Officials: Mysterious ocean catch was mustard gas
Let's hear it for our country:
"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.
Only some of the ocean dumps were mapped, and chemical munitions have been found in areas they weren't supposed to have been dumped, such as off Hawaii, said Craig Williams of the Chemical Weapons Working Group, a Kentucky-based organization."
So that's reassuring.
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