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"There are 3000,000 landmine victims in the world." - Queen Noor of Jordan, 7 Mar 01 on Nightline

Landmines are shattering the lives of children and their communities in 68 developing countries, 18 of them in Africa. More than 115 million unexploded mines are buried in the earth. Another 100 million are stockpiled ready for use. Since 1975, landmines have caused one million casualties. Mines kill and mutilate 8,000-10,000 children each year and threaten millions more. There is one landmine for every 12 children.

Making the World a Safe to Play In

Land Mine Detection Method Found

June 2, 2000 by DAVID PITT, Associated Press

ATLANTA (AP) - Long after a war ends, the land mines left behind remain a deadly danger hidden from sight. But not from sound, researchers say.

Scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology are developing a new system that shakes the ground to create sound waves and detect mines, even those that can't be found using traditional radar or metal-detection devices.

Systems using ground-penetrating radar fail because they can't tell the difference between mines and rocks, roots, cans or sticks, said Georgia Tech associate professor Waymond Scott. Metal detectors fail because they see every metal can, scrap and shell casing, resulting in a high false alarm rate.

Scott said the sound-wave techniques work because the mines, with air pockets, flexible cases and trigger mechanisms, reflect sound differently than other buried objects. Their system seems to be reliable for detecting all types of buried mines.

The Georgia Tech researchers presented the findings of their experiments Friday at the 139th annual meeting of the Acoustical Society of America.

Land mines kill or injure 26,000 people a year, and about 100 million mines remain buried from conflicts worldwide, according to statistics compiled by the State Department, the Red Cross and the United Nations.

The Georgia Tech team has tested its system in a lab with anti-tank and anti-personnel land mines. Its next step is to move the experiments into the field. Scott predicted that a manufactured system to detect mines could be from five to 10 years away.

He envisions a vehicle-mounted system with a shaker that sends out waves or perhaps a system that doesn't touch the ground at all and uses a different sound wave source. He said the best system will probably end up being a combination of a metal detector and sensors that pick up electromagnetic and sound waves.

Rats Train As Landmine Detectors

Dec 30, 1999

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Trained rats may be the best and cheapest form of landmine detector, Belgian researchers said Thursday.

Antwerp-based research group Apopo said it had taught its African Giant Pouched rats to recognize the smell of dynamite and believed the rodents were ready to start training in earnest in Tanzania.

"Rats have certain advantages over dogs, which are often used for detection purposes, and they live as long," Apopo's chief technical engineer Christophe Cox told Reuters.

"They have a better sense of smell, are cheaper to keep and maintain, they are more resistant to tropical diseases and, since they are smaller, you can transport more. Plus they are very suitable for repetitive tasks," Cox said.

Apopo, which has Belgian government financing for its six-year research project, said rats could be used both to mark the mined area and to pinpoint the position of individual landmines.

To identify the minefield, laboratory rats are given soil samples to smell, and indicate the presence of dynamite vapor by pressing one of two levers.

Once the minefield has been mapped, the rats sniff out a landmine and sit beside it waiting to be rewarded with food, imitating their behavior in the wild when they bury food and use their sense of smell to find it again.

"This could be a cheap solution and, since it is also simple and does not involve a lot of technical equipment, it is something countries could do for themselves," Cox said.

The project will now move to Tanzania, where the rats will be trained on real terrain rather than in sand boxes. Cox said he hoped the rats would be ready for action in two years.

"Of course, it may be necessary to have them on a lead working an area of maybe 10-15 square meters at a time to stop them from running off," he said.

UNICEF Landmine Awareness

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