........ published in NEWSLETTER # 68
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........ published in NEWSLETTER # 68
ARSENIC AND OLD MUSTARD: CHEMICAL PROBLEMS IN THE DESTRUCTION OF OLD ARSENICAL AND "MUSTARD" MUNITIONS
by Professor J.F. Bunnett, University of California, Santa Cruz/CA (U.S.A.) and Professor M. Mikolajczyk, Center for Molecular and Macromolecular Studies, Lodz (Poland)
Ten million or more chemical munitions left over from World War I are estimated to be lost in Europe, buried on old battlefields or military bases or sunk in the sea. They frequently are recovered, dug up by farmers or construction workers, washed up on the beach, or brought up by fishermen. Many retain their original charges of chemical warfare agents, and must be destroyed. Two types of agent present special difficulties in respect to their destruction: Yperite (or 'mustard') and arsenic-containing agents such as Adamsite and Clark I and II. The arsenicals, which are sternutators and vomiting agents, were used to disorient enemy troops; a challenge in their destruction is that all the arsenic in the agents appears in the chemical products of destruction, and many arsenic compounds are very toxic.
Yperite or 'mustard' was loaded into munitions in a variety of mixtures, some of them containing arsenicals. Yperite, on standing for decades, undergoes chemical changes that generate gelled or solid materials as well as some gases. The gels or solids are difficult to remove from munitions and seriously complicate destruction of Yperite munitions.
Speakers at this NATO ARW included a senior scientific adviser to the director of OPCW, the man in charge of cleanup of the main German site for production, filling and testing of chemical munitions, a senior official in the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation, prominent "chemical demilitarization" scientists from France, Britain and the United States, and two university scientists. The two, from Canada and Japan, have investigated chemical and biochemical transformations that arsenic compounds undergo if released into the environment. Also presented are nine poster abstracts and the reports of three discussion groups, as well as a glossary of military code designations for selected arsenical and 'mustard' agents.
Besides munitions reminaing from World War I, there are four other major "chemical demilitarization" problems: huge stockpiles of unused chemical munitions in the Russian Federation and in the United States, chemical munitions in China that were abandoned by Japan in 1945, and an great hoard of German chemical weapons (over 100,000 tonnes) that were dumped into the Baltic Sea after World War II. These four major problems are given little forthright attention, but much of the science and the know-how treated in this book (NATO ASI SERIES 1-19) is applicable to them.
Reference books: 1-19