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Earth

Chemical weapons create toxic waste nightmare

By Debora Mackenzie

31 October 2007

MEETING in the Hague next week, the signatories to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) will celebrate the fact that Albania and the UK have destroyed their last chemical weapons and that India and South Korea are almost done. But there will be an elephant in the room: in their scramble to destroy weapons by a 2012 deadline, Russia and the US, which possess over 95 per cent of the world’s chemical weapons, are creating thousands of tonnes of a nasty, toxic residue that they are having trouble disposing of.

“Albania and the UK have destroyed their last chemical weapons”

Chemical…

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