Explosives used by the military may be about to get a green makeover. Currently TNT, RDX and various other explosives are pretty terrible news for the environment, releasing toxic gases when detonated. Plus all of the poor trees that are blasted into oblivion and the massive craters they create in the earth. Those are pretty awful too.

Apparently the toxins are polluting the environment and are just as detrimental to the earth even when detonation is incomplete. Some German researchers caught wind of the fact that these explosives aren't just hurting humans, but the environment as well and have sought to find eco-friendly alternatives to carbon-emitting TNT. The new materials of choice are known as tetrazoles, which derive their energy from nitrogen instead. Two tetrazoles known as HBT and G2ZT have already shown promise when small test bombs were creating using the materials, releasing fewer toxic byproducts than other commonly-used explosives. Though the new bombs also produced dangerous hydrogen cyanide gas, chemist Thomas Klapötke of the University of Munich in Germany said adding some oxidizers to the compounds eliminated the cyanide problem. Scientists also found bombs made from these materials were less likely to accidentally explode than commonly-used explosives.

Not only do the new explosives safer for environment and for those handling them, but experimental explosions conducted in a lab showed that G2ZT is as powerful as TNT and HBT is actually more powerful than TNT and closer to RDX.

These compounds have great potential, "especially for large caliber naval and tank guns," Klapötke added.

Does anyone else see the irony of eco-friendly warfare? It's hard to believe that anyone detonating explosives in a war are first and foremost concerned with the impact they're having on the environment. It's doubtful that there will be soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan adopting a mentality along the lines of, "Man I just bombed the crap out of those militant headquarters and killed a bunch of guys, but at least I was being a friend to the environment while doing so." In other words, will slapping a green label on explosives really put anyone's mind at ease?

» Yahoo! News