I would like to submit the following draft for consideration.
Banning the Use of Mercury as a Propellant Additive
Category: Regulation
Area of Effect: Safety
The World Assembly,
Noting that the extremely high densities of elemental mercury and mercury-containing compounds makes them a useful additive for storable rocket propellants in rocketry, including short-range missile and jet-assisted take-off applications;
Realizing that the use of mercury in rocket combustion can lead to the dispersal of both mercury vapour and mercury oxide salts into the atmosphere;
Alarmed that these exhaust components have been shown to cause severe damage to the nervous system and kidneys of those exposed;
Hereby bans the use of mercury-containing compounds in rocket systems operating in the atmosphere, to prevent the release of mercury vapour and mercury oxides into the atmosphere and environment, and the damage to human health that would cause,
Bans the manufacture or storage of mercury-containing propellants for atmospheric rocket systems, to prevent incentives for their use,
And bans the export or import of such systems to or from member states, in an effort to prevent the international dissemination of their use.
My rationale for this draft is perhaps best explained by the below post.
Rho Ophiuchi wrote:Hello All,
I hope that this is the right forum to post this idea in.
I have an idea for a potential resolution, and I did as quick a check as I could to see if it had been done before, but I do not think it has. In any case, I recently found out that back in the 1950s and 1960s mercury metal, of all things, was considered for usage as a rocket propellant additive for things like surface-to-air missiles and JATO (jet-assisted take-off), as it had an extremely high density (I got this information from reading Ignition! An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants by John Drury Clark).
As such, I am wondering if it would be reasonable, given the highly toxic nature of both vapourized mercury and potential mercury oxides and hydroxides that might form in the exhaust of such rockets, to propose a WA resolution recommending the avoidance of their use.
This resolution would of course be mild (since it would just be a recommendation), and would probably best fit into the regulation (safety AoE) category, though I may be wrong on this.
Finally, I would just like to note that I am aware of being a complete novice at the creation of potential WA resolutions, and apologize for any major errors in this draft. Thank you all for your time and consideration.