User:Milan Rosen/Chemical weapon

Chemical Weapons

Lead

Lethal chemical weapons are no longer widely produced, however live stockpiles from the Cold War era still exist in countries such as the United States, one of the remaining few countries in the world with acknowledged chemical weapons storage. Continued storage of these chemical weapons is a hazard, as many of the weapons are now more than 50 years old, raising risks significantly. The United States is now undergoing measures to dispose of their chemical weapons in a safe manner.

Chemical Weapons Stockpiles

In 1985, the United States Congress passed legislation requiring the disposal of the stockpile chemical agents and munitions comprising of over 3 million chemical weapons, adding up to 31'000 tons of chemical weapons needing to be disposed of. This was ordered because a timely and safe disposal of chemical weapons is far safer than chemical weapon storage. Between the years of 1982 and 1992, the United States army reported approximately 1,500 leaking chemical weapons munitions, and in 1993 a 100-gallon spill chemical spill was reported at the Tooele Army Depot in Utah consisting of mustard agents. When chemical weapons are leaked or spilled into the ground, an insidious process follows where the condition of the agent is unknown. This occurs because the process of chemical agents degrading in soil is a complex process that is affected by many factors such as temperature, acidity, alkalinity, meteorological conditions, and the types of organisms present in the soil. This complexity causes persistent agents such as sulfur mustards to be harmful for decades.

Chemical Weapons Disposal

A map of the Baltic Sea sectioned off into parts. The Gotland Basin is marked by the numbers 7, 8 and 10 on the map, and the Bornholm Basin is marked by the numbers 12 and 11.

At the end of World War II, the Allies occupied Germany and found large stockpiles of chemical weapons that they did not know how to dispose of or deal with. Ultimately, the Allies disposed large quantities of these chemical weapons into the Baltic Sea, including 32 000 tonnes of chemical munitions and chemical warfare agents dumped into the Bornholm Basin, and another 2000 tonnes of chemical weapons in the Gotland Basin.

The majority of these chemical munitions were dumped into the sea while contained in simple wooden crates, leading to a rapid proliferation of chemicals. Chemical Weapons being disposed in the ocean during the 20th century is not unique to the Baltic Sea, and other heavily contaminated areas where disposal occurred are the European, Japanese, Russian, and United States coasts. These chemical weapons dumped in the ocean pose a continual environmental and human health risk, and chemical agents and breakdown products from said agents have been recently been identified in ocean sediment near historical dumping sites.

Environmental Effects

When chemical weapons are dumped or otherwise improperly disposed of, the chemical agents are quickly distributed over a wide range. The long term impacts of this wide-scale distribution are unknown, but known to be negative. In the Vietnam War of 1955-1975, a chemical weapon called agent orange was widely used by United States forces. The United States utilized agent orange as a type of 'tactical herbicide', aiming to destroy Vietnamese foliage and plant life to ease military access. This usage of agent orange has left lasting impacts that are still observable today in the Vietnamese environment, causing disease, stunted growth, and deformities.