Get the latest tech news
World War I dangers in France's red zones
The Great War never ended in some old battlegrounds.
Verdun Forest is an area that had restoration after World War I. F. Lamiot/Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 Generic And then there are the gases, acids, and other chemicals polluting the soil—in some parts, the ground still contains so much arsenic that nothing will grow. The issue has remained largely dormant, resurfacing only in the 1990s, when more than one in three U.S. veterans of the First Gulf War reported a range of symptoms ascribed to exposure to toxic substances. Even in France itself, not much thought is given to the lingering effects of WWI, or to the remaining Zones rouges—perhaps because so much of the affected areas were left to the trees, becoming so-called forêts de guerre (war forests), notably in the Champagne region.
Or read this on Hacker News
