Example of Landmines

When we began this line of research at Sandia National Laboratories, we were primarily concerned with landmines. One of our first efforts was to characterize the surface contamination on some typical mines. For this work we obtained some Soviet mines from the U.S. Marine Corps. Leggett and colleagues at the 

Army CRRDC also measured surface contamination. In addition, they measured flux of molecules from mines in both air and water. Mines form one of the larger groups of explosive bearing targets for trace chemical sensors. Therefore, these measurements provide some insight into the concentrations at the source 

Surface contamination was found to vary widely from mine to mine, but effective average contamination from a number of mines of several national origins seems to be about 15 to 18 ng/cm2. Contamination in the painted surface of mortar and artillery shells was similar [8], 

Flux measurements by Leggett and colleagues are briefly summarized in Tables 4.2 and 4.3 [9], Two features are immediately apparent (1) The flux of TNT is smaller that that of dinitrobenzene (DNB), while the greatest flux is always for DNT, and (2) the flux from any is greater when the mine is submerged in water, compared to the same mine in air. They also determined that, 

TABLE 4.3 Comparison of Mine Flux into Air and Water at 22° C (ng/mine/day)  

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