Abstract
Sea dumping of chemical warfare (CW) took place worldwide during the 20th century. Submerged CW included metal bombs and casings that have been exposed for 50–100 years of corrosion and are now known to be leaking. Therefore, the arsenic-based chemical warfare agents (CWAs), pose a potential threat to the marine ecosystems. The aim of this research was to support a need for real-data measurements for accurate risk assessments and categorization of threats originating from submerged CWAs. This has been achieved by providing a broad insight into arsenic-based CWAs acute toxicity in aquatic ecosystems.Standard tests were performed to provide a solid foundation for acute aquatic toxicity threshold estimations of CWA: Lewisite, Adamsite, Clark I, phenyldichloroarsine (PDCA), CWA-related compounds: TPA, arsenic trichloride and four arsenic-based CWA degradation products.Despite their low solubility, during the 48 h exposure, all CWA caused highly negative effects on Daphnia magna. PDCA was very toxic with 48 h D. magna LC50 at 0.36 μg × L−1 and Lewisite with EC50 at 3.2 μg × L−1. Concentrations at which no immobilization effects were observed were slightly above the analytical Limits of Detection (LOD) and Quantification (LOQ). More water-soluble CWA degradation products showed no effects at concentrations up to 100 mg × L−1.
Highlights
Worldwide stocks of chemical warfare agents (CWAs), right after the end of the World War II in 1945, reached about 500,000 metric tons, of which arsenic-based CWAs accounted for over 12 % (SIPRI, 1971)
This paper aims to provide the laboratory-test-derived acute toxicity thresholds for those substances, which could be utilized in improvement of risk assessment derivations and further analyses of chronic toxicity and sublethal effects of CWAs on
A 100 % mortality was noted for all four CWA compounds, and one CWA-related compound: AsCl3, all of them, including TPA, resulted in 100 % immo bilization of D. magna at the highest concentrations (Fig. 1)
Summary
Worldwide stocks of chemical warfare agents (CWAs), right after the end of the World War II in 1945, reached about 500,000 metric tons, of which arsenic-based CWAs accounted for over 12 % (SIPRI, 1971). It is estimated that up to 60 countries possessed chemical munitions, out of which 40 had chosen sea dumping as the quickest and efficient method of their disposal at that time (DEPA, 2010). Sea dumping of Lewisite by U.S forces in the Atlantic Ocean “somewhere” between England and the United States in 1918 was the earliest recorded offshore disposal of CWAs or chemical munitions (Bearden, 2001). Among other types of weaponized compounds, the unused loads of arsenic-based CWAs were dumped worldwide into the seas, conti nental shelves and ocean deeps, with several reported operations in rivers and lakes (Smart, 1997; Long, 2009; Radke et al, 2014). There are 127 documented chemical munitions dumpsites, it is estimated that their number exceeds 300 (James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, 2019)
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