Ecology & Safety ISSN 1314-7234, Volume 11, 2017 Journal of International Scientific Publications www.scientific-publications.net Page 173 DETERMINATION OF THE CHEMICAL COMPOSITION OF SHELLS OF CHEMICAL MUNITIONS IN THE ESTIMATION OF THE RATE OF CORROSION OF CHEMICAL WEAPONS DUMPED IN THE BALTIC SEA Jacek Fabisiak, Edyta Łońska, Wojciech Jurczak Polish Naval Academy, Gdynia, Poland Abstract About 15 000 t of chemical warfare agents placed in about 600 thousand pieces of ammunition and containers, were sunk in the Baltic Sea. The ammunition – mostly artillery shells and aerial bombs and containers – mainly barrels. Ammunition and containers undergo slow corrosion, which leads to releasing toxins into the environment. The corrosion rate depends on numerous environmental factors as well as on the type of ammunition bodies, material and container walls. This article presents the results of previous studies – determination of the chemical composition of munitions bodies and containers. Key words: chemical munitions, chemical warfare agents, corrosion, Baltic Sea 1. INTRODUCTION Chemical ammunitions were first used on the mass scale during World War I. Since then, countries engaged in military conflicts have extremely often used this type of new and very effective weapon. The greatest amount of it was produced before the beginning of and during World War II. Despite preparations made for a chemical war, during World War II none of the belligerents used chemical weapons in combat actions. For this reason huge quantities of them remained in many countries’ warehouses. It is estimated that, after the war, chemical weapons were owned by about 60 countries (Konopski, 2009) and the world wide reserves of warfare chemical agents (CWA) were evaluated as minimum 500 thousand tons (Robinson & Leitenberg, 1971). In Germany there remained about 100 thousand tons (Makles & Śliwakowski, 1997), in USA about 146 thousand tons of CWA, in Great Britain about 55 thousand tons, and the reserves of the Soviet Union were evaluated as minimum tens of thousands tons of CWA (Konopski, 2009). Significant amounts of CWA were also in the possession of Japan, Italy and France. The owner countries kept considerable amounts of the already produced CWA in their military arsenals. This was not the case of Germany. Under the Potsdam Agreement, the arsenal of chemical weapons of the Third Reich was seized by the allied troops with the recommendation of destruction. Dumping was the easiest and cheapest way of getting rid of toxins. Most of the German chemical weapons were dumped in the Northern and the Baltic Sea. Along with the process of destructing the German chemical weapons, the allies also got rid of their old or decomposed ones. As it turned out over time, munition dumping did not solve the problem. The ammunition lying on the bottom has become a problem for contemporary marine economy and tourism. The exploitation of the sea bottom (marine industry, construction of wind farms, dredging works, construction of underwater gas pipelines, lying power cables) in the vicinity of dumping areas connects with the risk of displacing the ammunition and releasing warfare agents to the environment and its contamination. Bottom fishing causes risk of ammunition sweeping, exposing of the fishermen’s health or displacing it in other regions, and in the effect enlargement of the area of dumped chemical munition. These and many other factors force countries, in whose waters the dumping was carried out, to counteract those threats. One of the methods is the extraction of outdated chemical ammunition and containers filled with CWA, and destruction on land or sea. Specially prepared devices are used for this purpose. Many countries have practiced such activities for several years. They are, for example, Japan, Belgium, Italy or USA. However, it should be noted here that the condition for clearing the sea bottom of the chemical munitions is good technical condition of chemical ammunition or containers filled with CWA. In order to evaluate the technical condition of chemical ammunition dumped in the Baltic Sea, one has to evaluate its corrosion degree. Except for the environmental factors (oxidation of the bottom waters,