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Dumped Chemical Weapons

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Handbook on Marine Environment Protection

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Abstract

Chemical weapons (CW) are a legacy of large conflicts of twentieth century. Those of them which were not used in combat were in part dumped to seas and oceans worldwide. Among many sites used for CW dumping, Baltic Sea is an area where high concentration of dumped munitions are located and for which several research programs produced valuable results regarding their environmental fate and toxicity. In case of the Baltic Sea, warfare agents of concern include mostly sulfur mustard and arsenic based agents, such as Adamsite, Clark I and Clark II. Although there are still many gaps in knowledge, we know that dumped CW are point sources of contaminants on the sea bottom, and can produce chronic effects on marine organisms. Dumped chemical weapons are a growing concern for the international community, therefore also management strategies for such areas are discussed in the following chapter.

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Acknowledgement

Presented results were obtained in the frame of DAIMON project - in which the research work was fund by the European Union (European Regional Development Fund) under the Interreg Baltic Sea Region Programme 2014–2020, project #R013 DAIMON, cofunded by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education (Poland) from the 2016–2019 science funding allocated for the implementation of international co-financed project.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Oceanology, Polish Academy of Sciences, Sopot, Poland

    Jacek Bełdowski

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  1. Jacek Bełdowski
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Correspondence to Jacek Bełdowski .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. German Advisory Council on the Environment, Berlin, Germany

    Markus Salomon

  2. University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany

    Till Markus

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Bełdowski, J. (2018). Dumped Chemical Weapons. In: Salomon, M., Markus, T. (eds) Handbook on Marine Environment Protection . Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-60156-4_12

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