BY STACY HUDSON
Posted on Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Chemical teams at the Pine Bluff Arsenal on Saturday began destroying rockets containing VX, a liquid nerve agent that attacks the body's nervous system. By Tuesday, the arsenal's Chemical Agent Disposal Facility had destroyed one rocket containing the potentially deadly nerve agent, spokesman Raini Wright said.

The work, which is expected to last six months, marks the start of the second major disposal effort for the arsenal, which began incinerating its chemical weapon stockpile in 2005. In May, the arsenal finished destroying its stockpile of GB, a liquid nerve agent also known as sarin.

"We successfully transitioned from the first disposal campaign to the second," Mark Greer, the site project manager at the disposal facility, said in a news release issued Monday. "We expect VX rocket processing to progress just [as ] smoothly as we did through GB rocket processing."

Before the incineration began, the arsenal was home to 12 percent of the country's original chemical weapons stockpile.

Congress passed a law in 1985 requiring the U. S. Department of Defense to destroy its chemical weapons. In 1997, the United States ratified the International Chemical Weapons Treaty, agreeing to destroy its chemical weapons by 2012 -- although just two-thirds of the nation's chemical weapons stockpile is expected to be destroyed by that deadline, federal officials said last year. Pine Bluff and seven other sites won't complete incinerating their stockpiles until as late 2016.

Nerve agents like VX are similar to pesticides in how they work, but are much more potent, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, based in Atlanta. Mild exposure to VX can cause twitching and loss of muscle control. Extreme exposure to the odorless and tasteless chemical agent can be lethal.

The Pine Bluff Arsenal opened in 1941 to make mustard blistering agents and assemble munitions during World War II. It once housed 3, 850 tons of chemical agents used in warfare.

In May, the Pine Bluff disposal facility successfully destroyed 90, 409 GB rockets containing GB and two 1-ton containers of the chemical. The sarin accounted for more than 12 percent of the chemical weapons stockpiled at the arsenal. About 3, 370 tons of chemical agents -- VX and mustard blistering agents -- remain. Arsenal officials won't give specifics on how many rockets, land mines and other weapons are left to be destroyed.

VX is a lower threat risk to the public than GB was, if the arsenal were to have an explosion or leak, Wright said. But she stressed that the incineration of the VX rockets will not pose a public threat and that the facility monitors the disposal process constantly.The area where the process will take place is surrounded by 2-foot-thick walls made of steel reinforced concrete.

The arsenal has experienced a handful of low-level chemical vapor leaks in the past few years, but Wright maintained that the chances of a leak were low. No one has been injured and there was no threat to the public. Should the facility experience a leak, workers would contain the source of the leak and seal it to minimize the threat to employees and the public, Wright said.

Next in line for disposal at the arsenal are VX land mines. After that, it will move on to disposal of mustard blistering agents. Wright contends that the arsenal is still on track to meet the 2012 deadline. "We actually started up destroying the VX rockets sooner than what we had anticipated, so we're on schedule," Wright said.