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What were they thinking? Turns out that the U.S. government used to dump old chemical weapons off the U.S. coast. Recently, a canister of mustard gas was taken up by a group of clam fishermen, sickening a few of the crew. I'm guessing/hoping that leakage from such canisters doesn't pose a large threat. Still, it just sounds like something that should not have been done.
The Defense Department began using the ocean as a dumping ground for chemical and conventional munitions after World War II. The military says it stopped in 1970, and two years later Congress banned waste disposal in oceans, including chemical weapons.Officials say it's impossible to know exactly how much and what type of weapons have been dumped in the ocean because of incomplete records. A 2001 Army report found 74 past instances of ocean disposal ? 32 off U.S. shores and 42 off foreign coasts. For example, in 1967 the Army dumped 4,577 one-ton containers of a mustard agent and 7,380 sarin rockets off the New Jersey shore, according to Army records.
They must have gotten sick from residue in the canister. Mustard and most chemical agents rapidly break down when exposed to the air. Their are two types of chemical agent, persistent and non-persistent. Even a persistent agent does not last long (3-4 days) in the environment unless it somewhat sheltered, i.e shade.I remember reading a story 10-15 years ago about a farmer in France who got Mustard Burns on his rear end after sitting on the stump of a tree that still had Mustard in it from WWI. I think it was somewhere along the Somme battlefield.
