[4] Over the past 150 years, millions of tons of explosives have been produced for military applications and other activities that have led to the accidental contamination of energetic materials in the soil and groundwater.
[5] Exact numbers cannot be obtained and estimations are generally conservative, because people make their own bombs, which is not a small activity in regions dealing with armed conflict.
The United States Army had estimated that over 1.2 million tons of soils have been contaminated with explosives on their training grounds alone.
In the last decade, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) has declared TNT a pollutant whose removal is priority.
[5] Explosives and their post-explosion by-products may be degraded by abiotic processes that include hydrolysis, oxidation, or photolysis.