Chemical Weapon Munitions Dumped at Sea: An Interactive Map | Hacker News Reader

Chemical Weapon Munitions Dumped at Sea: An Interactive Map

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46 pointsGracana32 comments

There has been work done on the fate of chemical weapons dumped into the ocean, especially mustard gas.[1]

Interestingly, many bacteria can feed directly on the hydrolysis products (after the mustard gas reacts with water) and use them as a carbon source.

The MGHP-degrading microorganisms identified as Achromobacter sp., Pseudomonas sp., and Arthrobacter sp. were isolated. These microorganisms were capable of utilizing the major product of hydrolysis, thiodiglycol, as the sole source of carbon and energy. The bacteria were capable of metabolizing MGHPs at a low temperature. The metabolic pathway for thiodiglycol degradation was proposed. The results suggest the potential for MGHPs biodegradation by naturally occurring populations of near-bottom-water and sediment microorganisms.

[1]http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19481794

According to a little googling [1] mustard gas breaks down in water (although slower in salt water) and doesn't bioconcentrate as well.

1: https://books.google.com/books?id=G8O4KUEyIXAC&pg=PA35&lpg=P...

Anyone know why there were dumped into the ocean instead of being destroyed? I'd wager a great deal of the dumped ordinance is still in-tact at the bottom of the ocean, albeit corroded. The plethora of buried mines and other unexploded ordinance still being found from WWI and WWII speak to munitions longevity.

After WW II dumping into the ocean was seen as destroying it. Our modern understanding of "The Environment" post-dates that time period. In 1950 there were about 2.5 billion people in the World, and that was a big new thing. The petrochemical industry was still in it's youth. Colorful car paints were the new thing. Colorful, synthetic fabrics were just being developed. A lot of our current understanding is the result of our past mistakes. Like lighting rivers on fire.

Exactly. Consider ... lead paint, everywhere. Leaded gasoline was the norm, EVERYWHERE, with little exception.

Well, that's a different issue, having to do with the also relatively recent understanding that trace amounts of a substance can also be toxic over long intervals.

It's exactly the issue. Trace amounts of military weapons in the ocean are probably a bad idea, too. The whole business of environmentalism is post-war. Mostly since Rachael Carson's "Silent Spring".

So... the solution to pollution is dilution?

Out of sight, out of mind.

Price.

Dumping something in the sea is far more economical that expending money properly disposing it.

Of course they did not solve the problem. They just make their grandchildren pay for it.

6th Fundamental Truth of Networking: It is easier to move a problem around than it is to solve it.

... RFC1925 via https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup

Quantity and time, some of these dumps have well over 10,000 tonnes (the largest point looks to have 200,000 tonnes). Loading them on ships and scuttling them out in the ocean is quick, the alternative is having them all sitting around in warehouses for years while they're slowly decommissioned, and hoping an accident or terrorist doesn't bathe half the country in mustard gas.

Interesting how nearly all the sites are so darned close to the shore. I'm guessing the conversation goes like this:

• "hey, we need to get rid of these, let's do it in that giant body of water nearby"

• "okay, whatever, what's the minimum distance we legally have to travel? diesel fuel isn't cheap (and my kids don't swim anyway)"

• "___ miles"

• "fine. find a spot that isn't near any important* people's view, and I don't care about the rest"

Does that about cover it?

* i.e. celebrities, journalists, policymakers, rich people ... in other words, those who are influential and likely to care ... not saying I agree with this, just surmising it's probably how the conversation went

> Interesting how nearly all the sites are so darned close to the shore.

Most of the sites do not have a known location. Or at least, not known to the people producing the map. Click a few markers and you will see lots of "Unknown Location" or "Off $location" which usually means the dumping ship left from that location.

It is true that many munitions were dumped close to shore, but there is a certain amount of making the map as scary as possible going on.

The ones around Britain and the North sea look close to shore but mostly seem to be tens of miles out at depths of 1600ft or more (the ones between Denmark and Norway are 2100ft+) so the chances of people kids swimming near them or even pulling them up in fishing nets are pretty much zero.

So if its 1946 and you have to dispose of hundreds of thousands of tonnes of chemical weapons sitting around taking them out further seems like a waste of time and resources.

Can these be retrieved and used or are they deep enough (hopefully) that retrieval is impractical?

Horrible either way. Not just pollution, not just the nasty purpose in the first place... but the waste. Just imagine the good that could have taken place with the resources used to create and dispose of the weapons in the first place.

As far as I can see, humanity has two choices. Either leave off the tribal feuds and find a better way, or else go back to using bows and spears to solve conflicts.

Given how corroded they probably, you are more likely to release contimants from the cleanup than letting it sit on the bottom.

It might be possible to an environmental seal, however.

This is scary. I had no idea how much of that stuff is - basically - just lying around.

I get this when I want to tweet this:

This map is not public You must change the permissions from "Private" to "Public on the web" before posting or embedding this map.

But this should be shared, a lot!

Whoops, I guess I chose the wrong sharing option. Fixed now.

The dumpsite in front of the belgian coast is at the wrong location , it should be at the right side of the port of zeebrugge http://www.wereldoorlog1418.nl/gasoorlog/paardenmarkt.html

it is a well documented dump site that is tested in regular intervals, no concentrations of pollution is detected in the water up until now .... it has been discussed to clean up the place but the risks are too high ...

The original article download is a KMZ file but I extracted the KML and loaded into a custom google map so it could be viewed online. Interesting stuff. There are a lot of mustard gas bombs rusting and leaking into the sea. 29 tons* off the coast of Honolulu, for a particularly egregious example.

* and a 1500 ton dump nearby. I'm going to stop editing, because I keep finding bigger and bigger ones...

30,000 tons on the east coast of Australia

From an infographic point of view, it might be worthwhile to use different colors or sizes of icons, to indicate the relative size of the munitions dumped compared to the others. Of course, you'd use ranges (0-10, 11-20, etc) and probably a logarithmic scale (0-10, 11-100, 101-1000, etc) ...

If you're really motivated, you might incorporate age as well.

Well done. I hope this raises awareness. Thanks for posting this!

That would be a fantastic way to display it, yeah. I imagine it can be done with the google maps API, but that's a lot more effort than it took for me to upload it, haha.

This is great and depressing at the same time...

For those of you that don't realize it there is a tremendous amount of dumped ordinance close to shore - zoom around this chart and you'll find a lot http://www.nauticalchartsonline.com/chart/zoom?chart=12300

That's a pretty cool map. What source material did you use to plot all these points?

Edit: nevermind, I answered my own question after finding this link in the map (http://cns.miis.edu/stories/090806_cw_dumping.htm)

hmm, this can not be complete, I have read about places in the middle sea that are heavily toxic but can not find them here. Is there any collaborative review and research process connected to the data represented by this map? If not, it should be created!

It's missing some WW2 data like the huge contamination in the port of Bari with mustard gas: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_raid_on_Bari

Wow! There are five times as many dumps if you zoom out. That's an interesting way to implement map panning.

Mmmmm mustardy seafood.....

nFaithInHumanity--

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