
The ticking time-bomb at the bottom of the Baltic Sea - neverminder
http://www.economist.com/blogs/easternapproaches/2013/11/baltic-sea
======
grumblepeet
My father, who was in the Royal Engineers at the end of WWII and for a few
years after, was always worried about the "tons" of mustard gas and explosives
that he and his colleagues were ordered to dump into the Irish Sea. He told me
that some of the explosives were so unstable that they "sweated"
nitroglycerine, and they used to run their finger down the sides of the
explosives and flick it at each other to make small bangs. Bear in mind that
although they had explosives training they were basically kids.

He also mentioned that the seas were often so rough that they did "dump and
run" as soon as they were out of sight of land. It was supposed to go into the
deepest sections of the Irish Sea, but he claims a lot of it was closer to
Scotland.

It was the mustard gas, and other nasties that he wouldn't talk about, that
worried him right up until he passed away in his eighties. They knew it wasn't
the right thing to do, but at that time you followed orders and did as little
as possible until you got demobbed.

~~~
sekasi
Terrifying. But like you said, basically kids during the war forced to do a
lot of things most modern day guys could never even imagine.

~~~
gedrap
>>> most modern day guys could never even imagine.

Oh no need for that. Grab a local news paper, check the crime section. 'modern
day guys' are not so smart and innocent, are they?

~~~
1ris
My gradma digged trenches and stacked bodies, at the age of 14 or 15. Modern
day guies don't do that, or something similar. War time is dramatical
different.

~~~
angersock
Eh, go look at footage out of Syria or parts of Africa--it's more a comment on
the state of the civilizations going to war.

------
danohuiginn
The shelf life of most chemical weapons is fairly short -- and tends to be
shorter the nastier they are.

We're mainly talking mustard gas. Germany did use nerve gases tabun, sarin,
and soman [1]. But nerve gases degrade after a period of a few weeks to a few
years. I'm not sure _what_ they degrade into, admittedly, and I doubt it's
nice.

Mustard gas lasts longer, but is also much less potent. Military use is about
1 tonne for 2.6 square kilometres [2]. So if it were just leaking into the
open sea -- even one as small as the Baltic -- it wouldn't be an issue. The
problem is really if something re-concentrates it -- currents, or location, or
possibly going up the food chain (does that happen?)

So my initial feeling is it's not quite as catastrophic as it sounds. Would
love to hear from somebody better-informed, though.

1 -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germany_and_weapons_of_mass_de...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germany_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction#World_War_II)

2 - [http://www.iraqwatch.org/perspectives/rangwala-
powell-020503...](http://www.iraqwatch.org/perspectives/rangwala-
powell-020503.htm)

~~~
zokier
> Mustard gas lasts longer, but is also much less potent

Maybe much less potent in killing instantly (ie in combat use), but what about
long-term low-dosage exposure?

> possibly going up the food chain (does that happen?)

Bio-accumulation in general is very real thing, and imho the most worrisome
aspect of this situation.

~~~
refurb
The issue with chemical weapons is that they are very reactive. Mustard gas
would react with the organics floating around in the ocean very quickly.

As for the hydrolysis product of mustard gas, thiodiethanol, it's not very
toxic. The MSDS claims acute toxicity in rates starts around 6.5g/kg. So a
human would need to consume ~500g in order to see toxicity.

Also, thiodiethanol is quite reactive itself. It would likely be oxidized to
the carboxylic acid. Wouldn't surprise me if bacteria could metabolize it.

~~~
infinite8s
Yeah, given the existence of life at deep-sea sulfuric vents, I wouldn't be
surprised if the newly evolved bioorganisms were colonizing the containers at
their leakage points.

~~~
Carwajalca
There are no deep-sea sulfuric vents in the Baltic Sea.

~~~
marshray
The point is the ocean is known to contain bacteria which can metabolize
chemical sources in the form of sulfur compounds. There's a chance that any
slowly leaking CS munitions in the Baltic Sea could host bacterial colonies
which break down these compounds.

------
Luc
Not just in the Baltic Sea. There's a dump of WWI poison gas grenades 2km off
the Belgian coast, buried in the sand. You can see the marker buoys from the
beach.

Here's a little map of the area:
[http://www.wereldoorlog1418.nl/gasoorlog/paardenmarkt.html](http://www.wereldoorlog1418.nl/gasoorlog/paardenmarkt.html)

EDIT: Then there's the stuff on land. In Belgium they still recuperate between
100 and 200 tons of ammunition per year. Farmers post them by the side of the
road for the bomb disposal teams to pick up. A couple of workers in Ypres
(yes, that Ypres) died last month unintentionally digging up a WWI bomb.

~~~
cafard
Some very pricy real estate in Washington, DC, the Spring Valley neighborhood,
was once part of a chemical warfare station. When WW I ended, the staff
followed the approved disposal method--dig a hole, roll in the shells, cover
the hole. A lot of nasty stuff, mostly as I recall mustard gas shells, has
been dug out and disposed of more properly over the last 30 years or so. But
one reads now and then of concern about arsenic levels in the topsoil.

~~~
declan
Same with some of the choicest real estate in the SF bay area, which came
under sustained barrage back when Stanford University was a munitions range.

That was during WWI, when the U.S. Army was targeting Portola Valley, which is
now one of the wealthiest zip codes in the nation:

[http://www.worldwar1.com/tripwire/pdf/campfremont.pdf](http://www.worldwar1.com/tripwire/pdf/campfremont.pdf)
"Camp Fremont troops engage in mobile artillery practice, near what is now
Dish Hill. The guns—almost certainly 75mm field guns of British or American
manufacture—are aimed toward Foothills Park and Portola Valley, where 75mm
shells were unearthed as recently as November 2010... five million rounds of
World War I-era ammunition fired in a four-month span on the foothills where
the camp conducted its war games..."

That document doesn't say anything about Woodside (where Steve Jobs famously
battled with the town) just a tad to the north. But Woodside was settled
earlier. Mountain Home Ranch was settled in 1839 and and a local church opened
in 1893 -- all of which likely convinced the Army to shift its artillery range
to the south...

~~~
lostlogin
The Ghost Fleet in San Francisco Bay had me interested after going past it via
train. Not sure what the plan is for it, but leaving stuff like that to rot
won't be doing the sea any good. The well maintained shipyard that isn't too
far from me has one hell of a high heavy metal count and I can't imaging The
Ghost Fleet is doing any better.
[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suisun_Bay](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suisun_Bay)

------
alister
65,000 tonnes of chemical sounds humongous, but picturing the volume makes it
look a lot smaller (not trying to diminish the potential gravity of the
problem).

Assume the chemicals have a density of 1 g/cm^3, the same as water, which
seems reasonable for organic liquids and such. Then a cubic meter weighs a
metric tonne. So 65,000 tonnes is the same as a cube that is 40 meters on a
side.

Another visualization: 1/5 of the volume of oil that can be carried by a Very
Large Crude Carrier supertanker according to Wolfram Alpha:

[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=65000+m^3](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=65000+m^3)

EDIT: Without diminishing the potential gravity of the problem, but trying to
visualize what 65,000 tonnes looks like, I'm surprised it doesn't look as big
as I thought it would.

~~~
awj
It may sound small by volume, but it sounds pretty big by potential effect.
Especially if we're talking about compounds that can bioaccumulate and move up
the food chain. We worry about the mercury content of tuna, what happens when
the tuna has an appreciable amount of whatever-mustard-gas-breaks-down-into?

~~~
Filligree
Thiodiglycol. It's not a serious issue, I'm more worried about the mustard
gas.

------
morsch
There used to be -- and really still is -- this cavalier attitude about
dumping stuff into the sea, because it gets diluted so much. Disposing nuclear
waste this way has only been banned since 1993[0]. And of course more
recently, the ocean was where much of the pollution from the Fukushima
incident was directed.

Or take sea-faring ships, who dump both grey and black water (ie. untreated
sewage) into the sea; I understand this is slowly being subject to some
regulation. Ships also run with heavy oil which has its own set of issues
(mostly sulfur content and NOx); in terms of CO2 emissions shipping is super
efficient though.

[0]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_disposal_of_radioactive_w...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_disposal_of_radioactive_waste)

~~~
jeffreyrogers
I recall reading some proposal for dumping nuclear waste in the Marianas
Trench. The rational had something to do with tectonic shifting eventually
pushing the waste into the Earth's mantle.

~~~
rdl
The subduction zone off Vancouver, BC is also a place for this, and off Chile
is even better.

The problem is the subduction zones are very slow -- on the order of 25 meters
per 100 years, at most. The waste isn't particularly threatening past 10-20k
years.

I still believe in reprocessing as the best solution.

------
tomelders
Is there something missing from the article or am I going mad? I don't
understand how people came to the rational conclusion that it would be ok to
dump thousands of tons of this stuff into the sea. It seems to me that people
collectively agreed to create a guaranteed disaster.

~~~
toyg
Ecological concerns weren't really a thing until the '60s. There was a
widespread belief that oceans could "take care" of everything; besides, in 30
years we'd all be flying to some other planet anyway.

~~~
aestra
Which is still the belief in some parts of the world as well as some people.

Silent Spring was published in 1962. It brought environmental problems to
mainstream Americans. As a result of new awareness the EPA was created.

What seems "obvious" now might not have always been obvious.

Lets not forget there have been over 2,000 (known) nuclear weapons test in the
world. 1032 done by the US alone, most in Nevada. It is well known that these
tests released massive amounts of radiation that affects human health. Clouds
carried the radiation across the United States into the Mid-West and Northeast
and deposited it with rain.[1][2][3][4]

[1]
[http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=390963](http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=390963)

[2]
[http://www.sciencemag.org/content/220/4592/18.abstract?sid=e...](http://www.sciencemag.org/content/220/4592/18.abstract?sid=ebaae089-599e-4d84-b440-a5a05b1ea2e4)

[3]
[http://www.ieer.org/latest/iodnart.html](http://www.ieer.org/latest/iodnart.html)

[4] [http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/fallout-from-
nuc...](http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/fallout-from-nuclear-
weapons-tests-and-cancer-risks)

------
pelle
I lived on the Danish island of Bornholm in the middle of the Baltic in the
80s. The island is basically surrounded by mustard gas dumping grounds. Back
then many local fishermen were seriously wounded by accidentally pulling
mustard gas bombs up in their nets.

------
reirob
And then there are 28,500 containers of radioactive waste, dropped into the
English Channel between 1950 and 1963:
[http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/legacy-danger-
old...](http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/legacy-danger-old-nuclear-
waste-found-in-english-channel-a-893991.html)

[..] at a depth of 124 meters (406 feet) just kilometers from the French
coast.

------
neverminder
Some more detailed information: [http://www.mir.gdynia.pl/wp-
content/uploads/2013/11/BST-NATO...](http://www.mir.gdynia.pl/wp-
content/uploads/2013/11/BST-NATO.pdf)

~~~
danohuiginn
Thanks for adding this. It's much, much more informative than the Economist
article

In fact, I think it deserves to be posted by itself, so I've submitted it as
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7620544](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7620544)

------
frik
Don't forget the atomic bombs and H-bombs:

* Dozens of Atomic Warheads Lost In Sea by Superpowers, Study Says: [http://www.nytimes.com/1989/06/07/us/dozens-of-atomic-warhea...](http://www.nytimes.com/1989/06/07/us/dozens-of-atomic-warheads-lost-in-sea-by-superpowers-study-says.html)

* Missing for 50 years - US nuclear bomb: [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8107908.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8107908.stm)

~~~
NAFV_P
The first link you posted mentions the USS Iowa Gun Turret explosion, another
shocking tale of negligence.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Iowa_turret_explosion](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Iowa_turret_explosion)

~~~
marshray
Fascinating read. Thanks.

------
locusm
I grew up in a sleepy little town and I lived about 800M from the DOW plant
that made 245T and agent orange components. Apparently surplus was dumped in
and around the surrounding areas which as time went on became populated with
people raising families. Proving the effects of chemical contamination is no
easy feat.
[http://www.bhopal.net/worldmap/new_zealand_more.html](http://www.bhopal.net/worldmap/new_zealand_more.html)

------
eitland
Recently navy mine hunters set off an old british mine in the sea just outside
my office. It wasn't too big, which is interesting because the shock wave was.
There are some videos from controlled demolition on the net but the shock wave
in the ground just has to be experienced.

------
TeMPOraL
I read an article about it in a polish science magazine many years ago. I'm
surprised that given the potential catastrophic consequences of this, no one
seems to be doing anything about it. We knew about this "time-bomb" for
decades. Can anything be done about it?

I guess it's time to get used to the thought that "holiday on a beach" will
soon mean visiting Croatia.

------
felixvolny
To get around the paywall go here:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Tjo28gT...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Tjo28gTGGHIJ:www.economist.com/blogs/easternapproaches/2013/11/baltic-
sea+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=at)

~~~
nhebb
Or, right-click the link and open in a new private window.

------
NAFV_P
I found an article related to this, [0].

Apparently they dumped stuff in the North Sea as well. The dumping locations
that are known of are mostly the deeper parts. The Baltic is 459m at maximum
depth while the North stacks a chilling 700m.

I think the dumping locations in the North Sea would be easier to find (The
North has been mapped fairly comprehensively due to oil and gas exploration)
but harder to deal with (it's tough as hell). The Baltic is smaller and
surrounded mostly by land, so I'm guessing the Baltic would be hit harder.

[0]
[http://www.chemsea.eu/characterization_and_mapping.php](http://www.chemsea.eu/characterization_and_mapping.php)

------
stagas
And they're about to dump some more into the Mediterranean unless we do
something about it:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7620714](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7620714)

~~~
adventured
No, they're destroying the weapons at sea, not dumping them.

------
mathattack
This may be a dumb question, but why were they tossed into the ocean? Was it
because there was no alternative? Or they just wanted them away from potential
users of them?

~~~
jonnathanson
Where else should they have dumped this stuff? That's not meant to be a glib
response. It was (and perhaps still is) a serious quandary. Should they have
buried these munitions in a field somewhere? In mine shafts? In a remote
section of the Alps or Pyrenees? I'd imagine that all of these alternatives
would have placed the weapons in closer proximity to humans and civilization,
with an accordingly greater risk of catastrophe, at a similar ecological cost.

Consider, in addition: 1) that the weapons were unstable and rapidly
degrading, which meant time was not on anyone's side; 2) a third World War
seemed not just possible, but perhaps probable, especially as tensions mounted
between the Soviets and the Western allies. Very quickly after WW2, the United
States realized it did not have the manpower to repel a Soviet land invasion
in Europe; in fact, it was outnumbered and outgunned by a significant margin.
So the US and its allies very much perceived themselves to be in a race
against the clock.

In retrospect, it's east to wring our hands about how these weapons were
disposed of. But there were very few choices available, all of them onerous.
Given the choice back then, i.e., "Do I want this stuff in the ocean, in the
groundwater, or under Soviet control?" policy makers found the ocean to be the
least of three evils.

Of course, the best thing to have done would have been to disassemble the
munitions and render their contents chemically inert. The infrastructure,
specialized labor force, resources, and time to do this were not on hand.

~~~
mathattack
Interesting. I had thought of "We may have to fight another war" but not that
it would be too hard to dig a very big hole and bury them under a mile of
concrete. (Do with them whatever we do with nuclear waste - granted we didn't
have much nuclear waste in 1945)

~~~
jonnathanson
We should also note that a lot of these weapons -- particularly, the ones
seized from the Nazis -- were advanced beyond the technical understanding of
the generals who'd seized them.

These bombs and rockets, including their chemical propellants, oxidizers, and
payloads, were designed by the world's top rocket scientists, in an era where
perhaps a few dozen of those people even existed. Disposing of these things
safely and securely would have been a bit like disposing of some alien death
ray that turned up in the Arctic permafrost.

Add to this the fact that most of Europe was a bombed-out husk in the
aftermath of the war. We're talking entire countries reduced to Third World
status. We're talking nonexistent transportation infrastructure. Civil unrest.
The threat of riots, uprisings, and invasion on all sides. Factories and
assembly plants blown to rubble. Millions of the Continent's best, brightest,
and most capable workers annihilated or driven off. Most of the Continent's
brain trust being frantically courted by either side of the emerging Cold War
battle lines. Total chaos, more or less.

Even getting our hands on enough cement to bury the weapons might have been
difficult, given resource and time constraints.

~~~
mathattack
Good points. Easy to take the history for granted.

~~~
jonnathanson
Thanks, and very sorry for the rambling on this topic! I just have a
fascination with the post-WW2 / early Cold War period.

------
jmzbond
This is an interesting article, and the comments are even more interesting,
highlighting other similar scenarios that have happened around the world.

I'm more curious if we think we'll learn from these and in the future try to
make better decisions (which hopefully means we'll avoid production in the
first place, which means... well, I live in a Disney world sometimes OK?).
Sometimes it's depressing how short term the collective memory of humanity
seems to be, what with bubbles and crises repeating themselves every couple of
generations.

------
sambeau
See also:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Richard_Montgomery](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Richard_Montgomery)

Which is wrecked in the Thames Estuary with 1.4KT of TNT onboard.

* 286 × 2,000 lb (910 kg) high explosive "Blockbuster" bombs

* 4,439 × 1,000 lb (450 kg) bombs of various types

* 1,925 × 500 lb (230 kg) bombs

* 2,815 fragmentation bombs and bomb clusters

------
rsync
Surprised that we are 70+ comments into this thread and not one mention of a
similar scenario right off the coast of San Francisco:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farallon_Islands#Nuclear_waste_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farallon_Islands#Nuclear_waste_dump)

------
mimo84
That's a known one, then there are the ones from the Soviet union.

------
stefantalpalaru
The similar US operation was cheerfully named CHASE (Cut Holes and Sink 'Em):
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_CHASE](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_CHASE)

~~~
character0
I came here to make this comment. Interestingly enough, VX poison gas (think
The Rock, but less face-melting) was disposed in this way before they tried
incineration and chemical means.

------
hackaflocka
Request: someone please post a tl:dr

Thanks.

------
kingkawn
dumping trash into the ocean is like playing morbid peak-a-boo: what is not
seen does not exist until it suddenly reappears.

------
tckr
This piece of "journalism" is pure speculation.

------
zacinbusiness
I've been thinking of moving to Poland from the U.S. for a few months now.
This sort of thing doesn't necessarily make me not want to go, but it does
make me angry how the U.S. and other countries treat the majority of the world
like our own, personal dump. And it makes me wonder how well Americans would
be received by the locals once people start coming down with cancer and other
horrible diseases that we essentially are the direct cause of.

~~~
abduhl
"Under an agreement reached at the Potsdam Conference in 1945, Britain and the
Soviet Union dumped around 65,000 tonnes of Germany’s chemical weapons
stockpile into the murky depths of the Baltic Sea in 1947-48."

What does America have to do with this?

~~~
mpyne
> What does America have to do with this?

America didn't go to war to stop it, so obviously things that happen in the
Baltic Sea are the fault of America. Or something, I don't know.

