culture. to the state crystal she holds has no idea which dances she was exposed to she has difficulty walking result of an earth to see head since she was young. give the concord had under fire i was 15 when i 1st began getting else in it i did after the end of the war and after they'd finished loading the gas by. the large volume there would be times that other i was almost paralyzed and initially a doctor thought it might be polio. in the mud for. d.d. agnostic state hard to escape to kimberly saying that this is them inverted always went away again. and then 20 years ago i was diagnosed with neuropathy level but he harbored. no one can say what caused her neuropathy but crystal she holds has found out the toxins can be a trigger. when she showed us

a photo album of pictures from her childhood she became sad the whole family died of cancer. she blames the chemical weapons and the politicians who ignored the existence of these water poisons for 75 years. she cannot leave because i don't understand it i just can't understand what the politicians are thinking he might not flog on the habit i know i'm old but i've been through it all. but these days i get the feeling that they know about it that they don't want to know and they don't want to spend money on it the costs are horrendous and for their money is more important than people. get it's better it's mention. the costs are on obstacle germany's most toxic. hole deadening

a pond in miller sex any could easily become the world's most costly want the cleanup comes with an estimated $15000000.00 euro price tag. in only 2020 work began on 3 exploratory shafts the 1st chemical shells turned up just to me to below the surface. stefan is part of the team recovering the deadly weapons in this job he's away anything can happen for his i want to fulfill your pecan there are things where you can't gauge the risk is what uncovering munitions that leak and so forth you know that's what this is about it was with my biggest concern is coming across an exposed chemical warfare agent down in the hole although that would mean getting out carefully evaluating the situation and taking further measures i don't want them to know that. stefan vision has been confronted with such situations down in the shaft he risked his own life on the job to save others who believe car this is munitions are

a problem that especially when they're somewhere buried in the earth disintegrating and hazardous gases are leaking into the water eventually that affects the whole population of the other heavy metals that get into the water like arsenic for example seep into the food chain and then into people that's why we have to do that this is what i think. 84 minutes is the maximum time stephon the ship can stay in the shaft with these hazmat suits and musk. he goes down a mine. next to him and beneath him on hundreds of poison gas shells from 2 world wars. today you'll recover 400 kilograms of toxic deadly munitions from the hole. in the commercial or food as i get most i have a mix of feelings it's strange because you know i can't really express what it feels like but it's certainly not good in punish you. have to stay sharp whether

you're excavating things or moving them but being on. this closely watched convoy has been moving around the newburgh heat for months. once a day it's poisonous hall is loaded onto a special truck and taken to the gate moonstone. the company is the only one in the country allowed to dispose of chemical weapons. any chemical weapon or warfare agent found on german soil is brought here. on average we have one to 200 shells being brought here most of them come from the region north of monster so your blood for example 2 years ago we had some from button button birds. the dots on the bay were doing some building and brought us chemical shells that still contained the nerve agent tabone high this. and they have come short of wood and are. just a drop of top one is enough to kill

a person full of her she is responsible for destroying the gas before he sets to work he meticulously checks the skia then you even that out if there is any dirt or contamination in this area or if any of these plastic pouncer damaged it could allow toxic agents or poisonous gases to get seen and that's why it's really important that everything fits here that everything is clean and that the membrane isn't compromised and is always the cement on and on and this. was present in november 29000 when the 1st shell from dec an opponent who saw an open and emergency medical also on standby. it's you know we get dressed here and then we get into our popemobile and driven over. india i knew before coming up next we enter the front chamber where we pick

up the shells which we take to be cart also an open. with any trees. we take the shell out of the barrel fasten it at the right height and we leave the room because then it's the turn of the machine operator soroka in the shell venting and out of the fleeces because when it's open he'll give us the ok we go in and monitor the room for concentrations of warfare agent in view if everything is ok we look to see what the contents are but just dismiss it out of albany when we've determined that we take a lab sample and then the agent is put into a barrel that can be secured and destroy it safely and finished it then. when the shell from death in a pond was sawn i've been the chemical warfare agent inside was found to be false changed. just probably mistrustful skin the problem is that shane damages the lungs which means bodily fluids can get in the lungs fill

up and the person effectively drowns on their own bodily fluids and you and i can cover safe and thinking. chemical munitions recovered from data in a pond stored at the gate if there really are $20000.00 shells to be recovered it will take years to destroy them all. the gay cat is already working to capacity. head of a place kruger says politicians could be doing more school so that you would of course that costs taxpayers money in the end you have a safer environment but that's not immediately visible it's so maybe that's why it's an unloved child but there's no other option we should be doing something else too. not least because so few people are aware of the many places in germany contaminated by wartime chemical weapons berlin's hostile host district for example . a document that's only going to

war the end of the 2nd world war the trail of records on substances found here gets lost. during that schumacher was time you had the allied takeover without any documentation or no document as the car some things here were also top secret so they were never supposed to be documented all the records are still sealed. in the tombs where the money. for decades berlin authorities turned a blind eye unwilling to stir up trouble on the river hafele but things changed in 2018 when a real estate firm planning to build apartments had the area searched for unexploded bombs the company moved in a fog and for. during the search a metal container was found in one of these bomb craters resorbed could not be determined. so the company asked the berlin police bomb disposal team to check it

out. and to prove they determined that the container was filled with the chemical warfare agent clark one comfort of before now but. after the unwelcome discovery the real estate company turned to an expert alfred crippen dorf is an engineer and former captain with the east german army. he's qualified to work with chemical agents such as mustard gas and. he says he's mobile laboratory are right next to the building site for an on the spot soil analysis. is long gone you're expecting a very strong contamination of the soil here and also the recovery of large amounts of materials containing arsenic. such as clark one and clark 2 us human being. given that the site was once home to a world war 2 factory that made chemical warfare agents this is hardly a surprise. some of the old buildings still there.

for decades no one paid much attention parties were held at a boat house here and the former owner of the berlin housing authority did nothing . now the authorities say it's up to the new owners to clear any old ordinance. but the investor doesn't want to pay for it because that would mean passing on the cost of these toxic legacy to buyers and tenants. of the new. year old glass containers from the lab area and here is a piece of the barrel. the ground is full of things like this doesn't hide other stuff and you're more from one. tons of ass nick have already been recovered so far 1000 barrels have been filled to prevent dust from spreading through the air water is constantly being sprayed

over the area. and the poison has been detected in the groundwater. barrels have to be transported to moose to to be destroyed the cleanup operation has cost an $8.00 figure sum. but what about the neighboring properties large film studios or not and on the other side new apartments are being built could they be chemical weapons in the ground there too. we've got no idea what's behind that fence or in the neighboring lot. you can assume that the soil is contaminated there as well. so you can. only hope that the new owners or whoever moves there also plans to switch out the soil because we know how heavily contaminated by arsenic the ground was here it would be good if everyone did what we are doing through it all as we'll obviously. other studies have shown that

public areas are also contaminated with us nick and uncomfortable truth for the city of loon after decades of turning a blind eye authorities have to face up to this toxic water time legacy and it's likely to cost them a lot of. exploratory drilling a ditching a pontoon low sex and he ended after tuning up $2552.00 gas shells in spring 2020 local district and regional state level officials agreed to excavate and completely clean up the area. known as sex abuse environmental mr leask says it was the only option. is also says she grew so much more the extent of the contamination is much greater than we initially thought it was and i would say we will have to invest at least $50000000.00 euros to get rid of what is there to fortunately that can be done in this fairly compact area to make it safe again for

the inspiration. but the minister doesn't want lower saxony to have to pay the costs on its own he wants the federal government to share the burden as well as we will notice there will be a little friction with the federal government over who pays but under the in my eyes the government is responsible or to put it differently shite residents here should know this won't not happen because of money it has to be done the government has to realise i'm not ready to carry their share it has to be fairly divided. the monster neighborhood of earl is just a stone's throw away from diddling a pond if anything goes wrong with the excavation site this will be the 1st place affected wants to make christina fleckenstein spoke with residents. that's you have kind of a huge amount was going up on no one thought about how dangerous it was for the

environment and for the people here. in madison. vick. talking flares you know point being scared if they wouldn't try to stop a cleanup because it has to be done with a noise me is that they took so long to act like. that. in the end the government agreed to help fund the cleanup painstaking operation has begun to reopen our building. and engineering firm was brought in one experienced in clearing chemical weapons it's boss applauds the lower saxony government for showing in take on the whole he says german politicians are far too reluctant when it comes to dealing with the almost 200 suspects contaminated by chemical weapons. don't want to go. on in the early 1990 s.

the federal office for the environment pushed for research to get an overview of the situation on these sites and germany system of these i'm stunned often as that led to some federal state setting up so-called ordnance decommissioning program which resulted in targeted investigations being carried out at several sites with bones and but it was never completed and. in addition to the toxins present in the soil and groundwater the engineer has other concerns to sinatra's. there is the risk that a. explosives and even warfare agents could end up in the wrong hands and the gun could and that would pose an even bigger risk to the population of solutes critical for the perfect will get. one of those warfare agents is the nerve gas sarin one of the most horrific chemical weapons ever many families are polities or the nerve agents are probably the worst can come because even just very little concentrations can damage a person's nervous systems and paralyze the wrist near

a tree center leading to death from or spirit tree failure to mention stand on an autumn facade. first sergeant thorsten's troops surveying a sinister place the ruins of the center of plant in months. just before the ones here on mars i mean this is where the sarin plant was we were told to. do wards the end of the war they carried out trials here into the mass production of the warfare agents aren't on here to do damage and so at that time they only produced half a ton when viewed on what they would have eventually been able to produce 50 tons of sarin a month here so even more of it to hear stern can joining the war the saturn factory was disguised as a farmhouse from the air and there was no indication of the experiments being carried out underground. when the british took over the plant after the war they

continued to research briefly and then blew the plant up the buildings above ground were destroyed but what if the underground. kind of switch to this place hasn't been checked properly it's toxic nobody knows what could still be in here in the laboratory equipment production site materials or even munitions that. no one knows for certain and there are no plans to search the old saturn. but the german army says it would cost too much. bottles and fragments of a quick mint lie strewn around the forest none of it's being tested clear. to many other priorities means the army has little time to inspect the grounds. it isn't clear where the civilians who have a trust cost. no one has

been caught so far if they were there would be a stiff penalty and that's because i strongly advise against coming to this part of the property because it's very dangerous and there are ruins from when the buildings were detonated and there's a huge chance of falling into an old shaft and never being found any video from civilian use him in schools. france's war fields are awash with gas shells from both sides in the war. after the 1st world war they were incinerated by the 1000000 in french forests. has been researching the almost industrial scale destruction. of the meaning. of simone weil that if in 2015 we were officially commissioned by the environment ministry to signpost the forgotten places where chemical weapons were industrially

destroyed. it so an inventory of at least 50 sites was conducted which is still ongoing. mission of just. these forests neutral in northern france is one site with chemical weapons were incinerated according to estimates several $100000.00 tons were destroyed. there are many spots where nothing has grown for a century the ground is full of toxic fragments of many. in class containers and yet the forest is excessive to everyone. some of the seals in fire don't yell and on cue we have to preach. this is a state owned forest and so it's open to the public good people often come here to pick mushrooms and it's not inconceivable that they could come into contact with toxic waste because he said it just so he could stick their fingers in their mouths after they've been playing here for example that the city share in autumn one is

off on the 29. but just like in germany no one here wants to take responsibility and bear the costs. at it as a thermometer factory there are several reasons for the lack of willingness to deal with the problem that just saw 1st the contamination took place 100 years ago the responsible party has long since disappeared them see you and the war ministry that gave the orders also no longer exists so now the question is who can be held accountable who is responsible and who paid a pretty. ostrich just to pay. however several incidents have forced the french government into action. not because i'm a sucker for quick easy there are accidents every year the french government does what it can assume is something is found the weapons are recovered soon on the lawn

or to the chemical ones are put in storage until the plant to incinerate them is complete the mission and the explosives alone obsoletes we're exposing popular. in france ordinance disposal is financed and run centrally by the national government in germany accountability lies with each regional state and their budgets vary greatly that's why german experts would like the federal government to take more control and responsibility. as people of you institute the regional states keep putting forward proposals for the federal government to take over the costs of ordinance removal till now they've been consistently rejected for up to the war it's a hot potato that keeps getting passed back and forth we received this quote from the finance ministry who are responsible for this matter. please during your

questions to the ministry responsible. the federal ministry for the environment nature conservation and nuclear safety. the environment ministry was quick to respond. the federal government contributes to the disposal of chemical weapons through the federal ministry of finance as to the clearance of contaminated ground here at the regional governments and not the federal government are responsible this is currently not on the federal agenda. many contaminated sites belong to the german government like the former look at mit's media plant in northeast germany where chemical weapons were manufactured up until 945. geologist yohannes price for the 1st time he's interested in the site because it was laid out in a similar way to form a war munitions factory in various he studied. properties such as this one a managed by the institute for federal real estate beata and lisa command are in

charge of administration safety here. this is the only bunker not to be blown up by the soviet army after the war. where you lost does come or sneeze was used for mustard gas which was transported here from the indoor factory near holland and stored in one of 7 bunkers go on 6 bunkers were used to store mustard gas and one bunker or rather assistant was used to store clark. the main part of this plant was dedicated to producing munitions empty cartridges mines and shells were filled here are not only would you prefer red means out of bounds white all clear the science show which parts of the 100 hectare property can be accessed and which can't know maps or plants in the form of munitions factory remain so you have a strong uses the bavarian plants layout for orientation.

of the gas shells were transported around the factory via conveyor belts through a network of subterranean tunnels ruins of those tunnels still survive. after the collapse of east germany the grounds was fenced off these get checked once a month and 90 survey determined the contaminated areas which were sealed off the ground water was found to be severely pollution by residues of arsenic and mustard gas. is in the 3 i'm fairly sad a very high concentrations of pollutants in the groundwater which are confined to certain areas so the toxins reach is also limited have been decreasing there's a clear decline that's why we asked whether we need to take further action to clean the soil here the ground water here also isn't used for drinking 3 houses here have water wells but they're checked regularly twice a year and thankfully they haven't shown any sign of contamination. if you haven't

got something kind of sharp stuff as to. what is the problem really solved just by putting a fence around it your highness price says. he's concerned by the many off limit areas and the blind spot when it comes to war time poison he says they could still be chemical agents in the cisterns here and toxic gas shells buried in the ground for him the fence isn't a solution it's part of the problem. when counsel for game review for you can do what they did here and say we don't see any immediate threats and in case there are any we'll put a fence around it but let's consider the long term picture i don't see that fence still standing in 75 years still 150 years old and wondered from 1st and the problem won't go away on its own and serves loose it as we clearly have to do something. it's a further issue the next generation will be saddled with it you need to get over to

the debt lean upon monster will hopefully be clean when it's passed on to the next generation even if it does cost $50000000.00 euros but that'll only happen if local regional and national politicians stay in agreement and as long as taxpayer money flows ality budgets on foot all of us who bear responsibility to day are not to blame for what happened years ago we don't know how we would have acted if we were allowed down but now it is our responsibility to make sure that this problem is resolved women even of. the world war one ended more than a 100 years ago world war 2 more than 75 germany is really associated with chemical weapons today but they remain in the country and to take to it and in unknown quantities even when i retire there will be plenty of munitions left to clear in germany. job of the man i think that if you don't

have 1st hand experience of something somehow somewhere and you don't know how to deal with it. and vice and if on top of that it costs money and benefits are not interesting. that this is true we don't include. the middle so we have to acknowledge that over the coming years many many billions more must be spent on a lemonade ng and cleaning up the weapons of the past difficult. if you and i was a hero it was at 6 and i began researching contaminated signs 34 years ago in 1906 by a diminished and in my view it's an issue that's far from over in the us that leads me to satisfy you i thought it would happen a lot quicker actually love in the day i thought once we tackled it and the resources were made available and the cleanup was made a priority that we could do it there is that phrase we can jus it was all sincere

but no we haven't done it none of them dismissed the show. kicked off. dormant is spinning its wheels. they were defeated in front. of their competitors reaping the benefits of. the fight for the top spot isn't slowed. to 30 minutes on d w. operation vaccines our national soul efforts in

shielding the global fight against her own a virus the large industrialized countries have secured the vaccine for themselves while poor countries are being left empty handed out in the vaccine be fairly distributed to the whole world is the hard road out of the pandemic close up. in 90 minutes on d w. all. life on earth one of a kind to and. a gigantic coincidence. that santa previously the earth was just a mess the chemistry lab i thought mission. where the improbable but.

also the creation of our solar system with our planet is a bit like winning the lottery the day i started getting. money from earth. starts feb 11th on t w. this is d w news and these are our top stories germany poland and sweden have expelled russian diplomats in answer to the expulsion of their diplomats from moscow last week the german foreign ministry said that the problems decision to expel european union diplomats while they even as foreign policy chief was visiting moscow it was unjustified russia choose the diplomats of participating in the illegal demonstrations in support of from one critic alexei navalny.