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AnonTechie [soylentnews.org] writes:

Baltic Sea under threat from Second World War chemical weapons:

The Baltic Sea is under threat from thousands of tons of Second World War chemical weapons which have now corroded to the point that they are contaminating the sea bed, marine experts have warned. After the War, Britain and the Soviet Union dumped up to 65,000 tons of unused German chemical weapons and chemical-weapons agents into the Baltic, with many of them falling into the Gotland Deep, where depths reach 820 feet.
"Our research has shown that in the Gotland Deep there are about 8,000 shells and missiles that could pollute the environment," said Doctor Jacek Beldowski, for the Polish Institute of Oceanography. "We have now confirmed that these objects are contaminating the seabed. Until now we could only speculate this would happen."

The toxic consequences seem obvious in hindsight, but it was a different time back then — a time when the seas seemed big enough that our trash could lie in it forever undisturbed. "The Baltic Sea is known as the chamber pot of Europe," as Yevgeny Usov of Russia's Green Party put it in more colorful terms for the LA Times back in 1992.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/p oland/10304648/Baltic-Sea-under-threat-from-Second -World-War-chemical-weapons.html [telegraph.co.uk]

http://www.economist.com/blogs/easternapproaches/2 013/11/baltic-sea [economist.com]

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