Sea-Dumped and Earth-Buried Chemical Weapons and Toxic

1,75

MB

Armament Waste in the Baltic Region

5

stron

6200

ID

Masaryk University Brno

2004

rok

INTRODUCTION

Toxic warfare remnants of used and abandoned chemical ammunition and non-adequately

destroyed / disposed chemical warfare agents exist both in munitions and in bulk in former

production facilities as well as on storage and disposal sites. They belong to the dangerous heredity

of the past chemical arsenals produced and used on the European and Far-East battlefields since

the first use of chemical weapons in 1915. Besides chemical munitions that can be occasionally

found on former European battlefields of WW-I (mainly in Belgium, France and Poland) and on the

Asian battlefield of the Japanese aggression in 1937 and WW-II (in China), there are several sites

of concern at former production, storage, training and disposal sites with exactly unknown types,

number and status of old and abandoned chemical munitions. The largest earth-burial site is located

around Munster/Örtze in Lower Saxony, Germany, the most important region with several sea-

dumping sites is the Baltic Region with the adjacent waters. In only rare cases, states responsible

for the munitions left under their former jurisdiction have already destroyed these inventorieswith

environmentally sound technologies (e.g. The Netherlands in Indonesia in the 1980s). Otherwise,

they are now obliged to do it pursuant to the Convention on general and comprehensive prohibition

of chemical weapons (e.g. Japan in China).