ATLANTIC CITY — State and federal officials worked today to decontaminate an Atlantic City-based clam boat anchored in isolation off Massachusetts after it dredged up old munitions laced with mustard gas, severely sickening a crewman.
The Coast Guard was trying to locate the two military shells, which the crew tossed overboard in about 60 feet of water about 45 miles south of Long Island, said Coast Guard Petty Officer James Rhodes. He acknowledged finding the shells will be difficult.The military used the ocean as a dumping ground for munitions from after World War II through 1970. While the tons of old chemical weapons beneath U.S. waters present a danger to fishermen, experts don't believe they are a possible source of weapons for terrorists.
The two shells that came aboard the vessel Sunday were in a haul of clams. The area is in a known munitions dumping zone and is on charts, Rhodes said.
A National Guard team boarded the vessel, the ESS Pursuit, today to test for contamination, while the Coast Guard worked to secure the ship in waters off New Bedford so that it can be moored and decontaminated. The captain and first mate have declined to leave the 145-foot dragger, fearing it could run aground, the Coast Guard said.
The boat had returned to New Bedford early Monday after one of its six crewmen reported blistering and shortness of breath.
Hours later, another crewman was brought ashore after he reported feeling lightheaded. He was examined and released. Two other crewmen left the boat late Monday, with one reporting nose and eye irritation.
The most seriously injured crewman, whom officials did not identify, had painful blisters about three-quarters of an inch high on an arm and a leg, said Dr. Edward Boyer, a toxicologist who is treating the man at UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester.
Officials weren't sure at first what the crew was exposed to, but Boyer said blood and urine tests confirmed exposure to mustard gas, used most frequently during World War I.
"It literally pulls the top of the skin off the layer underneath it," Boyer said. But Boyer said his patient was "handling it very well."
The Defense Department began using the ocean as a dumping ground for chemical and conventional munitions after World War II. The military says it stopped in 1970, and two years later Congress banned waste disposal in oceans, including chemical weapons.
Officials say it's impossible to know exactly how much and what type of weapons have been dumped in the ocean because of incomplete records. A 2001 Army report found 74 past instances of ocean disposal — 32 off U.S. shores and 42 off foreign coasts.
For example, in 1967 the Army dumped 4,577 one-ton containers of a mustard agent and 7,380 sarin rockets off the New Jersey shore, according to Army records.
Only some of the ocean dumps were mapped, and chemical munitions have been found in areas they weren't supposed to have been dumped, such as off Hawaii, said Craig Williams of the Chemical Weapons Working Group, a Kentucky-based organization.
The tons of chemical weapons underwater are an extremely unlikely source of weapons for terrorists, Williams said, given the difficulty in locating them, uncertainty about the hazards they present and the fact that more dangerous chemicals are more readily available.
Mustard gas can be deadly if it's used as an aerosol and inhaled, causing blisters and other problems in the lungs. It was designed to incapacitate soldiers and suck up men and resources to take victims off the battlefield and care for them, said Steve Bird, an associate professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and a chemical weapons expert.
The gas was used most frequently during World War I, but has been used sporadically since, including during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, he said. The chemical retains its potency over time, though some of its components break down, he said.
"The stuff still works just the same, and is still as toxic as it was before," Bird said.