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Short abstract

TNT dumped in postwar oceans does not disappear – it transforms. Corroding munitions leak toxic metabolites into the sea, absorbed by marine life decades later. This contribution traces TNT's slow violence across seawater, exhibition spaces, and an STS researcher's encounter with a toxic molecule.

Long abstract

Trinitrotoluene (2,4,6-trinitrotoluene, TNT) is a chemical compound best known as an explosive. Since its synthesis by German chemist Julius Willbrand in 1863, it has become the world's most widely used conventional explosive – its energy yield serving as the standard measure for all explosions. TNT has a violent effect in two different temporalities. Its rapid violence is well understood: a detonator triggers near-instantaneous release of enormous energy. Less visible, but equally consequential, is its "slow violence" (Rob Nixon). After the First and Second World Wars, thousands of tonnes of ammunition – most of it containing TNT – were dumped into the oceans, then considered a safe disposal site. Decades later, corroding casings are leaking. TNT does not simply degrade; it transforms into metabolites such as 2-ADNT and 4-ADNT, molecules that are no less toxic than the original substance, now absorbed by marine life across the seas.

Drawing on two transnational and transdisciplinary EU research projects investigating ammunition pollution in the North Sea, this paper traces how TNT spreads through seawater, how the topic was communicated through a travelling exhibition – and how an anthropologist and STS researcher came to encounter, through a single molecule, the slow violence and the toxic legacies that outlasts war itself.