Speaker's Stand ... Better monitoring needed for nerve agents

By Craig Williams
Special to The Star
03-26-2006

The incident caused concern not only among the Russell Building occupants but also with communities in the shadow of chemical weapons stockpiles. Citizens live daily with the risks of chemical agent exposure and need advanced monitoring systems for these lethal agents.

Significant advances in chemical warfare agent detection have occurred over the past decade, especially since Sept. 11, 2001.

Unfortunately, communities living close to these chemical weapons stockpiles are not provided the most advanced monitoring systems.

Cities in Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Oregon and Utah, some with upwards of 75,000 residents in what is called an "immediate response zone," depend on antiquated perimeter monitors -- absorbent tubes affixed atop telephone poles, drawing air over six to 12 hours before being analyzed.

The analysis often requires hours to determine if chemical agent drifted past the 3-inch tube atop the pole. Obviously, chemical agent doesn't have to pass near these tubes to breach the fence lines of facilities where the weapons are kept.

The sad fact is, there is no real-time warning system to alert communities, but such capability exists.

In March 2004, chemical agent sampling tubes at the fence line of the Anniston Army Depot, where the Army is burning chemical weapons, detected VX agent. Two tests by Army labs confirmed VX, but the Army says it was a false alarm.

A third test could not be done, as the samples were destroyed during the first two tests -- violating the Army's own analytical protocol. The Army still can't explain the reading.

Thousands of agent alarms at the Army's incinerators have occurred, and the Army admits, in most cases, that it doesn't know what caused the alarms, yet assures workers and nearby residents it wasn't leaking chemical agent.

It's possible many of the alarms were false, like the one on Capitol Hill. However, so many "immaculate detections" have occurred over the years that there's a concern workers may become desensitized, and residents believe that unless there are fatalities the Army will never admit chemical agents were released.

Chemical ionization mass spectrometry and open-path Fourier infrared spectroscopy have both been shown to be able to detect nerve agent at levels that could cause harm to the public in approximately 15 to 30 seconds. Nevertheless, the Army refuses to deploy such advanced capabilities. Their position is that what they’ve got is adequate.

A committee of the National Research Council agreed in a 2005 report. Of course, none of the committee members live anywhere close to an "immediate response zone."

The committee did recommend a cost-benefit analysis; however, the Army has revealed no dollar figures on the cost it might assign to each civilian life lost in an accident.

Equal to the value of the eight senators stuck in a Capital garage recently? Perhaps.

Everyone is relieved that the incident on the Hill was no cause for alarm. But the question is, why aren't families in chemical weapon stockpile communities even being provided an alarm?

Craig Williams is director of the Chemical Weapons Working Group in Berea, Ky.

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