1 Introduction
Energetic materials are prominent components of munitions and weapons that can be
found in war zones, training ranges and on production sites. During this decade, many
needs have already emerged related to the identification, quantification, delimitation
and elimination of energetic contaminants dispersed by munitions, or present in
explosives dumps, trials or destruction fields, firing areas and production sites 1-25 .
Within this context of growing awareness of environmental issues, the Director
Research and Development Branch, through DRDC Valcartier, has directed some of
its resources to assess and develop expertise related to the environmental risks
associated with explosive compounds.
Many Canadian Forces sites used as impact areas, training ranges, demolition and
open burning/open detonation (OB/OD) ranges, which were used to destroy out-of-
specification materials, were highly suspected of being contaminated with energetic
substances as described in the literature 1-14 . To evaluate the contamination of
Department of National Defence (DND) sites, sampling and characterization of
various ranges were performed over the last ten years. A protocol describing the
different methods of sampling and the analytical chemistry was developed 15 . This
protocol was recently updated in collaboration with Cold Regions Research and
Engineering Laboratory (CRREL) and is presently being reviewed under the auspices
of the Technical Cooperation Program (TTCP) by the member nations (Canada, the
U.S., the U.K., Australia and New Zealand) in a key technical area (KTA 4-28) 16 .
Research results to date have demonstrated that explosives are not common
contaminants, since they exhibit limited aqueous solubility and are dispersed in a
heterogeneous pattern of contamination. In the United States, a lot of efforts have
been made to develop analytical chemistry, to establish the best sampling procedure
and to understand the complex fate of explosives in the environment 3, 4, 6-12, 17-
25 .
The selection of CLAWR in CFB Cold Lake to conduct the first R&D efforts to
assess the environmental aspects of live firing activities on an Air Base was the result
of a growing interest by 4- Wing following the characterization of CFB Shilo and also
because Cold Lake is the largest Air base in Canada. As the largest and the most used
area for Air practice with live weapons, This site is the most representative and the
worthiest of studying among Air bases. The problem of air bombing is completely
different from problems encountered on Army ranges. The weapons used are
different, especially in size and content. Low order detonations of Air weapons may
result in high concentrations of explosives in the environment as it was seen in CFB
Gagetown 26 . Furthermore, Air Forces use rockets that contain ammonium
perchlorate, a newly recognized contaminant that is extensively studied in the US.
When these rockets hit the ground, some of them are not completely burned and can
break into pieces after the impact with the ground, spreading ammonium perchlorate
at the surface. Since this contaminant is ionic, it is highly soluble in water and can go
directly to the groundwater.
1
DRDC Valcartier TR 2004-204
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