Arsenic
and Old Mustard:
Chemical Problems in the Destruction of Old Arsenical and 'Mustard'
Munitions
Edited by Joseph
F. Bunnett and Marian
Mikolajczyk
Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998 [ISBN 0 7923
5175 4]
Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Research Workshop on Chemical Problems
Associated with Old Arsenical and 'Mustard' Munitions, L�dz, Poland,
17�19 March 1996
More than ten million `poison gas' shells, mortar bombs, etc., lie
hidden in Europe, many of them relics from World War I. Some were fired
and failed to detonate, others were abandoned in old ammunition dumps.
Most retain their load of chemical warfare (CW) agents. They are turned
up daily in the course of farming and construction. Many European nations
have permanent departments concerned with their collection and destruction.
Old munitions, when discovered, are usually heavily corroded and difficult
to identify. Is it a CW munition? Or an explosive? If CW, what agent
does it contain? Once identified, one has to select a destruction method.
Some of the methods that have been proposed are less than perfect, and
are often complicated by the presence of extraneous chemicals, either
mixed with the CW agents during manufacture or formed over decades in
the ground. Of particular interest are the insiders' reports on the
German CW programmes of both World Wars, and the current status of Russian
chemical armaments.
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