Anniston Star
September 4, 2003

Army displays alarm system

By Sara Clemence
Star Staff Writer
09-04-2003

A whiff of horseradish, a sniff of roofing glue and a spritz of Jovan Musk cologne could help to allay community concerns about the Anniston chemical weapons incinerator, the Army hopes.

Those ordinary substances, along with a syringe of highly diluted nerve agent, were used Wednesday to demonstrate the sensitivity of the chemical agent monitoring system used at the incinerator.

The presentation came in the wake of questions about agent alarms — some false and some confirmed — in the facility, where the Army is in the early stages of destroying chemical weapons stockpiled at the Anniston Army Depot.

That process continued Wednesday, with workers processing 138 M55 rockets filled with GB nerve agent, Army officials said.

A total of 1,164 rockets have been drained, chopped up and burned since operations began Aug. 9. More than 660,000 munitions remain.

Tonight, the Army plans to burn about 300 gallons of sarin drained from those rockets.

The first time agent was burned in bulk here, on Sunday, monitors picked up trace amounts of sarin in the furnace room. Reports of the detection alarmed the community.

During Wednesday’s monitoring demonstration, Army officials said such incidents are to be expected.

“We do have open containers of agent and we will have agent readings inside the plant,” said Tim Garrett, the Army’s project manager at the Anniston Chemical Weapons Disposal Facility.

Air inside the building is heavily filtered to keep agent from escaping into the environment, he said.

“When we get outside of that, that’s when concerns would be raised,” Garrett said.

The monitoring equipment has been checked and approved by the Centers for Disease Control, he said. All monitoring data is sent to the federal health agency every two weeks.

False Alarms

Clad in a blue lab coat for the demonstration, a technician injected a small amount of sarin —deadly in higher concentrations, but diluted to drinking-water standards — into the monitoring system.

The main part of the machine, called an Automatic Continuous Air Monitoring System (ACAMS), is a little larger than a computer’s hard drive. A readout on the front shows the levels of agent detected. More than 100 such monitors are distributed around the facility, officials said.

The machine whirred as, for two minutes, it sucked in air, collecting contaminants on a tiny filter. It then analyzed the contents for sarin, and a minute later began to buzz.

The same thing happened when the lid from a bottle of horseradish was held near the plastic intake tube. And the perfume. And the lid from a canister of roofing glue — the substance that officials said set off alarms in recent weeks.

“We were having a lot of false alarms,” Garrett said.

The primary monitoring system can quickly detect small amounts of agent in the air, but it can be misled, said Dr. Robert Kelly, who runs the laboratory at the incinerator.

“It does very good at looking for chemical agent, but it every now and then picks up chemical interference,” Kelly said.

The machine destroys the sample in the process of analyzing it, he said. So, readings must be confirmed with the backup system, called Depot Area Air Monitoring Systems (DAAMS).

The backup system samples the same air, trapping contaminants in a cigarette-sized glass tube that is brought to the lab for detailed analysis, “to determine whether there is really, truly, agent in the tube,” Kelly said.

That process can take an hour, he said.

In the meantime, workers are supposed to respond to every alarm, donning gas masks and evacuating, if necessary, said Bob Love, Westinghouse Anniston’s manager at the facility.

“The only safe way to do business is to treat every alarm as if it’s real until you prove otherwise,” Love said.

Outdated?

Several federal legislators, including Sens. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) and Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) have proposed an amendment to the 2004 defense funding bill, urging the Army to implement new monitoring systems.

“It is important for the Army and the safety of the community that the most advanced, real-time monitoring technology be used in the chemical demilitarization program,” Shelby said in a statement Wednesday.

The monitoring amendment is still making its way through Congress. It does not include any money, and it is not binding. But it does use strong language to describe current monitoring systems.

The air monitoring systems at the eight chemical weapons disposal sites around the country are “inefficient or outdated compared to newer and advanced technologies on the market,” the amendment says.

Supporters say that newer systems are more sensitive, and could reduce the number of false readings, as well as the time needed to confirm a result.

A local environmentalist said he would like to set up a demonstration of other monitoring systems.

“If we’re going to be with this incinerator for another seven to 12 years, whatever, this will help to bring a level of comfort to those of us who live here,” said Pete Conroy, director of the Environmental Policy and Information Center at Jacksonville State University.

The new technology doesn’t invalidate the current system, Conroy said, but could enhance it.

“There’s a more advanced, more accurate and more suitable technology available for our situation here in Calhoun County,” Conroy said. “This isn’t me reading emails. This is Sen. Shelby … standing side by side with the National Research Council and a dozen other Congressmen who support this technology and would like to see it used.”

Garrett said “if there’s a better box out there,” he’s happy to use it. But, he said, workers are experienced with the current system and trust it.

Susan Ankrom, who oversees Westinghouse’s environmental and monitoring work, said the current system has been thoroughly checked out by federal health officials, and has been proven effective.

“To date I don’t know of any instrument that has gone through a precision and accuracy study … in the field and passed that test,” she said.