Tear gas at protests: the state fires first and never checks what it does to bodies

According to Libération, the police should stop using tear gas at demonstrations until its effects on health are known. The daily cites a death under suspicious circumstances in Paris, disrupted menstrual cycles and poorly assessed dangers. It accuses the government of having endorsed the massive use of this chemical substance against the population, for lack of precise medical studies.

The file provided is thin. At this stage, we do not know who the deceased person was, whether or how their death has been linked to the gas, or how many women have reported problems. Libération speaks of "suspicious" circumstances: let us keep that word as it is. What follows is our reading, not an established fact.

Let us start with the detail that press releases prefer to forget: a disrupted menstrual cycle is not one anecdote more in the cloud. It is a body that has breathed something in, then goes home with it. Yet nobody collects the empty canisters to find out what they left in the lungs, the skin, the belly. The gas dissipates within minutes on the boulevard; its consequences settle in the kitchen, the bathroom, the GP's surgery.

This is where the question becomes one of social reproduction, the work that makes and repairs people rather than producing commodities: caring, watching over, taking someone to the doctor, washing gas-soaked clothes, reassuring children who saw their mother coughing. This work is largely unpaid, often shouldered by women, and treated as external to "the economy". When the state exposes protesters to a substance whose effects it does not know, it does not eliminate the cost: it transfers it to households and, from there, to the public hospital already drained.

The irony is delicious: we demand proof of harmlessness for a shampoo, but not for what is fired at face height. Without studies, it is also impossible to compensate, to acknowledge, to prevent. Ignorance is convenient: without data, no responsibility.

There is finally a political effect. The unions know it: the right to demonstrate and to strike measures the balance of power among workers. If marching can cost you your health, or worse, without anyone knowing how much, then the entry price of protest rises, and it weighs most heavily on those who cannot afford to be ill: single parents, precarious workers, carers.

The precautionary principle, so dear to official speeches when it comes to regulating others, should apply here. Independent, publicly funded studies, with follow-up of those exposed: that is a modest demand. It costs less than a single winter of unrecognised care. The question remains whether the government truly wants to know the answer.