Chem/Eng News - US Army Dumped Lewisite, Mustard, Munitions, VX Into Oceans 73 Times: Search Begins

[hatrack]

USING DEEP-DIVING submersibles, researchers have confirmed the location of hundreds of munitions on the ocean floor south of Pearl Harbor. These warheads may be some of the chemical munitions the U.S. military dumped at sea nearly four decades ago.

The U.S., like other countries, used the ocean as a dump site for unwanted items, including military weapons, in the early- and mid-20th century. Poor record keeping of dump locations is creating problems for policymakers and scientists who want to find disposed-of chemical munitions to keep ensuring public and environmental well-being.

The find earlier this month off the Oahu coast by researchers from the School of Ocean & Earth Science & Technology (SOEST) at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, on behalf of the U.S. Army is likely just part of the more than 8,000 tons of chemical agents that the Army reportedly dumped off the Hawaiian shores at the end of World War II. But this cache is only a small fraction of all the munitions and bulk containers holding chemical weapons agents that were routinely scuttled in the ocean.

According to Army documents, large quantities of shells, mines, solid rocket fuels, propellants, radioactive materials, and chemical weapons were dumped into the ocean not only off U.S. shores but all around the world. And on at least 74 occasions, the Army knowingly dumped hazardous chemical agents such as mustard, lewisite, phosgene, and VX off U.S. coastlines. Records of exact locations of such dumps can be hard to find, only partly for security reasons. "The Department of Defense disposed of excess, obsolete, or unserviceable munitions, including chemical warfare material, in coastal waters off the U.S. prior to 1970," says James C. King, the Army's assistant for munitions and chemical matters. Like questions about the location of dump sites, the exact quantities of materials disposed of at sea also remain unclear.

EDIT

http://pubs.acs.org/cen/government/87/8713gov1.html

[JoeyMac1]

1. "Unlcear" locations & Quantities = Plausible Deniability

Poor recordkeeping is a bullshit response in a structured stockpile system like we have.
C'mon... these are chemical, radiological, and conventional weapons.
Somebody know where they are or there is a record of them. They're just not divulging the info.

Records are either "lost" or unrecorded by design/intent. No accident.