Buried poison: abandoned chemical weapons pose continual threat.

• Author: Wagner, Breanne
• Position: CHEMICAL WEAPONS

TACOMA, Wash. -- Hidden chemical weapons are scattered across the globe, in rivers, bays, lakes and oceans, and buried in the ground at current and former military bases.

Lost and abandoned chemical weapons are known as non-stockpile materiel--separate from the world's stockpile chemical weapons, which are tightly guarded and regulated.

These chemical weapons of yesteryear are lying dormant. One expert hopes the wrong people don't discover them first.

Accidental discovery of chemicals by civilians is a serious concern, but another more sinister possibility exists. Terrorists could find--and steal--the hazardous containers, said Frank Bennett, vice president of Versar Inc./Geomet Technologies, a company that specializes in classified and hazardous projects.

Bennett believes that the free availability of non-stockpile weapons gives terrorists an advantage because materiel that was buried at current and former military bases is not always guarded, he said.

"The terrorists I know don't have concern for human life, they just want the easiest target," Bennett said.

The possibility of such an attack is just one consequence of dumping chemical warfare agents all over the world. "There are social ramifications and prices to pay," he said.

Discarded after World War I and II in what was then thought as a final disposal solution, "these weapons now pose a major threat to everyone," Bennett said during a Lodestar Group special operations conference.

Non-stockpile materiel is a serious danger because there is no real way to know where most of it is located and in what quantity, Bennett said. That information was not comprehensively recorded after the wars.

The hidden items include recovered weapons, samples, old production facilities, binary chemicals--which form lethal chemical agents by mixing two non-lethal chemicals during flight--and miscellaneous equipment such as empty aerial spray cans.

Following World War II, the United States alone dropped 100,000 tons of chemical agents throughout the world, Bennett said in an interview. The nation was an "equal-opportunity dumper," he quipped. The Army dropped containers along the U.S. East and West coasts, the Baltic and North Seas, and the Japan Sea, among other locales.

On U.S. soil, non-stockpile materiel has been found in 42 states, at 1,200 sites and 153 locations, Bennett added, and the numbers keep going up. "The scope of the problem is not fully quantified," he said.

Because these weapons are hidden in many unknown places, they are sometimes found purely by accident. Unassuming civilians, such as farmers plowing their fields or children playing in the park, have uncovered them.

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