Breathe easy. Or a little easier, at least.

After 45 years, the last of Calhoun County's Cold War-era sarin weapons are gone. Now there's just VX nerve agent and mustard blister agent to worry about.

Workers at the Anniston Chemical Agent Disposal Facility destroyed the Anniston Army Depot's last 105 mm projectile filled with the nerve agent sarin -- also known as GB -- on Thursday afternoon.

"This is a milestone for the community," said Tim Garrett, the Army's project site manager for the facility. "There is far less risk now with GB gone."

Depot workers delivered the last batch of sarin-filled weapons from a storage bunker to the disposal facility on Feb. 22. The last round was drained of sarin and destroyed at 3:40 Thursday afternoon, Garrett said. Sarin drained from the last few weapons still is in a storage tank at the incinerator.

"We should flush the tank by Wednesday of next week," Garrett said. "There's very little chemical agent left in that tank."

Officials had expected to be rid of the sarin by the end of February, but the last round of projectiles proved to be tougher than expected. Decades of storage had sealed some parts of the 105 mm rounds together, Garrett said. Workers at a Maryland facility developed new tool attachments to remove the parts and brought them to Anniston last month.

In all, workers moved and destroyed 144,428 sarin weapons and 96,246 gallons of the nerve agent, starting Aug. 9, 2003. The weapons had been stored in Calhoun County since 1961, according to Gene Snyder, chief of storage for the Anniston Chemical Activity.

ANCDF and storage workers at the depot now will turn their attention to M-55 rockets filled with the nerve agent VX.

VX-filled rockets, artillery shells and land mines account for 46 percent of the remaining chemical weapons stockpile at the Anniston facility. Mortar shells, artillery shells and ton-size containers of mustard blister agent account for the other 54 percent. Once all the VX is destroyed, which Garrett said would take about one year, 99 percent of the risk of storing chemical weapons will be gone.

Garret said he expects some of the M-55 rockets to start fires as they're processed, as has happened at disposal sites in Arkansas and Oregon. He said the fires will not cause a hazard because they'll likely happen in a room designed to contain explosions. Such fires likely will slow the weapons destruction, though.

"I fully anticipate having those," Garrett said of the fires. "How many, I don't know."

Beginning today, workers will begin 17 weeks of preparing the facility to destroy VX rockets. Officials said workers are training to handle contamination from the nerve agent, which is thicker than sarin. Garrett compared sarin to water. VX is more like motor oil, he said, and therefore tougher to clean from machinery and from workers' protective suits.

"VX is very unforgiving," said Bob Love, project Manager for Westinghouse Anniston, the contractor that runs the incinerator for the Army.

Officials highlighted the safety record of work crews in announcing the end of sarin destruction Thursday. Workers didn't miss a single workday because of accidents over two and a half years, Garrett said.

"Eight million work hours without a lost workday is unheard of, especially in a hazardous environment," he said.