6 ms·

-After WW2, the victorious allies dumped loads - as in, hundreds of thousands of tons - of surplus German ammunition in Norwegian waters, mostly simply by loadi

by lb1lf 5y ago

-After WW2, the victorious allies dumped loads - as in, hundreds of thousands of tons - of surplus German ammunition in Norwegian waters, mostly simply by loading up old freighters with the ammo, steaming into deep waters and sinking them there. The result? We now find traces of toxins in fish caught off the dumping grounds (Mostly in the Skagerrak between Denmark and Norway, but also in the fjord right outside my office on the northwestern coast.) While dilution is a wonderful thing, I am a bit peeved that my nautical maps still show areas which are off-limits to fishing, be it recreational or professional, due to a metric shitload of mustard gas and tabun being dumped there, with a healthy sprinkling of conventional high-explosives on top just to make sure we'd never be able to clean it up properly. Sigh.

hyperman1 5y ago
There is also mustard gas dumped in the north sea near knokke, in rusting vats. Near to one of the busiest shipping routes in the world. Don't worry, citizen, it's not leaking much yet, go on holiday at the coast. https://www.gremberghe.nl/2013/07/het-mosterdgas-voor-onze-kust/ https://www.gremberghe.nl/2013/07/het-mosterdgas-voor-onze-k...
- hulitu 5y ago
  Thank god the new bombs are envirinmental friendly. I wonder why no one talks about them (state secrets ?). /s
  - lb1lf 5y ago
    -Well, there is such a thing as bio-degradable land mines in the works. [0] (At least the idea was discussed years ago - whether it is implemented in current land mines, I've no idea.) While mines are still an abomination, ensuring they are laid down with an expiry date is still progress. Of sorts. I am in the rather awkward position of hoping for development in the anti-personnel mine business - I've no illusions such an effective weapon will ever be obsolete, so the best we can hope for (sigh) is that they will at least not cause collateral casualties for decades after the conflict which caused them to be deployed in the first place. [0] http://www.metts.com.au/landminesdoc.html http://www.metts.com.au/landminesdoc.html
    - sharikone 5y ago
      Here in Israel the Golan Heights are just filled with Syrian land mines from 50 years ago or more (Israeli mines too, but at least the army has the maps for them). Sometimes a cow blows up or worse. The sad thing is that they get more, not less, dangerous over time. The reason is that they drift inside the terrain over the decades and they can get even in areas that were thought to be clear. In fact putting a landmine is my pet example for something that is easy to do and terribly difficult to undo.
      - foobarian 5y ago
        The film "A Perfect Day" [1] revolves around the Bosnian war zones, and one of the more interesting characters is an old grandma who walks her cow in front, and then steps exactly where the cow stepped for reasons you can probably guess. Lots of dark humor but the whole thing is a pretty sad affair unfortunately. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Perfect_Day_(2015_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Perfect_Day_(2015_film)
      - slapfrog 5y ago
        > (Israeli mines too, but at least the army has the maps for them). > they drift inside the terrain over the decades and they can get even in areas that were thought to be clear. Hmm.
    - lostlogin 5y ago
      > bio-degradable land mines in the works Shame on those working in them, as this is solving the wrong problem. The Ottawa Treaty is signed by most the worlds countries, with the usual suspects have avoided doing so. Your attitude is pragmatic, and likely the best that could be achieved. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottawa_Treaty https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottawa_Treaty
      - diamondlovesyou 5y ago
        TABITHA You've got to sign the land mine treaty, Toby. TOBY Whoa... What happened to the nuance of diplomacy? TABITHA Oh, sorry, the shoes are shined. TOBY No we-we're there now, you-you can't go back. TABITHA Sorry. TOBY Right. TABITHA 142 countries have signed it, 84 have ratified, 12 destroyed there entire stock. TOBY Yes. TABITHA You know who hasn't signed it? Us and Cuba. TOBY You know who initiated it? Us. And the nations of the world rallied around it in yet another impressive display of American leadership. TABITHA And then? TOBY We bolted. TABITHA Right. TOBY And the reason we did is because we love anti-personnel land mines. We love 'em. And we think the government should be in the business of selling them, like the Post Office. In fact, the Post Office is the sales venue we've been considering. TABITHA Toby. I-I got a... TOBY It's Korea. Tabitha. There are 900,000 North Korean soldiers in the DMZ, and the only thing stopping them from walking into South Korea are 37,000 US troops, and about a million land mines along the border. We have said over and over that we would be thrilled to sign this treaty if we could have an exemption for South Korea and we have been rebuffed. Rebuffed... I say. From The West Wing, Season 3 – Episode 16 – “The U.S. Poet Laureate”.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  Generally speaking you don't have to worry that much about chemical weapons waste. Anything toxic enough and potent enough to incapacitate people on any militarily useful timeline needs to be pretty reactive with some subset of organic molecules. That pretty much always means that it readily makes bonds with something in the top few rows and right half of the periodic table. Likewise it will quickly find something in the environment to react with and become much less of a problem if you let it loose. Heavy metals and exotic engineered chemicals that are only mildly toxic and/or are mostly nonreactive that can pass through the food chain or will not affect you immediately but build up is what you should worry about (agent orange, mercury, etc).
  - lb1lf 5y ago
    Oh, we've got quite some of that to go around, too. Wars are good for creating further problems down the line. In the closing months of WWII, the German sub U-864 was sunk just off the island of Fedje in south-western Norway; among its cargo was 67 tons of mercury and scientific personnel - it was on its way to Japan to aid in the war effort. The quicksilver is still there, slowly seeping out of the wreckage; good thing (as such things go...) quicksilver is heavy and insoluble in water. With any luck it seeps into the seabed before any marine life ingests it to find it is not insoluble in fat and tissue.
    - nate_meurer 5y ago
      Another problem-- probably a much bigger one-- is the huge amount of mercury fulminate used in munitions throughout much of the 20th century. It's much more soluble and dispersible than native mercury, and there's a lot more of it in weapons dumps.
  - nate_meurer 5y ago
    > Generally speaking you don't have to worry that much about chemical weapons waste... This whole paragraph is gibberish. Some chemical warfare agents are vulnerable to hydrolysis, but only if the munition casing is compromised. However mustards are quite robust against environmental degradation; they have low volatility, they're hydrophobic, and they resist hydrolysis. Thus they appear to persist indefinitely even when the bare chemical is exposed to water. Read the news stories about fishermen being burned by blobs of mustard that were accidentally trawled from the sea floor, or people on beaches injured by random enounters with wandering bits of mustard. And of course none of this matters as long as munitions are still intact, which will be the case for millions of hundred-year-old shells dumped at sea and buried on land for the foreseeable future. > Heavy metals and exotic engineered chemicals... Mercury is indeed a persistent pollutant that bioaccumulates. When you mention agent orange, I'm guessing you're talking about the dioxins that are supposed to have contaminated some batches of pesticides. However none of these are exotic engineered chemicals, and they certainly aren't "mildly toxic". While many old weapons dumps present a mercury hazard, they're dwarfed by the mercury pollution caused by coal-fired power plants. Dioxins aren't really relevant to weapon dumps; the vast majority of dioxin pollution (and chlorophenols in general) comes from burning of waste and industrial accidents.
tomxor 5y ago
I agree, the actions of our (or rather my) forbearers in dealing with man-made toxins were short-sighted and ill informed. They hadn't dealt with these new chemicals in such large quantities before and they probably didn't give a second through to the consequences of simply dumping them. However I wonder if there is a silver lining in that by polluting those waters it has also protected them from overfishing? Much like Chernobyl's nature is flourishing, yet still not safely habitable by humans long term.
- lb1lf 5y ago
  -Oh, I don't really blame our forbearers as such, they'd just spent a few years seeing the world being chewed up and now had to start rebuilding fast, I can see how 'Let's just dump this stuff out where it will affect no-one in our lifetime' made sense. As for the silver lining, the restricted zones are probably way too small - in my local case, it is only a matter of a couple of square kilometers . (The main concern probably not being that the catch is dangerous to eat, but rather that whatever fishing gear you use may recover to the surface with all sorts of exciting litter attached to it.)
  - tomxor 5y ago
    Ah yes, i guess trawling would be really dangerous, and bottom trawling suicidal... which is an even bigger bonus to sea life than preventing overfishing. Shame? it only benefits such a small area :D difficult to know which is more damaging.
    - yummypaint 5y ago
      You've hit on an interesting idea: anti-fishing mines. Maybe a bouyant explosive attached to a weight by a cable such that the depth is well below what a ship on the surface could interact with. Getting snagged in the net arms it to detonate when the ambient pressure drops to near atmosphere is it's being pulled on board...
      - Doxin 5y ago
emn13 5y ago
Fortunately, it's pretty likely that many of those toxins won't be particularly harmful in low doses; but the stress isn't good, that's for sure. A similar (worldwide) problem are all the maritime shipwrecks stemming from that period: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727761-600-why-wartime-wrecks-are-slicking-time-bombs/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727761-600-why-wart... https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-ticking-time-bomb-of-wwii-era-shipwrecks https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-ticking-time-bomb-of-wwii-... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OP0U62oiBlM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OP0U62oiBlM
ectopod 5y ago
Around the UK too. The North Channel between Scotland and Northern Ireland contains ~1,000,000 tons of munitions. It was supposed to be dumped in the deep channel, but in rough weather the boats would dump it a few hundred metres offshore [1]. Separately, 1500 tons of TNT is deteriorating in a grounded WWII ship just off Sheerness in the south-east of England [2]. I wouldn't live there! [1]: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg14820042-200-the-ww2-bombs-dumped-off-western-scotland-washing-up-on-beaches/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg14820042-200-the-ww2-... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Richard_Montgomery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Richard_Montgomery
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- sleavey 5y ago
  I think the wreck in the Thames estuary is of genuine concern to the prospect of building a new airport for London on reclaimed land there. The ship would need to be dealt with before building the airport, which surely would require exploding it, which would in turn break windows 10s of km away. Building new international airports for major cities is already expensive before you consider that!

by lb1lf 5y ago

hyperman1 5y ago

There is also mustard gas dumped in the north sea near knokke, in rusting vats. Near to one of the busiest shipping routes in the world. Don't worry, citizen, it's not leaking much yet, go on holiday at the coast. https://www.gremberghe.nl/2013/07/het-mosterdgas-voor-onze-kust/ https://www.gremberghe.nl/2013/07/het-mosterdgas-voor-onze-k...

hulitu 5y ago
Thank god the new bombs are envirinmental friendly. I wonder why no one talks about them (state secrets ?). /s
- lb1lf 5y ago
  -Well, there is such a thing as bio-degradable land mines in the works. [0] (At least the idea was discussed years ago - whether it is implemented in current land mines, I've no idea.) While mines are still an abomination, ensuring they are laid down with an expiry date is still progress. Of sorts. I am in the rather awkward position of hoping for development in the anti-personnel mine business - I've no illusions such an effective weapon will ever be obsolete, so the best we can hope for (sigh) is that they will at least not cause collateral casualties for decades after the conflict which caused them to be deployed in the first place. [0] http://www.metts.com.au/landminesdoc.html http://www.metts.com.au/landminesdoc.html
  - sharikone 5y ago
    Here in Israel the Golan Heights are just filled with Syrian land mines from 50 years ago or more (Israeli mines too, but at least the army has the maps for them). Sometimes a cow blows up or worse. The sad thing is that they get more, not less, dangerous over time. The reason is that they drift inside the terrain over the decades and they can get even in areas that were thought to be clear. In fact putting a landmine is my pet example for something that is easy to do and terribly difficult to undo.
    - foobarian 5y ago
      The film "A Perfect Day" [1] revolves around the Bosnian war zones, and one of the more interesting characters is an old grandma who walks her cow in front, and then steps exactly where the cow stepped for reasons you can probably guess. Lots of dark humor but the whole thing is a pretty sad affair unfortunately. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Perfect_Day_(2015_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Perfect_Day_(2015_film)
    - slapfrog 5y ago
      > (Israeli mines too, but at least the army has the maps for them). > they drift inside the terrain over the decades and they can get even in areas that were thought to be clear. Hmm.
  - lostlogin 5y ago
    > bio-degradable land mines in the works Shame on those working in them, as this is solving the wrong problem. The Ottawa Treaty is signed by most the worlds countries, with the usual suspects have avoided doing so. Your attitude is pragmatic, and likely the best that could be achieved. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottawa_Treaty https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottawa_Treaty
    - diamondlovesyou 5y ago
      TABITHA You've got to sign the land mine treaty, Toby. TOBY Whoa... What happened to the nuance of diplomacy? TABITHA Oh, sorry, the shoes are shined. TOBY No we-we're there now, you-you can't go back. TABITHA Sorry. TOBY Right. TABITHA 142 countries have signed it, 84 have ratified, 12 destroyed there entire stock. TOBY Yes. TABITHA You know who hasn't signed it? Us and Cuba. TOBY You know who initiated it? Us. And the nations of the world rallied around it in yet another impressive display of American leadership. TABITHA And then? TOBY We bolted. TABITHA Right. TOBY And the reason we did is because we love anti-personnel land mines. We love 'em. And we think the government should be in the business of selling them, like the Post Office. In fact, the Post Office is the sales venue we've been considering. TABITHA Toby. I-I got a... TOBY It's Korea. Tabitha. There are 900,000 North Korean soldiers in the DMZ, and the only thing stopping them from walking into South Korea are 37,000 US troops, and about a million land mines along the border. We have said over and over that we would be thrilled to sign this treaty if we could have an exemption for South Korea and we have been rebuffed. Rebuffed... I say. From The West Wing, Season 3 – Episode 16 – “The U.S. Poet Laureate”.
throwaway0a5e 5y ago
Generally speaking you don't have to worry that much about chemical weapons waste. Anything toxic enough and potent enough to incapacitate people on any militarily useful timeline needs to be pretty reactive with some subset of organic molecules. That pretty much always means that it readily makes bonds with something in the top few rows and right half of the periodic table. Likewise it will quickly find something in the environment to react with and become much less of a problem if you let it loose. Heavy metals and exotic engineered chemicals that are only mildly toxic and/or are mostly nonreactive that can pass through the food chain or will not affect you immediately but build up is what you should worry about (agent orange, mercury, etc).
- lb1lf 5y ago
  Oh, we've got quite some of that to go around, too. Wars are good for creating further problems down the line. In the closing months of WWII, the German sub U-864 was sunk just off the island of Fedje in south-western Norway; among its cargo was 67 tons of mercury and scientific personnel - it was on its way to Japan to aid in the war effort. The quicksilver is still there, slowly seeping out of the wreckage; good thing (as such things go...) quicksilver is heavy and insoluble in water. With any luck it seeps into the seabed before any marine life ingests it to find it is not insoluble in fat and tissue.
  - nate_meurer 5y ago
    Another problem-- probably a much bigger one-- is the huge amount of mercury fulminate used in munitions throughout much of the 20th century. It's much more soluble and dispersible than native mercury, and there's a lot more of it in weapons dumps.
- nate_meurer 5y ago
  > Generally speaking you don't have to worry that much about chemical weapons waste... This whole paragraph is gibberish. Some chemical warfare agents are vulnerable to hydrolysis, but only if the munition casing is compromised. However mustards are quite robust against environmental degradation; they have low volatility, they're hydrophobic, and they resist hydrolysis. Thus they appear to persist indefinitely even when the bare chemical is exposed to water. Read the news stories about fishermen being burned by blobs of mustard that were accidentally trawled from the sea floor, or people on beaches injured by random enounters with wandering bits of mustard. And of course none of this matters as long as munitions are still intact, which will be the case for millions of hundred-year-old shells dumped at sea and buried on land for the foreseeable future. > Heavy metals and exotic engineered chemicals... Mercury is indeed a persistent pollutant that bioaccumulates. When you mention agent orange, I'm guessing you're talking about the dioxins that are supposed to have contaminated some batches of pesticides. However none of these are exotic engineered chemicals, and they certainly aren't "mildly toxic". While many old weapons dumps present a mercury hazard, they're dwarfed by the mercury pollution caused by coal-fired power plants. Dioxins aren't really relevant to weapon dumps; the vast majority of dioxin pollution (and chlorophenols in general) comes from burning of waste and industrial accidents.

tomxor 5y ago

I agree, the actions of our (or rather my) forbearers in dealing with man-made toxins were short-sighted and ill informed. They hadn't dealt with these new chemicals in such large quantities before and they probably didn't give a second through to the consequences of simply dumping them. However I wonder if there is a silver lining in that by polluting those waters it has also protected them from overfishing? Much like Chernobyl's nature is flourishing, yet still not safely habitable by humans long term.

lb1lf 5y ago
-Oh, I don't really blame our forbearers as such, they'd just spent a few years seeing the world being chewed up and now had to start rebuilding fast, I can see how 'Let's just dump this stuff out where it will affect no-one in our lifetime' made sense. As for the silver lining, the restricted zones are probably way too small - in my local case, it is only a matter of a couple of square kilometers . (The main concern probably not being that the catch is dangerous to eat, but rather that whatever fishing gear you use may recover to the surface with all sorts of exciting litter attached to it.)
- tomxor 5y ago
  Ah yes, i guess trawling would be really dangerous, and bottom trawling suicidal... which is an even bigger bonus to sea life than preventing overfishing. Shame? it only benefits such a small area :D difficult to know which is more damaging.
  - yummypaint 5y ago
    You've hit on an interesting idea: anti-fishing mines. Maybe a bouyant explosive attached to a weight by a cable such that the depth is well below what a ship on the surface could interact with. Getting snagged in the net arms it to detonate when the ambient pressure drops to near atmosphere is it's being pulled on board...
    - Doxin 5y ago

emn13 5y ago

Fortunately, it's pretty likely that many of those toxins won't be particularly harmful in low doses; but the stress isn't good, that's for sure. A similar (worldwide) problem are all the maritime shipwrecks stemming from that period: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727761-600-why-wartime-wrecks-are-slicking-time-bombs/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727761-600-why-wart... https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-ticking-time-bomb-of-wwii-era-shipwrecks https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-ticking-time-bomb-of-wwii-... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OP0U62oiBlM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OP0U62oiBlM

ectopod 5y ago

Around the UK too. The North Channel between Scotland and Northern Ireland contains ~1,000,000 tons of munitions. It was supposed to be dumped in the deep channel, but in rough weather the boats would dump it a few hundred metres offshore [1]. Separately, 1500 tons of TNT is deteriorating in a grounded WWII ship just off Sheerness in the south-east of England [2]. I wouldn't live there! [1]: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg14820042-200-the-ww2-bombs-dumped-off-western-scotland-washing-up-on-beaches/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg14820042-200-the-ww2-... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Richard_Montgomery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Richard_Montgomery

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
sleavey 5y ago
I think the wreck in the Thames estuary is of genuine concern to the prospect of building a new airport for London on reclaimed land there. The ship would need to be dealt with before building the airport, which surely would require exploding it, which would in turn break windows 10s of km away. Building new international airports for major cities is already expensive before you consider that!