
The Chemists’ War - elemeno
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/10/science/chemical-weapons-world-war-1-armistice.html
======
code_duck
Great article - I’m fascinated by pollution for some reason.

I recently spent time living near Los Alamos, NM. The physicists and nuclear
chemists surely outdid WW1 in their legacy of environmental devastation. Check
out Acid Canyon, a popular recreation area in the middle of Los Alamos. If I
recall, they opened this place to the public for recreation in 1962, then a
few years later barrels containing plutonium waste surfaced after a heavy
rain. Then they opened it again.

[http://projects.wsj.com/waste-lands/site/4-acid-pueblo-
canyo...](http://projects.wsj.com/waste-lands/site/4-acid-pueblo-canyon/)

[http://www.nuclearactive.org/docs/doublestandard.html](http://www.nuclearactive.org/docs/doublestandard.html)

[http://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/los-
alamos-...](http://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/los-alamos-will-
never-be-clean/article_a3cc7ce1-8af0-5113-8f38-5d4aa673fd7a.html)

I guess at some point they stopped dumping untreated liquid plutonium waste
there. That was a good move. The wastewater facility for the entire Natl Lab
for decades that processed all of the toxic chemical, metal and nuclear waste
discharged the water untreated until the 60s. There are dozens of
uninventoried dump sites and things like full closets in basements with
uranium that nobody has looked at in a couple decades. Oh, and people who work
there suggested to me that all the public info made available is falsified for
one reason or another.

DP Rd and TA-21, site of first plutonium machining facility, and the
wastewater ‘treatment’ (meaning untreated discharge) facility, is another
interesting one. They’re currently environmentally remediating the area for
homes.

~~~
bitexploder
We have Rocky Flats here in Denver. We have built giant neighborhoods in the
shadow of that facility with a similar reckless history of nuclear and
industrial waste related to nuclear weapons production.

~~~
code_duck
Indeed, there are many such nuclear sites, particularly in the West.

The main dump for Los Alamos, TA-54, which has been in service 35-45 years, is
900 feet above the aquifer that serves Albuquerque and Santa Fe, and 2 miles
from the Rio Grande. One of the dozens of disposal areas it contains includes
a dump, MDA-C (it is it Area G?) that consists of 4 200 foot shafts, putting
their large inventory of toxic and highly nuclear waste only 700 feet above
NM’s drinking water table.

[https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2015/06/f23/RS1738_A...](https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2015/06/f23/RS1738_Attachment%20N.pdf)

Figure 8 shows at lower right the four negative pressure tents covering the
shafts, which were visible from my backyard in White Rock.

------
zeteo
Chemical weapons, beyond their psychological effect, were not a game changer
for either side in WW1. Effective countermeasures were developed rather
quickly and, in any case, a breakthrough effected by poison gas could not be
easily exploited.

Although not mentioned in the article, the main contribution of chemists to
WW1 was almost certainly the Haber-Bosch process [1]. It allowed Germany to
produce ammo and explosives even while cut off from Chilean saltpeter [2] and
also sustained its agriculture in the absence of fertilizer imports. Without
the Haber-Bosch process Germany could have afforded only a very short war [3].
It's still immensely important today as it produces over half of the nutrient
received by the world's crops [4].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process)

[2] [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-
america-31090757](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-31090757)

[3]
[https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1920/02/03/118...](https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1920/02/03/118255924.pdf)

[4] [http://vaclavsmil.com/wp-content/uploads/docs/smil-
article-w...](http://vaclavsmil.com/wp-content/uploads/docs/smil-article-
worldagriculture.pdf)

~~~
Symmetry
Yup. In WWI the defender had railroads and telegraphs to let them contain a
breakthrough but the attacker couldn't make use of either on the attack. By
WWII we had trucks and radios, making breakthroughs much more meaningful.

------
rpeden
For an interesting take on this, I'd recommend reading _The Alchemy of Air_.

It's not specifically about either of the world wars. It's about the work that
led to the discovery of the Haber-Bosch process that makes it possible to
produce ammonia by extracting nitrogen from the atmosphere.

This was a hugely valuable discovery - and the companies that formed as a
result ended up having a significant impact on both wars.

The book talks about how the German chemical industry formed, how the
discovery of the Haber-Bosch process affected the industry, how Fritz Haber
helped lead Germany's chemical weapons development during WW1, and how the
major chemical companies were eventually merged to form IG Farben, which was
responsible for some pretty horrible things during WW2.

~~~
saiya-jin
> how the major chemical companies were eventually merged to form IG Farben

... and how it seamlessly became Bayer after the war, with same folks running
it. Acquired by Monsanto this year, what else to say

~~~
hef19898
Bayer aquired Monsanto, not the other way round. But yeah, these two companies
truely are a fit made... well not heaven but maybe the hotter counter part of
it.

~~~
CaptainZapp
Please don't knock Bayer.

Those are the chaps, after all, that developed (and trademarked) Heroin.

As a cough medicine for children.

(I really hope that this doesn't need a <sarcasm> tag)

------
bognition
Wow I had no idea that chemical weapons were tested in the suburbs of DC,
wild.

I’m kind of surprised that the article didn’t talk about the zone rouge in
France. If you haven’t heard of it it’s worth checking out. Basically it’s
whole regions of France that were contaminated by munitions and chemicals in
WW1. The area is uninhabitable and some regions are devoid of life. It should
be a memorial to the folly of men and the devastation of war.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_Rouge](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_Rouge)

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _Wow I had no idea that chemical weapons were tested in the suburbs of DC,
> wild._

Wait until you learn that biological weapons studies were done on people of
San Francisco, without them knowing.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea-
Spray](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea-Spray)

~~~
Shivetya
What is worse is the time bomb of chemical and even conventional weapons
dumped into the oceans of the world. this of course only includes those we
know about

[https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/decaying-
weapo...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/decaying-weapons-
world-war-II-threaten-waters-worldwide-180961046/)

~~~
TeMPOraL
I was talking just about that the other day with my wife, and remarked that
oceans are large - they can probably eat that exposure without much
consequence. But the Allies also dumped those weapons into _Baltic Sea_ ,
where it now poses a danger to the ecosystem (and consequently, the economy of
my country and our neighbours).

------
mothsonasloth
Nice read, in the UK there's an island off the coast of Scotland called
Gruinard Isle which was contaminated with Anthrax for the best part of 40
years, until it was cleaned up in the 80s.

Still wouldn't fancy walking around it.

------
CathyWest
> Are you 100% American?

US government bonds, the kryptonite of any foreign spy!

