Between 1918 and 1970, the U.S. alone dumped CW agents in waters worldwide on at least 74 occasions. These disposals were no small undertaking, taking one fair example from this tour, in 1945 the U.S. military dumped 1,154 55ga drums of arsenic trichloride, 375T of adamsite smoke candles, 75,852 4.2in distilled mustard shells, ~56,000 smoke canisters, and ~23,000 smoke projectiles. This represents only one of dozens of dumpings conducted off the U.S. coast. While some dumping operations were carefully undertaken, including the keeping of detailed records; other dumping operations were done haphazardly with no or minimal written accounts of the disposal locations, quantities disposed or depths.
So far the staff at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies have located and chronicled 127 locations where either human exposure to or disposal of chemical weapons agents and/or munitions has occurred. We are virtually certain there are more disposal sites requiring attention hence we present this material in hopes of garnering further interest into this subject.
By James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies