What impact does war have on the environment?

Tamás Stadler of the Ludovika National University in Budapest agrees. He studies the pollution caused by armed conflict. We don’t even have to look far from home for that. Even now, more than a century after the First World War, the chemical traces of the clash of arms from ’14-’18 are measurable on the former battlefields.

During the First World War, many chemical projectiles flew through the air. “The gaseous or liquid compounds contaminated the air, soil and freshwater sources. In some places, for example the zone Rouge at Verdun, the soil still contains very high concentrations of arsenic and lead.”

Many heavy metals in the soil of war zones come from ammunition. The most notable heavy metals are lead, zinc and copper. But barium and antimony are also often used in the primers of projectiles. A notorious heavy metal is depleted uranium (U-238 isotope). It is rock hard and is therefore used in armor piercing ammunition. Although it is less radioactive than other isotopes, it is still very toxic.

Stadler distinguishes primary and secondary pollutants. The above chemicals are in the first category. In the second group you can think of the pollution that is created when factories, depots and oil refineries are blown up.

Military activities also cause leakage of fuels, lubricants and other hydrocarbons into the environment during peacetime. “After the fall of the Iron Curtain, the ground around former Soviet air bases was heavily contaminated. It was one of the most important environmental problems in Hungary at the time.”

Soils are being hit hard in another way. Heavy armored vehicles and explosions compress the ground. “That can hinder the infiltration of rainwater, which is problematic for the water balance. The risk of erosion also increases because it is more difficult for plants and trees to reach the deeper layers of the ground with their roots. In photos of the battlefields of the First World War you see plains without vegetation: only trenches and bomb blasts.”

In the same breath, Stadler mentions the forests of Vietnam that were destroyed in the 1960s and early 1970s. Nature took decades to recover after Americans deliberately removed vegetation with defoliants such as the dreaded Agent Orange. They wanted to be able to spot the enemy better and undermine their food supply.