Star Staff Writer
A lab technician mistakenly testing an air monitor at the Anniston chemical weapons incinerator set off the alarms that caused the evacuation of a lab late Thursday night.
The unnamed worker injected highly diluted GB nerve agent, or sarin, into an air monitor that was not scheduled for testing, incinerator officials said Monday.
The problem was uncovered through an investigation, and managers are considering disciplinary actions, said Donovan Mager, spokesman for Westinghouse Anniston, which operates the facility.
The worker denied the error until Monday morning, he said.
"It’s unfortunate for the employee and the entire ANCDF team," said Ken Ankrom, Westinghouse Anniston plant manager. "If the employee would have come forward and admitted the mistake, we could have avoided the investigation and the undue concern that it caused the workforce and the community."
Officials were at first baffled by the incident, since there did not seem to be a source of sarin in the lab, which is separate from the weapons processing building.
An alcohol spike in the reading, discovered during the investigation, pointed to the testing solution, Mager said.
Workers regularly test the monitors by injecting them with diluted agent. In this case, the agent was injected into the primary system and the backup system used to confirm a detection, Mager said.
The alarm did not stop operations at the incinerator. The facility is in the middle of agent trial burns to show whether it is meeting state and federal environmental standards.
The facility was built to destroy the 2,253 tons of obsolete chemical weapons stored at the Anniston Army Depot. The facility has destroyed 12,078 M55 rockets filled with sarin since operations began Aug. 9.