24 Jul 2014
Nasty Surprises on the Ocean Floor: Chemical Warfare Agents and Ocean Health
When I was a kid I daydreamed about seeing the bottom of the ocean and its secrets: strange fishes, giant squids, sunken pirate ships and their chests of filled with gold and gleaming jewels. Maybe you did too. Older now, I still daydream about those things, but the awareness I’ve gained about other things on the bottom---plastic, bottles, cans and other solid waste, sewage and sewage sludge, subway cars, wrecked or scuttled ships and countless barrels of industrial chemical or radioactive wastes---often intrude on the magical quality of those early musings.
Among the most troubling dream-wreckers are armaments and
chemical warfare agents (CWA) now resting and deteriorating on the
seafloor. Beginning in World War I, continuing
through World War II and the Vietnam War and probably
into the 1990s, numerous countries dumped thousands of tons of bombs,
ammunition, mines and steel drums containing some of the world’s most deadly
chemicals into the ocean, just as they also did at many sites on land. Useless except for warfare, the chemicals were
designed to blister the skin of enemy soldiers (sulfur mustard, nitrogen
mustard, Lewisite); irritate their nose and throat (Clark I, Clark II,
Adamsite); blind them (tear gases, α-chloroacetophenone); prevent them
breathing (phosgene, diphosgene); destroy their nervous systems (Tabun); or poison
them (hydrogen cyanide).
U.S. Army photos, Daily Press / September 19, 2005
Countries dumped those chemicals to get rid of unused supplies
at the end of their wars though some went to the bottom when ships carrying
them sank during battle. Disposal usually occurred in deep and relatively inaccessible locations either by
dumping or scuttling the entire ship, but sometimes disposal began shortly
after a ship left harbor and continued until it reached the specified disposal
site. That practice, as well as the
wooden cases used to transport many munitions, which floated for a while after
discharge from the ship, spread CWA over large areas.
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI).
Deeply out of sight and mind, few thought about those sunken
chemicals during the wars or their aftermath, though fishermen and beach goers
sometimes received nasty reminders of their existence. For example, in the Baltic Sea, where 50,000
tons of munitions were dumped, including 15,000 tons of CWA, fishermen
brought up 115 CWA objects in their trawls between 1993 and 2012. Among incidents recounted in CHEMSEA,
7 fishermen on a Faroese trawler, F.V. Hildarstindür, hauled up an object containing mustard gas while
trawling one night in 1984. Darkness
prevented them from identifying it as unknown and dangerous. The men were severely injured and had to be evacuated
to Copenhagen. In 1997, the Polish
vessel F.V. WLA206 hauled up a 5-7 kg lump of mustard gas and dumped it in a
rubbish container at port. The next day
all 8 crewmembers suffered serious burns and lesions on their skin, and four
had to be hospitalized for a few weeks, escaping death only because the
incident took place in January when cold temperature stopped the gas from
evaporating. In 2001, people and houses
had to be evacuated when the Swedish trawler SG Delfin caught and brought to
port an aircraft bomb containing mustard gas.
As another example, the Japanese Ministry of the Environment
reported 822
incidents between 1945 and 2004, including 400 injuries and 10 deaths,
related to chemical weapons dumped in Japanese waters by Allied or Japanese
forces at the end of World War II.
Shores of the continental United States were also impacted, as
documents reviewed by the Daily Press showed that between 1944 and 1970 the
U.S. Army dumped 64 million pounds of nerve and mustard agents, 400,000
chemical-filled bombs, and more than 500 tons of radioactive waste into the
waters spanning 11 states.
The London Convention on
the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes and Other Matter,
enacted in 1972, made it illegal to
dump weapons (or other waste) in the ocean, but enforcement is difficult to
verify so illegal disposal may not have stopped immediately. What’s more, not all countries have signed
the Convention.
So the question remains of what
to do with the legacy contamination from previous decades.
Sonar and remotely
operated vehicles can locate CWA in previously-designated dumping
areas. Locating randomly discarded items is more
difficult. Finding, retrieving,
disarming and detoxifying all sea-dumped CWA would be enormously expensive.
Some items might best be left alone, especially those in
which the containers holding the toxic chemicals have rusted and degraded. Breakage during retrieval could spread the
poisons and endanger recovery workers or others. In some locations, sediments and detritus
sinking out of the water column and settling on the bottom at rates of an inch
or two per thousand years will slowly bury any materials left in place reducing
their potential damage to people or the environment if they are left
undisturbed.
However, ridding the bottom of items that pose especially
high risk and are sufficiently intact to be safely raised would advance ocean
health, especially in places near coastlines or ongoing human activities and
where burial by sediments does not occur.
For example, at the Hawaiian disposal site studied by HUMMA, currents scour the bottom and
prevent burial of the munitions by sediments.
What are the risks of leaving CWA on the seafloor? CWA containers will continue to rust and
degrade, potentially releasing more chemicals. Dangerous munitions may occasionally wash up on beaches or be caught by
fishermen. Coastal residents should know
about CWA so that they can avoid and report suspect items. Special care will continually be needed by
those fishing near disposal sites, as for example in the Baltic Sea where such
boats must carry safety equipment to protect fishermen from hazardous
substances.
We probably won’t ever know the full extent of damage to
marine life caused by CWA, though most is likely to be limited to habitats
close to dumpsites. Fish don’t appear to
contain CWA in their flesh, though some instances of damage to skin and organs
have been found in catches near dump sites.
In the Baltic Sea any catches that contain a hauled up component must be
discarded.
It is worth emphasizing that dumped munitions containing CWA
are by no means the only sources of ocean not the only sources of ocean
pollution. Chemicals, excessive
nutrients, pathogens and trash are carried and spread by rivers, runoff from
land, water currents and winds. Achieving
the cleanest ocean
we can requires working to eliminate them while addressing the legacy of dumped munitions.
Ocean disposal of CWA and other hazardous substances has
been a sorry chapter in the long relationship between people and the sea. There is hope that the chapter is nearing its
end. Groups actively addressing this general
issue include the International
Dialogue on Underwater Munitions (IDUM, also
see). The Hawaii
Undersea Military Munitions Assessment (HUMMA), a project of the University of
Hawaii at Manoa, conducts research to locate and assess the condition of
munitions, their surroundings and nearby animals at a disposal site south of
Pearl Harbor. An interactive global map of chemical
munitions dumped at sea was prepared by the Monterey Institute of International
Studies’ James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies
Useful references:
CHEMSEA Findings: Results from the CHEMSEA Project – Chemical Munitions
Search and Assessment. Institute of
Oceanology of the Polish Academy of Sciences.
http://underwatermunitions.org/pdf/CHEMSEA_Findings_24.01.pdf
HELCOM, 2013. Chemical Munitions Dumped in the Baltic Sea. Report of
the ad hoc Expert Group to Update and Review the Existing Information on Dumped Chemical Munitions
in the Baltic Sea (HELCOM MUNI). Baltic Sea Environment Proceeding
(BSEP) No. 142. 128 pp. http://underwatermunitions.org/pdf/BSEP142.pdf