by nomo » Mon Oct 31, 2005 6:45 pm
THE OLD MUNITIONS AND THE SEA<br>U.S. Army dumped heaps of chemical weapons in Davy Jones' locker<br><br>Between 1944 and 1970, the U.S. Army secretly dumped about 64 million pounds of<br>chemical warfare agents, plus over 400,000 mustard-gas-filled munitions, off<br>several state shores -- and more than that in the waters around 11 other<br>nations. A fair amount of the dumping took place right after the end of World<br>War II, when the Army needed to divest of a lot of spare chemical munitions. A<br>two-part investigation by Virginia's Daily Press reveals that the Army doesn't<br>know where most of these dump sites are, whether the munitions are leaking, or<br>what effect they may be having on the environment or fishers. The situation is<br>"a disaster looming -- a time bomb," says Gert Harigel, a physicist and expert<br>on chemical weapons. "The scientific community knows very little about it. It<br>scares me a lot."<br><br>straight to the source: Daily Press, John M.R. Bull, 30 Oct 2005<br><<!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://grist.org/cgi-bin/forward.pl?forward_id=5960>">grist.org/cgi-bin/forward...d_id=5960></a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>straight to the source: Daily Press, John M.R. Bull, 31 Oct 2005<br><<!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://grist.org/cgi-bin/forward.pl?forward_id=5961>">grist.org/cgi-bin/forward...d_id=5961></a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--> <p>--<br>When all else fails... panic.</p><i></i>