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Article: Cleaning up deadly chemical weapons.
- Article from:
- Popular Science
- Article date:
- July 1, 1993
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1993 Bonnier Corporation. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Considered clumsy and imprecise by many military experts, chemical weapons are nonetheless lethal. They're also relatively easy to make: Known as "the poor man's atom bomb," they contain ingredients similar to those used in pesticides and fertilizers. What's difficult, the U.S. Army has found, is destroying the nation's stockpile of obsolete, deteriorating weapons.
Some 25,000 metric tons of these chemical warfare agents--packaged in rockets, bombs, land mines, artillery projectiles, spray tanks, and bulk containers--now languish at eight sites in the continental United States and one on a Pacific atoll. Some of the weapons are nearly five decades old.