Abstract
Besides toxic agents, chemical weapons munitions also contain propellants and explosives. Moreover, sea-dumping also included conventional munitions containing high explosives. Nitro-compounds such as TNT, and nitrate esters such as glycerol trinitrate (GTN) and pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN) which have been widely used in munitions, are potential sources of nutrition for bacteria. This paper describes recent work on the bacterial biodegradation of GTN and PETN by bacteria isolated from rivers, soil and sewage. The capacity of bacteria to biodegrade explosives has implications for the fate of explosives released from corroded munitions, for the development of remediation/disposal strategies for recovered munitions, and in the development of sensitive biosensor detectors for surveying and monitoring dump-sites.
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White, G.F., Snape, J.R., Nicklin, S. (1996). Bacterial Biodegradation of Nitrate Ester Explosives. In: Kaffka, A.V. (eds) Sea-Dumped Chemical Weapons: Aspects, Problems and Solutions. NATO ASI Series, vol 7. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8713-6_16
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8713-6_16
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