External Contamination of Landmines by Organic Nitro-Compounds.
Abstract
It has been known for years that landmines are contaminated on their surfaces by explosive compounds. Subsequently, it was shown that TNT vapor-contaminated surfaces outgas at a significant rate. This has encouraged the quest for chemical systems for buried mine detection. This report documents a recent study of four types of mines obtained from former Yugoslavian inventories. In addition it presents the results of a study of 18 foreign and domestic types of landmines examined in 1992. Contamination was removed from known areas of the surface by solvent-soaked swabs and several swabs pooled for each mine. Surface concentrations ranged from 1 to 400 ng/sq cm over all mine types, but was generally less variable within each type. There appears to be an increase of surface contamination with temperature, though this could be due to increased flux rather than increased concentration. Sampling mine casings using swabs may recover more than is truly on the surface, because contamination is regenerated from within material by definitive permeation. Similarly, single swabs recover this subsurface contamination inefficiently, as sequential sampling of the same area continues to extract contamination. For this reason, these measurements under-represent source size. Surface concentrations are influenced by conditions external to the mines, and after deployment will be influenced by soil moisture.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Mar 01, 2000
- Accession Number
- ADA376896
Entities
People
- Austin W. Hogan
- Daniel C. Leggett
- Paul H. Miyares
- Thomas F. Jenkins
- Thomas Ranney
Organizations
- Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory