Mothball

Mothballs are small balls of chemical pesticide and deodorant sometimes used when storing clothing and other articles susceptible to damage from mold or moth larvae (especially clothes moths like Tineola bisselliella).

Use of mothballs when clothing is stored out-of-season has given rise to the colloquial usage of the terms "mothballed" and "put into mothballs" to refer to anything which is put into storage or whose operation is suspended.

Composition

Older mothballs consisted primarily of naphthalene, but due to naphthalene's flammability, many modern mothball formulations instead use 1,4-dichlorobenzene. The latter formulation may be somewhat less flammable, although both chemicals have the same NFPA 704 rating for flammability. The latter chemical is also variously labeled as para-dichlorobenzene, p-dichlorobenzene, pDCB, or PDB, making it harder to identify unless all these synonyms are known to a potential purchaser. Both of these formulations have the strong, pungent, sickly-sweet odor often associated with mothballs. Both naphthalene and 1,4-dichlorobenzene undergo sublimation, meaning that they evaporate from a solid state directly into a gas; this gas is toxic to moths and moth larvae.

National Defense Reserve Fleet

The National Defense Reserve Fleet (NDRF) consists of "mothballed" ships, mostly merchant vessels, that can be activated within 20 to 120 days to provide shipping for the United States of America during national emergencies, either military or non-military, such as commercial shipping crises.

The NDRF is managed by the U.S. Department of Transportation's Maritime Administration (MARAD). It is a different entity from the United States Navy reserve fleets, which consist largely of warships.

NDRF vessels are at the fleet sites at James River, Virginia–the 'James River Reserve Fleet'; Beaumont, Texas–the 'Beaumont Reserve Fleet'; and Suisun Bay, California; and at designated outported berths. Former anchorage sites included Stony Point, New York - the Hudson River Reserve Fleet; Wilmington, North Carolina; Mobile, Alabama; Astoria, Oregon; and Olympia, Washington.

Through the 2010s, the oldest, most decrepit hulls at Suisun Bay will be stripped of toxic materials, then broken up in Texas, California or Asia. Twenty of the most polluting mothball ships are slated for recycling by 2012, as are 32 more by 2017. Unaffected will be the battleship USS Iowa which has been relocated to the Port of Los Angeles to become a museum ship.