Man and woman arrested after stockpile of mustard gas discovered in Lincolnshire

Two people injured after accidentally digging up canisters near former RAF base

Mustard gas canisters were found in Roughton Moor Woods, Lincolnshire (Lincolnshire Police)

Two people have been arrested after a stockpile of potentially deadly mustard gas was found concealed in woods in Lincolnshire.

Police declared a major incident when the chemical weapons were found in Roughton Moor Wood, which housed a military base until the 1960s.

Two people digging for bottles in the woods required hospital treatment after discovering the canisters, which released gas leaving them with burns and respiratory problems.

A 38-year-old man from Lincoln, was arrested on suspicion of being in possession of a noxious substance on Tuesday and a woman was arrested on Wednesday.

Mustard gas causes blisters and burns on the skin and can kill anyone exposed through damage to the respiratory system and internal organs.

After being used as a weapon in the First World War, it was banned by the 1925 Geneva Protocol, but has been used in recent conflicts including by Isis in Syria.

Lincolnshire Police said the incident in Roughton Moor Wood was not terror-related.

“We are working with other emergency services, military and health partners to ensure the continued safety of anyone who uses the woods and to establish if any further canisters are present,” a spokesperson added.

“We would ask people to avoid the area for the time being.”

The canisters were taken to the Porton Down military science base for analysis, which found that they had been “in situ since when the site was an operational RAF base”.

Police said there was no indication of a wider contamination problem or risk to people visiting the woods.

Superintendent Phil Vickers added: “We are working with other emergency services, the Environment Agency, Anglian Water, Public Heath England and the military to reduce the risk from the materials that have been found.

“The people who found it have been exposed to it and we are ensuring they have the best possible treatment.

“The work we are doing is to ensure nothing or no-one else is contaminated. There isn’t any need for alarm.”

The woods were formerly part of RAF Woodhall Spa, which opened in February 1942 as a satellite of RAF Coningsby and closed in the mid-1960s.

It came almost 20 years after The Independent revealed that more than 60 military sites were contaminated by mustard gas, despite being declared “safe” by the Ministry of Defence.

Checks were carried out after it emerged that decontamination efforts had been botched, leaving significant amounts of the chemical weapon in the soil.

Under the Chemical Weapons Convention, which is ratified by Britain, the Government is obliged to declare sites where chemical weapons were manufactured or stored.

The Ministry of Defence has not yet responded to The Independent’s request for comment.