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| A worker at the Anniston Chemical Agent Disposal Facility wears a protective suit for a training exercise. Incinerator officials changed their safety procedures this week for workers wearing such suits in toxic areas. Photo: Courtesy photo. |
Incinerator officials have changed safety procedures in the wake of a Feb. 4 incident in which GB nerve agent was detected and two workers had to be cut out of their protective suits.
Workers entering toxic areas now will have to decontaminate more thoroughly and try to contain contamination to specific areas. They will also be checked for contamination using handheld chemical monitors earlier in the process to exit toxic areas.
The incident, which triggered two agent alarms, occurred after the workers left an area called the toxic cubicle – where liquid agent is pumped through filters to the facility’s liquid incinerator. The men were changing a filter.
One of the workers came in contact with sarin, and as the two exited the toxic cubicle and decontaminated their protective suits, traces of vapor seeped into several rooms, though it never left the incinerator’s protective measures.
Pam Jenkins, an incinerator official who has oversight of workers entering and exiting toxic areas, said the changes were instituted to contain contamination and that all workers authorized to work in toxic areas have been re-trained to incorporate the changes.
Jenkins said workers are to spend more time decontaminating their protective suits before moving into an airlock. Once in the airlock, Jenkins said, workers are to decontaminate their suits up to three times. The workers, who wear suits that completely encompass their bodies, will be cut out of their suits in the airlock.
The workers also will be checked with a monitor resembling a hand-held metal detector in this air lock.
Workers then will move to another airlock, where they are to be checked out with the handheld monitor again in case any traces of chemical agent have contaminated their undergarments. Incinerator workers entering toxic areas wear a cotton coverall beneath their protective suits.
“We went though a long investigative process on what happened Feb. 4 and determined the cause was we had contaminated an individual’s clothing,” Jenkins said. “We had to determine how to make the process more separate to keep the contamination in (the first) airlock.”
Before, workers exiting the toxic area were cut out of their suits in the second air lock, where air monitors were used to detect agent.
Under the changes, Jenkins said, contamination should be limited to the toxic area and the first air lock to keep agent from moving into other areas of the incinerator.
The original exit procedure was taken from the Army’s incinerator at Johnston Island, the first generation chemical disposal facility.
Jenkins said she looked at the exit process used at the chemical weapons incinerator in Tooele, Utah, and found it worked better for use here.
“Our facility is not designed like Johnston Island,” Jenkins said. “There are a lot of good practices we pick up from (both) and we have to look at them both to see what applies to us best.”
The Anniston Chemical Agent Disposal Facility – the third-generation incinerator – employs a number of workers and managers who worked at Johnston Island.
Jenkins said the incinerator’s troubleshooting staffers never identified an incident such as Feb. 4 and no other incident like it happened at Johnston Island or Tooele.
The incinerator’s 200 workers qualified to work in toxic areas have been briefed about the changes and have been re-trained in ways to contain contamination, such as using tools instead of their hands to handle items contaminated with chemical agent, Jenkins said.
About 15 percent of the incinerator’s work force turns over, but each new employee undergoes safety training, said Donavan Mager, the Westinghouse spokesman.
In the case of a maintenance technician who works in a toxic area, 349 hours of training, are required, with 48 of those hours spent in protective suits at the Chemical Demilitarization Training Facility in Aberdeen, Md. The Aberdeen training is specifically for making entries in protective suits, Mager said.
Control room operators, who guide workers in toxic areas, get 413 hours of training and are certified every six months.
Mager said workers have made thousands of entries and exits of toxic areas without incident across the chemical disposal program and that the Feb. 4 incident was the first incident in about 350 entries.
Information from the incident will be shared with the next two incinerators to fire up, in Pine Bluff, Ark., and Umatilla, Ore., and with incinerator officials in Tooele, Utah.
“Through our safety department we have a lessons-learned program,” Mager said. “This is written up with an analysis, and we’ll send that out to our sister sites. So there is a formal way of sharing the information.”