Contamination of military ranges by the use of explosives can lead to irreversible environmental damage, specifically to soil and groundwater. The fate and effects of traditional explosive residues are well understood, while less is known about the impact of Insensitive High Explosives (IHEs) that are currently being brought into military service. Current research has focussed on the investigation of individual constituents of IHE formulations, which may not be representative of real-world scenarios when explosive residues will be deposited together. Therefore, this study investigated the fate and transport of the combined IHE constituents 2,4-dinitroanisole (DNAN), 1-nitroguanidine (NQ) and 3-nitro-1,2,4-triazol-5-one (NTO) in two UK soil types. Static experiments ran for 9weeks to determine the fate of the combined explosive constituents in soil by monitoring the rate of degradation. Transport was examined by running soil column experiments for 5weeks, with a watering regime equivalent to the average yearly UK rainfall. Both static and soil column experiments confirmed that DNAN and NTO started to degrade within twenty-four hours in soil with high organic content, and were both completely degraded within sixty days. NQ was more stable, with 80% of the original material recovered after sixty days. The major degradation product of DNAN in the test soils was 2-amino-4-nitroanisole (2-ANAN), with trace amounts of 4-amino-2-nitroanisole. NTO was rapidly degraded in soil with high organic content, although no degradation products were identified. Results supported work from literature on the individual constituents DNAN, NQ and NTO suggesting that the three explosives in combination did not interact with each other when in soil. This study should provide a useful insight into the behaviour of three combined Insensitive High Explosive constituents for the predication of soil and water contamination during military training.

With a multitude of potential applications, poly­(phosphine–borane)­s are an interesting class of polymer comprising main-group elements within the inorganic polymer backbone. A new family of primary alkylphosphine–borane polymers was synthesized by a solvent-free rhodium-catalyzed dehydrocoupling reaction and characterized by conventional chemicophysical techniques. The thermal stability of the polymers is strongly affected by the size and shape of the alkyl side chain with longer substituents imparting greater stability. The polymers show substantial stability toward UV illumination and immersion in water; however, they undergo a loss of alkylphosphine units during thermal degradation. The polymers exhibit glass transition temperatures (T g) as low as −70 °C. A group interaction model (GIM) framework was developed to allow the semiquantitative prediction of T g values, and the properties of the materials in this study were used to validate the model.

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