Hitler's chemical weapons a seeping menace

[LiviaOlivia]

Sydney Morning Herald
By Alister Doyle
January 25, 2004

Six decades after the defeat of Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler's chemical weapons are coming back to haunt Europe as they ooze from rusting and poorly mapped graves on the seabed.

Far from the hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, corrosion, deeper fishing by trawlers and seabed cables or oil pipelines are disturbing stockpiles in what once seemed inaccessible dumps from the Baltic to the Atlantic.

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European governments reckon the stocks are safest where they are, slowly seeping poisons that may break down in contact with sea water or become diluted over decades.

The environmental group Greenpeace says they should be recovered. Apart from the threat to people working at sea, a sudden release of nerve gas could kill fish stocks. Other poisons might sink into the sediment and damage the food chain. "This problem is not going to go away," countered Paul Johnston, principal scientist at Greenpeace research laboratories. "As corrosion sets in the likelihood of releases increases.

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Reuters
This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/01/24/1074732654196.html

[TolstoyAndy]

1. An undersea Yucca Mountain ! n/t