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
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
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).
On the German Islands in the North Sea there are still employees of the "Kampfmittelräumdienst" - bomb disposal squads walking up and down the coast line looking for stuff that gets washed ashore. Especially problematic are incendiary bombs where the content reacts with air like white phosphorus. People pick them up thinking it to be amber pieces and put them into their pockets and end up with horrible burns in the hospital.
That's a little different. They thought the bacteria was harmless and were trying to study distribution, not effects. In hindsight we know it caused negative effects so we consider it stupid.
In comparison, testing actual chemical weapons that are supposed to be harmful in proximity to and upwind of a city is stupid in foresight and hindsight.
I attended American University back in the mid-'90s. It was kind of mind-blowing to see buildings in the neighborhood routinely cordoned off with stern warnings that cleanup of chemical weapons detritus from the World War I days of "Camp American University" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_American_University) were underway in them. It gave me a vivid sense for how the scars of war can linger for decades, even in places far away from the actual battlefronts.
It taught me something even I hadn't heard before: that the campus student union building where I'd spent so many happy undergraduate days, Mary Graydon Center, was first constructed by the government as the "Chemical Warfare Service Building."
The Frederick, Maryland campus of the National Cancer Institute used to be the site of biological weapons research in the 1950s and 1960s and until 2003 there was a building that was off limits because it was contaminated with anthrax spores. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Building_470
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