Posted on 04/14/2018 11:25:57 AM PDT by Jyotishi
Hmmmm. Not a word about the chemical munitions
dumped in the Atlantic after both world wars...
Nor those in the North Sea, or the Farallon Islands off of San Fran. Maybe that’s why those White sharks get so big....
Mentions WWII munitions dumped...still intact...
“The Horror of Party Beach” (1964)
quick google tells you that there are 187 quintillion gallons of water in the Pacific.
This is dumping about 613025 gallons of chemicals.
There’s a math of parts per million to go into, but it doesn’t take a genius to recognize that the amount contemplated is negligible amount.
Nor Johnston Island . Pacific Ocean. Radioactive debris due to high altitude tests. Agent Orange. etc. Not on my places to visit...
The chemical weapons were dumped close to the shoreline, according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, March 1981 (available free online). Also, Sarin gas was tested on land:
U.S. Military secretly tested Sarin Nerve gas in Hawaii
Your calculation is certainly correct after complete dilution in all the world’s oceans has taken place, but neglects the reality that the concentration will be quintillions of times higher at the location of the actual leaks, before any significant dilution has taken place. These higher concentrations will easily be lethal to local life in the vicinity of the munitions.
Note also that if companies attempted to dump such chemicals in the oceans, they’d be fined millions of dollars for gross negligence. But, since the government did it, everything’s hunky dory.
Cyanides are common metabolic products of bacteria and plants. This whole thing is a big nothingburger.
The article doesn’t mention exactly how deep the munitions are. Oahu is surrounded by the Kaua’i Deep to the north, the O’ahu Deep to the west, and the Lana’i Deep to the south. They’re all at least 3 miles deep.
There’s little mixing of such deep waters. The munitions are far below the thermocline.
There is so much toxic crap buried in our country and off of our shores that we may never find it all. That’s just the way government did things during WWII and Cold War.
Undersea volcanic vents spew hydrogen sulfide, hydrogen cyanide, and assorted other nasty things... yet there’s life around them, even life dependent on chemicals that would kill people...
We used to dispose of 20mm overboard, not such a good idea, but cyanide among other things? Isn’t this just wonderful?
At least when Claudius, Emperor of Rome dumped his grandmother’s chest of poisons (Poison is Queen) into the ocean, shortly after thousands of dead fish floated to the surface. Claudius ordered that anyone eating the fish were to be put to death.- Claudius the God by Graves.
Meanwhile, Hawaii is about to ban sunscreen because of bad science saying it hurts coral.
But it would (will) take hundreds, if not tousands, of years to become fully diluted. If that is even possible.
Water exchange in the depths is very slow as there is no wind or sun to power movement as on the surface and in shallows.
In the short term seepage will be concentrated around the leaking containers.
More so at greater depths.
That's probably a good thing as the introduction of leaked chemicals into surrounding waters will be further slowed giving natural processes enen more time to dissipate the poisons.
Still, it is a shortsighted way to dispose of munitions and other dangerous substances.
You would be correct IF the dispersal were uniform over the entire volume. That is not how leaks happen. Coral reefs are very delicate habitats. An entire habitat can be wiped out with a drifting concentration of these toxic brews.
Didn’t seem to bother or stop the Japanese in Dec of ‘41
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