Gruinard handed back

 The end of the eighties appeared a short article in Nature titled Gruinard handed back, which said in brief the case of the island of Gruinard, whose territory was tested the resistance of anthrax spores explosion and weather resistant. as part of a research program for the development of biological weapons by 3 governments of the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States of America.
Anthrax is a disease of herbivores caused by Bacillus anthracis, which is transmitted to humans. Of the disease in humans different clinical forms depending on the mode of transmission. In the transmission by contact is manifested in one of the milder forms carbonchiose with pustules from which originated the name of the disease, and when it is inhaled from place to pulmonary anthrax, which is lethal.
During the Second World War, the island of Gruinard was evacuated, paying compensation to the inhabitants as 500 pounds.
Bombs containing anthrax spores were exploded on the island in 1942 and 1943. As expected spores proved unable to withstand explosions and until the eighties were still viable spores found in the territory of the island.
To eliminate the spores was necessary to resort to a drastic reclamation operation, obtained by spreading a solution of formaldehyde in sea water on the island.
Finally in 1988, after further analysis and controls, but especially after a flock of sheep had been grazing there for months without contracting the disease, the British government had been able to declare that the island was safe and no longer haunted by anthrax spores. To the ancient inhabitants and owners of the island was then given the opportunity to return to the island and take possession of their lands, after having returned to the government £ 500 paid to them at the time of the evacuation of the island.
The history of the island of Gruinard puts us in front of all the major problems that only the testing of biological weapons by governments in their territories involves: first the unpredictability and the difficulty of being able to assess with a sufficient margin of safety effects that the shedding of pathogens can have on the environment, as well as the risks that may result from the loss of control of infectious agents, and then by the spread of epidemics among civilians.

The island of poisons

The shocking discovery of huge stockpiles of lethal bacteria and viruses still hidden on an island in the Aral Sea by the Soviet authorities after the international ban on biological weapons.
In the spring of 1988, the bacteriological laboratory of the Russian city of Sverdlovsk, 1,360 km east of Moscow, received the order to embark on their mission more difficult. In great haste and total secrecy moved by giant barrels of stainless steel hundreds of tons of anthrax bacteria - enough to destroy the whole of humanity several times - covered them with bleach to decontaminate the deadly pink powder, loaded them on a train and they illegally sent through Russia and Kazakhstan to more than 1,600 km away, to the remote island in the heart of the inland Sea of Aral. Here Russian soldiers dug huge pits and you poured the mush lethal, burying the bacteria and - he hoped Moscow - a serious political threat. While Mikhail Gorbachev supported his campaign for glasnost and perestroika and tended to strengthen ties with the West, U.S. intelligence revealed that the Soviet Union, contrary to the commitments made in treaties, continued to produce tons of lethal germs to be used as biological weapons, although they were banned worldwide. Russian scientists involved in the program, claiming that the stocks had to be destroyed if the United States and Britain had requested an inspection. Using the island of Vozrozhdeniye (in Russian island of Rebirth) as a secret landfill was an obvious choice: until 1992, when the army finally abandoned the area, it was the most important area of ​​experimentation in the open air of the Union Soviet Union. Today the island, which legally belongs to the former Soviet republics of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, is the largest anthrax burial site in the world. Wells lethal Paradoxically, for the American secret services is a real gold mine. Experts and Army scientists were secretly invited by the governments of the two republics are interested in going on the island several times in the last four years, to inspect and to collect samples of bacteria buried. According to the consultants, what they found was stunning. The tests, carried out on soil samples collected from six of the eleven large burial pits show that although the bacteria were immersed in bleach at least twice, first in 250 liter barrels and then in the sand pits where they remained for about ten years, some spores are still alive and potentially lethal. The analyzes performed in American laboratories have also shown that the anti-anthrax vaccine currently administered under 2 and a half million U.S. soldiers is actually effective against the strain of this old Russian, deadly scourge ... or at least against the strain found on the island. Although this has reassured the Clinton administration, the discovery of viable spores instead he cares greatly alarmed Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, which has conducted exploratory drilling for oil about three-quarters of the island belonging to him. The Aral Sea was once the fourth largest lake in the world today for amplitude but its volume is reduced by 75% due to incorrect policy of forced irrigation started in the 50s by the former Soviet Union. The two main tributaries of the Inland Sea were in fact diverted to groped in vain to make some arable semi-desert areas of Turkmenistan and other Central Asian territories, thus depriving the Aral Sea area of about 55 million cubic km of 'water that received each year and sentenced him to death "for thirst." As a result of the withdrawal of the waters, the island has grown from 200 to nearly 2,000 square kilometers originating square kilometers today and is about to be reunited with the mainland. Experts fear that anthrax spores can be unearthed from mice, turtles, lizards or birds and then spread in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. The disease is in fact transmissible from animals to humans by direct contact and is treatable with antibiotics if diagnosed immediately. Pandora's Box Military officials and Central Asian Americans fear that the ease of access to the island cause of terrorist groups to use the deadly bacteria, payable in a spray form and then inhaled as a heavy weapon of blackmail. It is also thought that the same spores could be a serious threat to the local population, whose health is already considered by the WHO (World Health Organization) among the worst in the world. Both Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan have signed the ban on weapons of mass destruction, and both have requested the help of the United States to ascertain the extent of this terrible legacy of the Soviet regime and to decontaminate the entire area.