Those with the worst problem are Angola, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Iraq, Laos and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Each year an estimated 100,000 mines worldwide are cleared, but another 2 million are laid. An average of 2,000 people each month are killed or maimed by land mines. In my mind, it's the worst form of pollution mankind has ever come with, bar none. Chemical Sensing One of the most promising technologies under development at Sandia to identify sea mines, land mines, and unexploded ordnance is chemical sensing.
All mines apparently emit explosive molecules.
The system is not an anomaly detector since it looks for the explosive molecules themselves rather than a container holding the explosives. It incorporates a new Sandia-developed concentration technology, which potentially can chemically amplify the source strength thousands of times. The project originally was directed at detecting sea mines and unexploded ordnance in shallow water and is sponsored jointly by the DOE and Department of Defense, Office of Munitions. Many land mines actually are placed in water such as rice paddies, fords, and domestic water sources, laundry areas and irrigation canals. They are analyzing how environmental conditions such as temperature and precipitation influence the movement of explosive molecules through soil, air, and water.