Chemicals in Antarctic huts pose 'potential explosive' risk, conservators warn
Conservators looking after the historic Shackleton and Scott expedition huts on the Antarctic continent have warned that century-old medical and photographic chemicals stored inside could be potentially explosive. The New Zealand-based Antarctic Heritage Trust has launched an urgent disposal operation.
The huts were built between 1907 and 1917 during Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton's Antarctic expeditions and are on the UNESCO World Heritage list. Antarctic Heritage Trust conservators have identified glass bottles inside containing nitroglycerin-based medical preparations and nitrate-based photographic stocks. Chemists say that, after a century in frozen storage, these substances have undergone structural changes that make them highly sensitive to temperature swings.
The head of the Antarctic Heritage Trust called this "the most delicate disposal operation we will undertake on the continent". Conservation specialists and the New Zealand Defence Force's chemical-biological response unit will work together. Hospital-grade nitroglycerin had been produced in the same period as the First World War.
The project is being funded by New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Australia. The Antarctic Heritage Trust said reopening the huts to the public after the clean-up could take until the summer of 2027. If the operation succeeds, similar protocols are expected to be rolled out to other historic polar bases.
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