“The Army now admits that it secretly dumped 64 million pounds of nerve and mustard agents into the sea, along with 400,000 chemical-filled bombs, land mines and rockets and more than 500 tons of radioactive waste - either tossed overboard or packed into the holds of scuttled vessels.”
Can someone shed some light on this? Does saltwater neutralize these chemicals? The dolphins didn’t seem to think so. On face value, these are just staggering figures.
Remember very public dumping of nerve gas weapons. I would guess that it was in the 70’s. The government announced it was discontinuing them. I don’t recall whether it was in response to some kind of treaty or agreement with the USSR. They were dumped into the ocean while the cameras rolled.
At one point I worked for a government contractor to the Department of Energy. About the time that nuclear power was the hot topic (late 1979 - early 1980’s). I remember hearing about the concept of just dumping nuclear waste into the oceans. The logic was “the oceans are so vast that the waste would be diluted to harmless proportions.”
This doesn’t surprise me one bit and I highly doubt anything will be done to rectify this besides a press statement at best. If our country isn’t outraged by the fact that there were no WMD’s in Iraq and a lot of the evidence was possibly forged, then this will barely hit the radar at CNN. Our military cares very little about the environment and this is just one example of it.
**“The Army now admits that it secretly dumped 64 million pounds of nerve and mustard agents into the sea, along with 400,000 chemical-filled bombs, land mines and rockets and more than 500 tons of radioactive waste - either *tossed overboard or packed into the holds of scuttled vessels.” ***
I wonder where the Army got all of the boats and ‘‘vessels’’ needed to accomplish this?
Seeing as you are so concerned with such matters and is your priority on news happenings … you should offer your house and backyard for them to dump the stuff.
I sent this link to my wife (marine biologist specializing in marine mammal forensic genetics), and this was her reply (reprinted without her permission, of course):
"I don’t doubt that mustard gas and other biological weapons were dumped,
and I don’t doubt it could kill tons of marine life including dolphins
as it seeps (or gushes) out.
But… the 1987 die-off was studied extensively, partly by Patty (Roselle) and
obviously others, and as I understand it, most of it was attributed to
wide-spread morbillivirus, not nerve gas. I don’t have the original
sources, but here’s a review.
I might be wrong, but I think exposure to the elements can cause burning
and blisters on dolphins similar to that in the picture. “burns similar
to mustard gas exposure” don’t mean much (I have an abrasion similar to
what one might expect from an encounter with a power sander on my knee
right now). The “one marine mammal specialist” is not named, which is
really suspicious, especially in the marine mammal field where everyone
is clamoring to have their name in the press. Plus, it would have been
easy to test for mustard gas exposure since they run a million toxicity
tests to determine cause of death with these unexplained mortality
events. Now, I would admit that the story could be right, and it could
also be that these contaminants have made ocean life more susceptible to
viruses and disease, but I don’t really put a lot of stock in this
picture from the 1987-1988 die off without names, dates and places
(institutions). Marine mammal people are not afraid to piss off the
government as they have done with sonar testing in recent times."
"Our military cares very little about the environment and this is just one example of it. "
I’ll try to remember how little our military cares about the environment the next time I’m filing a whale sighting message (yes, sighting, not whale hit or whale strike, just a sighting) or running the environmental impact software I have to run before I do pretty much anything on a Naval ship, or running the shredder and plastic waste pulper that takes up a ridiculous amount of man hours to maintain, or filing the 16 tons of paperwork that I have to file if I spill any amount of anything in the water, etc, etc.
The truth is that we do quite a bit to reduce our impact on the environment. However, we can either focus on preserving the environment, or do our jobs. We can not do both to the satisfaction of people on both side of the issue. For instance, the entire job of my ship is to look in the water for sea mines. The only way to look for sea mines is by using sonar. The only way to train to find mines using sonar is to actually use the sonar. However, everytime we use sonar, someone bitches about the environmental impact. So sure, I can stop training and preserve the environment, but then when it comes time to fight Iran or N.Korea and they mine the hell out of the waters we need to use, and we aren’t capable of finding the mines, and so our ships blow up or we can’t accomplish our mission, I expect everyone to keep their mouths shut, and I don’t want to hear a thing about why the military isn’t adequately preparing for these contingencies.
I don’t know what happened with this specific incident, and it sure sounds bad, but to say that the military in general doesn’t care about the environment is simply incorrect.
Has the exact quote from your blog (I would have expected the blog to reference previous works.
“The Army now admits that it secretly dumped 64 million pounds of nerve and mustard agents into the sea, along with 400,000 chemical-filled bombs, land mines and rockets and more than 500 tons of radioactive waste - either tossed overboard or packed into the holds of scuttled vessels.”
Other pieces “shockingly” absent.
“The Army’s secret ocean-dumping program spanned decades, from 1944 to 1970.
The dumped weapons were deemed to be unneeded surplus. They were hazardous to transport, expensive to store, too dangerous to bury and difficult to destroy.
In the early 1970s, the Army publicly admitted it dumped some chemical weapons off the U.S. coast. Congress banned the practice in 1972. Three years later, the United States signed an international treaty prohibiting ocean disposal of chemical weapons.”
The sad part is that all of that stuff they dumped can be safely disposed of with today’s technology. Back then, they had no clue what to do with it. Today, we can setup a fairly simple operation to break it down to a harmless substance. My dad works for a major engineering firm doing this. You’d be amazed at how simple the process really is.
“The sad part is that all of that stuff they dumped can be safely disposed of with today’s technology. Back then, they had no clue what to do with it. Today, we can setup a fairly simple operation to break it down to a harmless substance. My dad works for a major engineering firm doing this. You’d be amazed at how simple the process really is.”
I’m sure that’s true. As is usually the case with any problem, if you wait long enough, you can look back and play Monday morning quarterback.
Right outside the Golden gate just a few miles from San Francisco is a massive readioactive and chemical dump on the seabed. Site studies have shown that the containers are deteriorating to the point where leaks are imminent. It’ll cost a couple of billion to clean it up so its being ignored.
