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Chemical weapons dumped in oceans
Posted on Sunday, November 13, 2005 (CST) by Thoth
 In the summer of 2004, a clam-dredging operation off New Jersey pulled up an old artillery shell. The long-submerged World War I-era explosive was filled with a black tarlike substance.
Bomb disposal technicians from Dover Air Force Base, Del., were brought in to dismantle it. Three of them were injured -- one hospitalized with large pus-filled blisters on an arm and hand. The shell was filled with mustard gas in solid form.
What was long feared by the few military officials in the know had come to pass: Chemical weapons that the Army dumped at sea decades ago finally ended up on shore in the United States. It has long been known that some chemical weapons went into the ocean, but records show that the previously classified weapons-dumping program was far more extensive than ever suspected.
The Army now
admits that it secretly dumped 64 million pounds of nerve and mustard
agents into the sea, along with 400,000 chemical-filled bombs, land
mines and rockets and more than 500 tons of radioactive waste -- either
tossed overboard or packed into the holds of scuttled vessels.
An investigation also found:
- These weapons of mass
destruction virtually ring the country, concealed off at least 11
states -- six on the East Coast, two on the Gulf Coast, California,
Hawaii and Alaska. Few, if any, state officials have been informed of
their existence.
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The chemical agents could
pose a hazard for generations. The Army has examined only a few of its
26 dump zones and none in the past 30 years.
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The Army can't say
exactly where all the weapons were dumped from World War II to 1970.
Army records are sketchy, missing or were destroyed.
-
More dump sites probably
exist. The Army hasn't reviewed World War I-era records, when ocean
dumping of chemical weapons was common.
"We do not claim to know
where they all are," said William Brankowitz, a deputy project manager
in the Army Chemical Materials Agency and a leading authority on the
Army's chemical weapons dumping.
"We don't want to be cavalier at all and say this stuff was exposed to water and is OK. It can last for a very, very long time."
Dangerous Substances
A drop of nerve agent can
kill within a minute. When released in the ocean, it lasts up to six
weeks, killing every organism it touches before breaking down into its
nonlethal chemical components.
Mustard gas can be fatal.
When exposed to seawater, it forms a concentrated, encrusted gel that
lasts for at least five years, rolling around on the ocean floor,
killing or contaminating sea life.
Sea-dumped chemical weapons
might be slowly leaking from decades of saltwater corrosion, resulting
in a time-delayed release of deadly chemicals over the next100 years
and an unforeseeable environmental effect. Steel corrodes at different
rates, depending on the water depth, ocean temperature and thickness of
the shells.
That was the conclusion of
Norwegian scientists who in 2002 examined chemical weapons dumped off
Norway after World War II by the U.S. and British militaries.
Overseas, more than200
fishermen over the years have been burned by mustard gas pulled on
deck. A fisherman in Hawaii was burned in 1976 when he brought up an
Army-dumped mortar round full of mustard gas.
It seems unlikely that the
weapons will begin to wash up on shore, but last year's discovery that
a mustard-gas-filled artillery shell was dumped off New Jersey was
ominous for several reasons:
- It was the first ocean-dumped chemical weapon to somehow make its way to U.S. shores.
-
It was pulled up with
clams in relatively shallow water only 20 miles off Atlantic City. The
Army had no idea that chemical weapons were dumped in the area.
-
Most alarming: It was found intact in a residential driveway in Delaware.
-
It had survived, intact,
after being dredged up and put through a crusher to create cheap
clamshell driveway fill sold throughout the Delmarva Peninsula.
Easy Disposal
The Army's secret ocean-dumping program spanned decades, from 1944 to 1970.
The dumped weapons were
deemed to be unneeded surplus. They were hazardous to transport,
expensive to store, too dangerous to bury and difficult to destroy.
In the early 1970s, the
Army publicly admitted it dumped some chemical weapons off the U.S.
coast. Congress banned the practice in 1972. Three years later, the
United States signed an international treaty prohibiting ocean disposal
of chemical weapons.
Only now have Army reports
come to light that show how much was dumped, what kind of chemical
weapons they were, when they were thrown overboard and rough nautical
coordinates of where some are.
The reports contain bits
and pieces of information on the Army's long-running dumping program.
The reports were released to the Newport News, Va., Daily Press --
which cross-indexed them to obtain the most comprehensive, detailed
picture yet of what was dumped, where and when.
To put the information in
context, the newspaper also examined nautical charts, National Archive
records, scientific studies and interviewed dozens of experts on
unexploded ordnance and chemical warfare in the United States and
overseas.
Unknown Effect
The environmental effect of chemical weapons dump sites is unknown but potentially disastrous.
Ocean depth varies widely
off the East Coast. As a rule, it gradually deepens to 600 feet before
hitting the outer continental shelf, which drops into very deep water.
The shelf's location can be as close as60 miles, or as far as 200
miles, from shore.
"The perception at the time
was the ocean is vast -- it would absorb it," said Craig Williams,
director of the Chemical Weapons Working Group in Kentucky, a
grass-roots citizens group. "Certainly, it is insane in retrospect they
would do it."
One of the first of the
now-identified dump zones created at the end of World War II was also
one of the largest. The Army dubbed it Disposal Site Baker.
The Army has only the
vaguest idea where it is on the ocean floor -- somewhere off the coast
of Charleston, S.C., the most specific surviving records indicate.
"I have never had any
information to suggest this was done," said Charles Farmer, a marine
biologist who's worked for South Carolina's Department of Natural
Resources for almost 40 years.
"I would say this is not
well-known to us at all. This is something that is new, at least to me.
It's incredible some of the things we've managed to do."
The first documented dump
near that state was in March 1946, when four railroad cars full of
mustard gas bombs and mines were tossed over the side of the USS
Diamond Head, an ammunition ship.
Several months later, an
estimated 23 barges full ofGerman-produced nerve gas bombs and
U.S.-made Lewisite bombs were dumped in the same location. Lewisite is
a blister agent akin to mustard gas. A single barge carried up to 350
tons.
There's one indication that
those weapons were dumped in relatively shallow water: Army records
show many of those 23 slow-moving barges were unloaded in one-day,
out-and-back operations.
The records leave no doubt that other chemical weapons were dumped close to shore:
- In 1944, at least 16,000mustard-filled 100-pound bombs were unloaded off Hawaii in deep water only five miles from shore.
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Several mustard gas bombs fell into the Mississippi River near Braithwaite, La., in 1945 and have never been found.
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A reported 124 leaking
German mustard gas bombs were tossed in the Gulf of Mexico off Horn
Island in Mississippi in 1946 from a barge that returned to port a few
hours later. The island is now part of Gulf Islands National Seashore,
a popular vacation and fishing destination.
-
A 1947 dump site in Alaska's Aleutian Islands is only 12 miles from a harbor.
The effect of the dumping
operations has never been studied. Few scientists knew that it was
done, so studies of the decline in sea life over the years has never
focused on the possibility of leaking chemical weapons.
"It'd be nice to see the
Army go down there and investigate, but nobody wants to open that book,
it seems," said Bob Schoelkopf, director of the Marine Mammal Stranding
Center in Brigantine, N.J. "You'd think they'd want to go look at those
sites and say once and for all this isn't a problem. The amazing thing
is they are not being monitored."
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