Well over 300,000 tons of chemical weapons have been dumped into the sea.

Industrial waste and drugs aren't the only water waste we need to worry about. For decades, the world's oceans were used as a giant garbage can for the most noxious, lethal chemicals in existence. Countries have dumped hundreds of thousands of tons of weapons loaded with cyanide, mustard gas, sarin, phosgene, VX, Zyklon B, and other nerve agents into the drink/

Such dumps started around the time of the first world war, but documentation of this early activity is practically nonexistent. The practice kicked into overdrive in the immediate aftermath of WW11. Faced with hugh stockpiles of Germany's weapons, the Allies pitched them into the waters around Europe, NATO officially estimated that from 1945 to 1947, 300,000 tons of these weapons--containing 60,000 tons of nerve agents -- were heaved into the Baltic and the North Atlantic. Japan had much less of this stuff than the Nazis, but still almost 5,000 tons were cast into the Pacific. Britain and Australia used this method to dispose of some of their own arsenals after hostilities ended. Dumps in the 1950s continued to be primarily of WW11-vintage nerve agents. In the sixties and 1970, the US jettisoned tens of thousands of its own leaky, sarin-loaded M-55 rockets into the Atlantic. 

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists reports: - In all, the United States is responsible for 60 sea dumping totaling about 100,000 tons of chemical weapons filled with toxic materials, according to a 1993 study by the US Army Control and Disarmament Agency (acda). The US sites are located in the Gulf of Mexico, off the coast of New Jersey, California, Florida, (New York) and South Carolina, and near India, Italy, Norway, Denmark, Japan, and Australia.

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