NAVY RECYCLES NAPALM 

On April 4 at a low key ceremony at the Fallbrook Naval Weapons Station in San Diego County, California, the Navy recycled its final two canisters of Vietnam-era napalm.

Napalm, one of the most notorious weapons used by U.S. forces in the Vietnam war, was manufactured by Dow Chemical Company between the years 1965 and 1969. Napalm is 46 percent polystyrene (a type of plastic, and commonly known as Styrofoam), 33 percent gasoline and 21 percent benzene (made from crude oil and coal). It was created 60 years ago when Harvard University and U.S. army scientists mixed a soap powder of naphthene and palmitate with gasoline, creating a syrupy substance that burned more slowly than gasoline.

The Navy sent the canisters to locations in Louisiana and Texas where they were blended into fuel and used in industrial furnaces. One of the recipients of the recycled napalm is Rhodia Inc. in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Rhodia burns the thinned and blended napalm as a fuel in furnaces that regenerate sulfuric acid used by petrochemical companies.

The Navy began recycling the napalm in March of 1998, at a rate of about 100 canisters a day. There were a total of 34,123 bombs, weighing between 500 and 700 pounds each, at the Naval Weapons station, with a total weight of 23 million pounds.