Chlorine devastating because the existing gas masks were difficult to deploy and had not been broadly distributed. Chlorine is the second halogen, being a nonmetal in group 17 of the periodic table. Its properties are thus similar to fluorine, bromine, and iodine, and are largely intermediate between those of the first two. Chlorine has the electron configuration [Ne]3s3p, with the seven electrons in the third and outermost shell acting as its valence electrons. Like all halogens, it is thus one electron short of a full octet, and is hence a strong oxidising agent, reacting with many elements in order to complete
Bromine participate in chemical reactions (the noble gases, with the exception of xenon in the very unstable XeBr); extreme nuclear instability hampering chemical investigation before decay and transmutation (many of the heaviest elements beyond bismuth); and having an electronegativity higher than bromine's (oxygen, nitrogen, fluorine, and chlorine), so that the resultant binary compounds are formally not bromides but rather oxides, nitrides, fluorides, or chlorides of bromine. (Nonetheless, nitrogen tribromide is named as a bromide as it is analogous to the other nitrogen trihalides.) Bromination of metals with Br tends to yield lower oxidation states than chlorination with Cl when a variety