The binary destruction facility at the Pine Bluff Arsenal began destroying the last of its stock of chemical precursors this week, officials announced.

The U.S. Army Chemical Materials Agency Non-Stockpile Chemical Material Project expects the destruction to last six to eight weeks. During that time, workers will eliminate 291 drums of QL, the last of the United States' inventory of the binary precursor chemical.

QL, or diisopropyl aminoethylmethyl phosphonite, was stored at the arsenal as part of a 1980s effort to modernize U.S. chemical warfare.

Binary munitions were designed to combine on the way to a target to create a chemical agent. QL would have combined with another chemical to form the nerve agent VX. Only one munition type was developed; none was used, according to the agency.

This story was published Thursday, June 8, 2006