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Texas A&M University
Texas A&M University researchers found these 55-gallon drums at a known chemical weapons dumpsite near the mouth of the Mississippi River. They suspect mustard gas was leaking out.
Oil and bombs don’t mix, yet there’s millions of pounds of unexploded World War II munitions dumped in the Gulf of Mexico that pose a risk to offshore drilling and the environment, researchers say.
The military carried out the dumping from 1946 to 1970 — including off the Pacific, Atlantic and Hawaii coasts — so it's no secret. But now that some of the containers used to store the munitions are more than 60 years old, the researchers say it's time to see them as a threat.
"The bottom line is that these bombs are a threat today and no one knows how to deal with the situation," Texas A&M oceanographer William Bryant said in a statement ahead of a briefing he'll give at a weapons disposal conference. "If chemical agents are leaking from some of them, that’s a real problem. If many of them are still capable of exploding, that’s another big problem."
Photos taken during surveys show that some of the chemical weapons canisters, such as those that carried mustard gas, appear to be leaking materials and are damaged, Bryant and others on his team reported.
The surveys have turned up 10 dump sites at 60 and 100 miles out — and one of them had a pipeline running through it.
Texas has the closest dump, followed by Louisiana, "not far from where the Mississippi River delta area is," Bryant said. "Some shrimpers have recovered bombs and drums of mustard gas in their fishing nets.
Texas A&M University
Texas A&M University researchers found this unexploded, 500-pound bomb at a dumpsite near the mouth of the Mississippi River in 2008.
"No one seems to know where all of them are and what condition they are in today," he added. "The best guess is that at least 31 million pounds of bombs were dumped, but that could be a very conservative estimate.
"These were all kinds of bombs, from land mines to the standard military bombs, also several types of chemical weapons," he said. "Our military also dumped bombs offshore that they got from Nazi Germany right after World War II.
"Is there an environmental risk? We don’t know, and that in itself is reason to worry," he said.
The hazards pose even more of a risk as the Obama administration and energy companies pick up the pace of drilling after the 2010 BP oil spill.
Ironically, unexploded ordnance was found in the offshore zone known as Mississippi Canyon where the BP well was drilled.
Pentagon
This chart lists some of the munitions dumpsites in the Gulf of Mexico, and what's there.
"My first thought when I saw the news reports of the Deepwater Horizon explosion in the Gulf two years ago were, 'Oh my gosh, I wonder if some of the bombs down there are to blame'," recalled Bryant.
That turned out not to be the case, but such World War II finds are not surprising in the oil industry.
Last year, BP shut a major North Sea pipeline for five days to remove a 13-foot unexploded German mine. BP discovered the mine during an inspection, then spent months devising a plan to remove and safely detonate it.
Pentagon
This chart lists some of the munitions dump sites in the Gulf of Mexico, and what is there.
In 2001, BP and Shell found the wreckage of the U-166, a German WWII submarine, 45 miles from the mouth of the Mississippi River.
While the practice of dumping bombs and chemical weapons in the ocean ended 40 years ago, some effects are just now being seen, Terrance Long, founder of the International Dialogue on Underwater Munitions, told Reuters. Bryant will be briefing the group's conference, which begins Monday in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
"You can find munitions in basically every ocean around the world, every major sea, lake and river," Long said. "They are a threat to human health and the environment."
Reuters contributed to this report.
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Leave a Comment:
And they thought no one was looking too........hmmmmm
It would interesting if they identified who ordered all this. I'm sure some one knows.
A few years ago, when I lived just East of the Nogales Highway (in Tucson), I got a notice in the mail saying there might be unexploded bombs on our property. Raytheon was just down the road, but I don't think the bombs were tied to them.
It's that damn G W Bush's fault....
Why hasn't the EPA issued fines and jailed the perpetrators, the Federal government agencies and the Pentagon? When the Big Government wants to regulate business or people, it emphasizes the danger of pollution and global warming. Yet, it is Big Government that intentionally dumps millions of tons of bombs and poison gas into the ocean.
This massive pollution caused by government only proves that Big Government don't care about clean air, water, and land. Big Government only care about expanding its power to regulate business and people.
Ah-hem.......Fat Cat. Check the dates in the story. You're railing against something that stopped four decades ago. The people responsible are likely dead by now. In any case, when they dumped the stuff it wasn't against the law and the EPA didn't yet exist.
Sounds like an excuse to milk the U.S. taxpayer. The munitions didn't cause any problems during the BP oil spill, so why the sudden "threat" such a short time later?
Truth,
would you eat crab that have been munch on oozing, solidified, mustard gas or whatever other chemical weapons they have down there?
What a bunch of morons this world is disgusting
Mustard Gas was outlawed in World War I. So, the dumping has been going on a lot longer than the article suggests. And, the ordnance is in worse shape, from salt water corrosion, then they think. There's not much anyone can do with the real old stuff, because any movement and the drums will totally disintegrate and disperse the contents, making things even worse.
East of Eden - The fact that this happened long ago, before the EPA wouldn't mean those responsible aren't liable were it private industry, not the Federal Government, doing it. For example, GE is responsible for the cleanup of PCBs they disposed of way back to the 50's, even though such disposal was legal at the time.
I am amazed that this stupid idea of dumping all these chemicals in our oceans was even thought of ! How could they do this and not think this was going to damage are oceans and come back to bit us in the biggest way ! this was done by the goverments and milatry ,just goes to show that all these bright minds and power did such a complete stupid thing and there thinking was childless and so fliping wrong !!!!! Flipping idiots !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
UncleBen - alot of mustard gas was still in our military stockpiles until it was gotten rid of in the last 3 or 4 decades. They used to just drop 'em off into the ocean until we realized just how dangerous that was.
Back in the 40's and still -at times- until the 70's the thought was 'out of sight, out of mind' and it was ok to just dump these old munitions over the side into the ocean. Why they thought that it was ok, I don't know, but that's what was done. it was NORMAL to do it - as odd as it sounds.
Today, people would get prison time for doing it, but back then it was acceptable and even believed to be a good thing.
"J_P_PatchesPal_1"
It's a shame that we lost the great one this summer. I be a Patches Pal as well.
Before hyperventilating, yelling names and calling for heads to roll, remember that this was done by the Greatest Generation. The folks who won WW II and gave this country the greatest economic boost seen in history. These people are our parents and grandparents.
No, they did not always do the right things, and often they did not even know what downstream problems they were causing. But they did far less whining, and a lot more working.
Since Mexico only pretended to fight in WW2, I can't imagine how that stuff got there.
I guess the stuff that the krauts threw at my grandfather was whipped cream.
Trueman did it. A Dem.
MENO:
Mustard was used then outlawed at the end of the war.....My grampa lost a lung. He used to wheeze a lot but lived till 1957.
the real scary thing is, the amount of ship mines still under water in our shipping lanes all over the world, North sea, Pacific has the highest amount, German, Japenese, British, Russian and American mines , still active, a very close guarded secret.
Notice the story is about how these things need to be monitored. It's not like ocean dumping was a good idea but we don't need to go back and start over, since we CAN'T. If they corrode through the contents will be diluted by trilions of gallons of ocean water. If we start to mess with them, we know that some will rupture and the contents be released, since they are metal containers and have already been soaking in cold salt water for 40 - 70 years. I would think that we just keep monitoring as long as we're not seeing massive bad effects. If they occur, by then there should have been a contingency plan formulated.
The human race is too stupid and venal to last much longer. Hope we don't take all the animals and oceans with us, but I suspect we will.
@ UncleBen-3793367: Mustard Agents are still in the arsenals of the USA and many other countries around the world. The outlawing of Chemical Agents never seemed to take hold although International Pacts have made some headway into reducing the amounts in existence.
One thing is for sure, Mustard Agent remains toxic for a long - long time. Fifty years after the First World War's end, people in France were still being injured and killed by agents "turned under" way back when.
There is a lost nuclear bomb out there and people are worried about regular bombs?
Where is a lost nuclear bomb?
Don't have the slightest idea because it is lost.
it was lost in the late 50's early 60's off the coast of Georgia, the natural background radiation is so high in that area that they cant find it with a Geiger counter, the scientists think it probably buried it's self 30 to 50 feet under the ocean floor, they search for it every year.
At least one, and we know only because there were folks who might mention it anyhow.
There's more than 1 nuke lost at sea.
Randall Flagg......"There's more than 1 nuke lost at sea."
Including Nuclear Submarines: Thresher (SSN-593), Scorpion (SSN-589), K-27, K-8, K-219, K-278 Komsomolets, K-141 Kursk, and K-159.
If memory serves, we lost a nuke, off the coast of Spain or Portugal, besides the one off the coast of Georgia. Did we ever recover the nuke that was stolen by one of our pilots, that crashed in, I'm not sure, but I think it was in some inaccessible region of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. I recall parts of the plane were recovered, but I never heard if the nuke was recovered. I'm guessing Russia probably lost a few nukes.
There's more than one lost nuke. The US has lost 8 (that we know of). Two of which are believed to have been jettisoned somewhere over a North Carolina swamp.
One off of the coast of Spain was off of a B-52 in the late Sixties. Hey, even if they said they retrieved it, would you really know?
Dog gone it who let the cat out of the bag? now every one knows! Thank you very much... Facebook.
My first reaction is to demand the re-tasking of lots of U.S. military equipment to remove this stuff - but it may be like asbestos- more trouble to remove than lock into place.
@Marco50210
The military wouldn't retask anyone for this. They'll just use it as an excuse to up their budget a little more.
its not all US military.. NATO... Uhm so when your talking sh!t about the US lets not forget the fact, So let this be a lesson... dont be dragging no fishing nets around in those areas!
obama administration and bp have picked up the pace of drilling? huh?
This is MSNBC. You didn't actually think they'd do a story without at least one pro-Obama remark did you?
Duh! Get the facts, not the myopic GOP spin (I am a true independant and dont support either corrupt party). Obama is just as bethrothed to big oil as Baby Bush ever was. He has actually approved more new drilling then either Bush. In fact, the US is now EXPORTING refined Gasoline. I bet you missed that one too...
Just because THEY drill it from your land doesnt mean you get to keep it. These are Multi-National Companies and they dont give a $#!T about the USA, the mess or where it comes from. All they care about is selling it to the highest bidder. You want gas..you pay their price, not yours. Dont like it, make something else to power your car. That IS what the Free Market is all about! Or are you advocating Nationalizing the Oil Supply like some kind of Socialist?!? Huh?
yes indeed the U.S. is exporting fuel to other countries. However those contracts were signed before the present idiot. The last idiot in the whitehouse is the responsible for the exports.
@aurumvorax.inc
Oil is a globally traded commodity as it should be. The more there is in the world the lower the prices will be for everyone. Since we don't produce as much oil as we consume we are forced to rely on the world market. This really isn't rocket science if people would just consider the facts instead of allowing their emotion to form their opinions.
out of sight out of mind. The Gulf of Mexico is a big sewer. Dead zones and tar balls.
Science will be baffled once again as to how to clean up the toxic mess they have fathered. Soon we will only be able to eat Monsanto GMO Soy.
my gosh I thought of all of the closed land out in utah's and nevada's and california's western deserts. Great piles of wierd unexpended ordinance. They haven't a clue what is out there in draws and gullies over vast tracts of land, HE, mustard gas cans. Open and on the land! Nobody lives out there and nobody will forever. It's alot cheaper to guard the perimeter and close millions of acres, than it ever will be to clean up the mess. The military calls it a bomb range/weapons testing range it's nothing but closed. The military police arrest people if they find them out around there.
Always cleaning up after past genrations... Seems like thats the case with everything. I hope they dont just leave it.
Lets not forget, right after WWII, the American Military loaded all of germany's chemical weapons onboad the german light cruiser Lipzig, took her out into the north sea, and scuddled her. They did not even put the weapons into storage containers, Lay you odds they are leaking, and have been for a long time.
@clifford, "scuddled"? If you can't spell it correctly, chances are whatever resource you used to look it up is incorrect.
Greeeat. Spelling police is out early today.
had enough
When you least expect them, expect them! Just like their namesake with radar guns.
Everything else being equal, don't you find grammatically correct, properly spelled posts to be more credible?
If someone talks about something being "scuddled", I have to see from the context if they even know what the word means, but of course in this instance you can tell that they do.
Farmers in the South still dig up Civil War ordnance from time to time. Unexploded shells from the Franco-Prussian War turn up from time to time in Alsace-Lorraine. World War I debris is all over Belgium. War is the gift that keeps on giving.
Rlquall
Sometimes. Sometimes just anal-retentive blowhards.
You'd think grownups would know better, but I guess not.
Grownups do know better.
Only a few people thought like that in 1946. Of course, it turns out that they were right, but when you are in a vast minority it's hard to prevail. Back then, most people just thought dumping wastes wherever, chemical runoff into streams even if it killed everything in them and downstream, and smoke and soot everywhere was just the price that one paid for there to be good jobs at good wages. Most people also just accepted "Jim Crow" segregation as the way that things were. It takes decades for things to change, and it's not fair to judge the people back then by 2012 standards, just as we may well not want to be judged by the standards of 2078.
is it an environmental risk? (mr bryant): i don't know...what the f*%k? who is this stupid oceanographer William Bryant? he sounds about as smart as the morons who dumped the stuff there in the first place!!! hey here's a thought for u government idiots. quit making the @!$%# then u won't have to dump it. u have enough to kill us all anyway.stupid. u dummies ever hear the saying? don't crap where u sleep. i think this applies.
Maybe humankind really deserves to be killed off. What idiots we are.
maybe we explode them and kill off a lot of fish.
zcesons: you first; I'll be at the back of the line.
Didnt they think this would happen? Just take a look at a seafarer ocean map! its scary!
humans think they are the smartest animals but tell me what other animal goes outside to cook and eat yet go in its home to crap? what other animal kills just to kill? what other animal invents stuff to make it more stressed out?
What animal enjoys a sunset? What animal wonders about the beauty of the night sky? What animal has an imagination? Take the good with the bad. When you get home, try flushing.
Consideration of attempted removal of corroded Mustard drums, in salt water, is pretty much out of the question. If they began to raise it, the decrease in atmospheric pressure would compromise, or "burst" the drums, pretty much guaranteeing dispersal. You REALLY don't want to be ANYWHERE near that stuff when it's released into the air or water. On contact with the skin, or any moist surface, it emits a sulfuric acid. No real need to go any further with that one. Controlled shelf life, buried in dirt, was "estimated" to be about 10 years. No one knows what this stuff is capable of doing after being submerged, in salt water, for 50-60 years.
There are old offshore dumping grounds off the coast of Washington State and Vancouver Island B.C. Sizeable in nature, containing Mustard and a variety of other munitions. A literal underwater "mountain" of it has been recorded with sonar. Some are concerned that if the deteriorated explosive munitions detonate, it could also release the CS and vast amounts of Mustard and other "classified" munitions over a wide area.
So, we try to salvage it, risk of creating a bigger problem. Leave it where it is, leave it alone and.....pray.
At one point, they were thinking about sending hoses down and pouring concrete type "berms" around the piles or munitions. Drop a type of "dome" down over it and pour concrete over the top of that hoping that would contain and seal it for maybe another 100 years. Haven't heard anything since that idea.
Yeah, outta sight - outta mind. The people that dumped it probably thought "Safe for 50-60-70 years, I'll be long gone by then, who cares."
Sooner or later, either the drums will corrode and rupture, or oil drillers or bottom dragging fishing nets will stir this crap up and that'll pretty much wipe everything out in that area for hundreds of miles for who knows haw many years.
And, yes, there's a lost nuke off Georgia, been lost for many many years. Every year, they get a little more.....nervious. The nuclear eveready batteries in THAT puppy will keep going and going and..........
CS is tear gas.
Yep, I'd be a lot more worried about GA, GB, phosgene, lewisite, and especially, VX.
old news very old i live i louisiana old news to us
WEll lets see WW2 sunk battleships, 90, 61 US destroyers, 616 total japanese warships, 1554 liberty ships. And the list goes on. The list is far from complete, however the battleships, destroyers and all the japanese warships went down with ammunition and fuel.
So 1554 liberty ships carrying 11 tons most i am sure were bombs. would be alone 34 million tons of bombs. course add in all the military ships and thats a lot of bomb rotting at the bottom of the ocean.
With just the list of ships above, a total of 2266 not even close to the complete number of ships sunk, each ship carried apprx, 2 million gallons of bunker oil. thats 4.5 BILLION gallons of oil just waiting to escape into the ocean. In relation, the BP disaster and the above mentioned bombs are a joke compared with all the uxo, and bunker oil resting on the bottom in the entire ocean.
I remember that the USS Arizona has an oil sheen above it. So this mess might be starting to leak out.
Course lots of ships were sunk in the gulf of mexico and every morning on the beach at corpus christi, there were always chunks of oil sludge. wonder if thats from rigs leaking or old ships.
Course i remember a picture of an american ship in the early 19th century called a buck and a quarter. it was 125 feet long. the picture showed a depth charge still on the rail. so no idea how long it takes uxo to go away under water. on land its supposed to be 200 years. nice mess though
Depends on steel thickness and quality, but I would say seawater corrosion is about 2-3 times faster than on land so say 2.5X faster of 200 years that would be 80 years. so yes we are getting there. Time for a wave of chemical release is coming. Mutations maybe?
No wonder I didn't need hot mustard sauce on my gulf shrimp.
Nobody's talking about the hundreds of thousands of tons of munitions that went to the bottom of the North Sea due to German submarines sinking ships in the convoys in that area. I guess it's OK if its in somebody else's ocean.
I imagine the people that live there talk about it. And I notice you didn't bring up all the unexploded landmines etc. all over the world. Why is that?
The USA refuses to sign the UN Treaty on banning land mines, cluster bombs, chemical weapons, etc...
The main reason - "The countries that used these weapons are required to remove them..."
The USA dropped the equivalent of a fully loaded B52 every 7+minutes, 24/7, for almost 10+years, of cluster bombs on Laos. Hundreds of people every year are still being killed and injured...
The USA used millions of tons of chemicals over Vietnam - This is still resulting in birth defects for thousands of children...
BTY - The US Marines & Navy used the waters off Camp Lejune, NC to dump ordnance for decades. There are large areas that are off-limits for fishing. People are still dragging unexploded ordnance up in their nets and discovering itwashed-up on the shore...
Sergent Carter, Sergent Carter....
Pyle!
Well Golllllly!
Knowing that chemicals from the war are still around in Vietnam and birth defects are happening due to this, why are children still being conceived? I wouldn't take the risk.
Ameruca is a mess...
No, the 50's was good. Today is a mess and getting worse every year.
The world is a mess. Humanity is a mess.
The best thing to do is clean up what we can and quit making the stuff. I noticed that the article did not mention all the nuclear material that has also been dumped in the oceans.
It's Obama's fault............................................................
Its the presidents and vice presidents fault.
So, one article is supposed to mention every conceivable oceanic environmental hazard? I don't remember the title being "Every Single Possible Threat Posed by Old Military Munitions and Materiel".
At least we won WWII...or most of us would not be here. The cost of war. A lot of men in the bottom of the seas around the world that went down with the ships.
Using remote/robotic technology we have today it is possible to retrieve the stuff then we can get rid of what we can and using rockets launch the rest of it into space providing the UN allows it to be done.
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight....
Ask the UN? Who needs to ask the UN anything? Aren't you an American? Bleep the UN!
that wont work. you remember recently a bomb in a german town that had to be destroyed in place? 80 year old uxo does not like to be bent spindled or mutilated.
And a side not the anniston army depot recently finished burning off the last of the nerve agent. mustard was done several years ago. so there is no more chemical agent there
Yes, that's a brilliant idea, as nothing ever, ever goes wrong with rocket launches! I honestly don't know which is lamer, the idea itself or wanting the permission of little Third World tinhorn dictatorial regimes to perform it.
"If chemical agents are leaking from some of them, that’s a real problem"
Perhaps Professor Bryant should consider consulting with his colleagues in the chemistry department before speaking of matters regarding which he has little or no knowledge. A brief review of what happens when mustard agent meets seawater is quite instructional.
It doesn't float. It's quite a bit heavier than water. It's insoluble in water. It reacts with the minerals in seawater to form inert compounds. Fishing trawlers don't generally drag the bottom in the deep waters of the gulf.
Somebody's fishing for grant money.
But its not all mustard agent's. For example nuclear material was dumped in the ocean near San Francisco Bay.
If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, you may be surprised to learn that "more than 47,800 drums and other containers of low-level radioactive waste were dumped onto the ocean floor west of San Francisco between 1946 and 1970." (Source: The U.S. Geological Survey, a bureau of the Department of the Interior.)
The threat from the LLRW in those drums is even less than the threat from the mustard agent, so long as they stay on the bottom. Like their Gulf of Mexico chemical counterparts they were dropped into places where commercial fishing gear is unlikely to find them.
Shrimp and other crustacean fishermen gonna be REAL surprised to hear that "East." Care to fill us in on on what the inert compounds are or are you just pulling that out of thin air as well?
First of all, crustaceans don't have "skin" like we do. Their exoskeletons are impervious to the effects of mustard.
As for the reaction products, read for yourself - http://www.opcw.org/about-chemical-weapons/types-of-chemical-agent/mustard-agents/
Well gas will shoot up because this terrible news. Undoubtedly will cause a shut down in production and cause oil prices to rise.