor of some apartment house or some home nearby for the use of 
the bathroom and shower facilities. Ke likely will seek places 
where they may have a basement shower, where it is rather easy for a 
person to get into without going through the rest of the house. He 
will also have to make arrangements for individuals who may be caught 
in the street to get into this place and cleanse themselves. 
Ambulatory persons will not be sent to the cleansing stations that we 
have under discussion this morning. It probably will be necessary to 
have guards stationed on the outside to keep such persons from inter- 
fering with the operation of the cleansing station while the injured 
are being attended. 
c 
There is a second use to which the cleansing station may be put. 
Certain members of the protection personnel, such as Gas Reconnaissance' 
Agents and the Decontamination Units, will need places where they can 
come and take off their protective clothing and cleanse themselves. 
After the injured have been taken care of in the cleansing station, it 
is very likely that.the cleansing station will be used by some of the 
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protective services fob thai purpose. Then there is also the problem 
of taking care of dead bodies. They may be handled at the cleansing 
station or at the morgue. That depends on the feetup and arrangements 
you make in your community. 
The thing to remember is that the cleansing station is designed pri- 
marily to protect the hospital, the doctor, and the nurse rather than 
to do much for the patient, V/e have heard a good deal in the last 
two days about the rapidity with which some of these vesicants act; 
we realize that it may not be a matter of minutes but it may be half 
an hour or so from the time a person is a chemical casualty until you 
get him into the cleansing station. Therefore, the treatment given 
in the cleansing station will not be of much value to the patient ex- 
cept in preventing the extension of contamination and consequent burns, 
I am primarily interested in the construction of the cleansing station. 
In that task, you may request the assistance of the Senior Gas Officer 
in your local community or the State Gas Consultant, and it is about 
that Job that I want to tell you something today, and point out to you 
■where to get the information you need in your local communities. In 
your local community, if you are interested in setting up cleansing 
stations, seek out the Senior Gas Officer. He will be attached, as 
we said the other day, to the staff of the Commander, and he will be 
able to give you technical advice concerning this facility. 
Briefly, there are three parts to a cleansing station. There is an 
undressing room, where the patients are brought into the station 
itself, the cleansing room, and finally a dressing room territory 
which may actually be either your hospital receiving room or the 
casualty station to which the cleansing station is attached. The 
suggested size for a typical station vo uld be to have an undressing 
room with an area of about 4-00 square feet, a cleansing room with 
500 square feet of space, and then if a third room is provided, it, 
should have about 400 square feet of space. Between the undressing 
room and the cleansing room is a gas lock. This is provided to lock 
out the gas which is undoubtedly going to contaminate the air in the 
undressing room, since you are removing clothing that is likely to 
be badly contaminated* 
I have some diagrams here that we can look over, showing suggested 
room layouts and equipment. Incidentally, I want to point out that 
the walls, ceiling, and floor of this room should be sealed. You 
can effectively seal them by painting with two or three coats of 
sodium silicate (water glass). 
Just outside the undressing room is placed a shuffle box. This is 
similar to the shuffle box which was shown in the decontamination 
movie and which the men stepped into and shuffled around with their 
boots, rubbing the material around on them in order to remove any 
contamination that was on their feet. This prevents the carrying 
of contamination into the station. There are saw horses to take 
LI-8 05 6 Cary XIII 
4-6 stretchers, drains in the floor and large metal cans or bins 
for the contaminated clothes. The cahs, or bins, must have tight 
covers, so that the contaminated clothing can he covered up. You 
probably will need an additional supply of cans of this sort so 
that as these cans become filled they may he removed and fresh ones 
brought in. An exhaust fan at floor level is needed to remove con- 
taminated air. In this diagram I have suggested that the exhaust 
fan he away from the entrance so that if there is any leakage at 
ground level, the gas will not return through the doorway. You 
should carry a stack up the side of the huitding to dissipate the 
gas where it will not do any damage. 
Tables are provided with wash basins and hypochlorite solution, so 
that the people that are working here can wash their protective 
clothing and rubber gloves as they become contaminated, 
I have suggested also that we should have a couple of benches or 
chairs that could be used by sitting cases. The gas lock for passage 
into the cleansing room is shown in this diagram. This is a section 
through the lock. The curtain is rolled up at one end and pub on 
the shelf, where it will stay in ordinary circumstances so you can 
pass directly through the lock. The lock should be about 10 feet 
long and about 3 feet wide, so that two men and the stretcher can 
get completely into it. The entrance curtain can be put down tight 
to shut off air completely from the lock before we open the outlet 
curtain and pass into the other room, so vhufc there is never a clear 
passage for air through the lock. 
The cleansing room is about 25$ larger than the undressing room, and 
should be supplied with additional equipment. The trash cans may be 
smaller, because you are not going to handle clothing—you are only 
going to have swabs and other materials that have been used for 
cleansing. Cans should open with a foot treadle and be easy of 
operation. Hose connections are furnished for washing the stretcher 
cases. Again benches are suggested for the sitting cases. Showers 
are provided for use in the cleansing of the station personnel and 
other protection personnel. 
An ample number of floor drains are required to carry away any vesi- 
cant as rapidly as possible. Included also are wash stands and 
eye irrigation equipment. 
When the patient has been cleansed, v/e are ready to turn him over 
to the hospital personnel. An area is marked out in the cleansing 
room, maybe by a curbing that is kept clean. Transfer horses are 
erected over the marking or curbing and the patient transferred from 
the cleansing room personnel to the hospital personnel at this point. 
A clean dry stretcher would likely be used from here on. 
M-8056 Cary XIII 
The exhaust fan will reduce the pressure in the undressing room so 
that any flow of air will tend to go from the dressing room to the 
undressing room, We probably would put a curtain across the doorway 
from the cleansing room to the hospital to prevent any appreciable 
flow of air into the hospital. The patients coming into the cleansing 
room still have some vesicant on their skin, so that air in this room 
is somewhat contaminated. 
It is not possible to construct new buildings now. Nor is it possible 
to set up at this time elaborate cleansing stations. The things that 
we have to consider are these; (1) So far, war gases have not been 
used against the United States; (2) The construction of such stations 
would be rather an expensive item; (3) There is a scarcity of mate- 
rials, particularly the plumbing and other metal parts; (X) The actual 
building of these stations at this time might to some extent interfere 
with the present use of our hospital facilities. The opportunity to 
use such secondhand materials as are available should not be overlooked. 
Now let us see how we should approach the problem in order to meet ade- 
quately the needs of the moment. First, of course, we are only going 
to provide these facilities for a specific group, the seriously in-* 
jured who are contaminated. It may be possible to utilize the same 
facilities for the cleansing of certain personnel of the Citizens 
Defense Corps as mentioned above. All other persons will be expected 
to apply the principles of self-aid as set forth in Operations Letter 
No. 128, 
It has been pointed out that in large industrial plants the principles 
of self aid cannot be effectively followed by the personnel because of 
a lack of suitable water outlets. This is a problem which must be 
worked by the plant protection personnel, and is therefore not a con- 
cern of the local medical gas officer unless his assistance is re- 
quested by the head of the plant protection service. 
In establishing cleansing stations one should utilize as far as pos- 
sible the existing structures that are available for conversion now, 
I am sure that all of you can think of some places that could be used. 
It has been suggested that each hospital of 150 beds or over, in the 
areas vulnerable to attack, should be provided with a cleansing sta- 
tion. Cleansing stations should be provided within the ratio of 
about 1 to every 50,000 of population. If 150 bed or larger hospitals 
are not available, you should use the smaller hospitals, or if it is 
indicated by the geographical location you should utilize the casualty 
stations. Improvised cleansing, stations can be made in hydrotherapy 
rooms. Considerable plumbing is already in place in such rooms. They 
can be arranged in nurses' locker and shower rooms at the hospital. 
They could be part of the out-patient department. Garages or other 
separate buildings at hospitals could be converted. School shower 
rooms, when schools are close to the hospitals, can be used. Maybe 
you will want to run a cleansing station at a school which is several 
blocks from the hospital and shuttle some clean ambulances back and 
forth. Gymnasiums and shower rooms, and shower rooms in clubhouses, 
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including the Y.M.C.A,‘s and the Y.W.C.A.'s, hotel washrooms with 
outside entrance, and gasoline filling stations, if of appropriate 
design, may be converted. 
You will notice that there has been no gas lock indicated to the 
outside for this cleansing station. It is not intended that this 
station would be able to operate in an area under gas attack. In 
other words, if your cleansing station were contaminated itself, you 
would not, under this plan of construction, be able to operate it as 
a cleansing station. 
There are a few minimal structural requirements that are needed for 
these improvised gas cleansing stations. In the first place, we 
should have a separate entrance, that is, an entrance which leads 
directly to the cleansing station, into the undressing room, from 
the outside. There should be an undressing space of about 100 square 
feet. The walls and floor and ceiling should be made relatively non- 
absorbent. A gas lock should be constructed between the undressing 
and cleansing rooms. You may find that the doorway between the two 
rooms needs enlarging in order to get this type of construction in 
here and get a 3 foot clearance to take your stretchers through. 
The cleansing room should properly have a tile or cement floor and 
be well drained. Remember, in the cleansing room you are going to 
have lots of water on the floor, and my recommendation is to keep 
the drainage around the outside wall. Do not clutter up the middle 
of your floor with a drain if you can help it. 
You will need plenty of hose outlets and shower heads. If the 
cleansing station is a part of or in connection with a hospital, you 
may go directly from the cleansing room into the hospital receiving 
room with your patients, once they have been cleansed. 
If there is not a hospital room in connection, you should have a 
dressing room of at least 100 square feet in area in qrder to do 
first aid work before the patient is removed from there to the 
hospital, 
QUESTION; What about protective clothing for the people who first 
receive the gas casualties? 
MR. CARY; I am going to let Dr. Bennett take care of that under the 
Chain of Evacuation of Casualties, 
QUESTION; When these stations are actually in use, do you recommend 
having separate stations for men and women? 
MR. CARY; Dr, Bennett is recommending that you have both men and 
women attendants in the cleansing station. Separate facili- 
ties would not be provided at this time. 
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