News

Nerve gas exposure prompts retraining

02/11/04

Two technicians at the Anniston chemical weapons incinerator have been contaminated with the nerve gas sarin, Army officials said Tuesday, and all workers are being retrained to avoid such accidents in the future.

Neither of the technicians was injured in the accident last week, according to blood tests administered at the Army's on-site clinic. The blood tests measure the body's response to sarin exposure and, if administered quickly, show if a person has been exposed to a dangerous level of the lethal chemical.

Officials shut down the incinerator and all maintenance last Wednesday after sarin alarms went off at two locations, including one open area where workers were not wearing protective gear.

Officials prohibited maintenance activities and entries into contaminated areas for a week while they studied what had happened and how to prevent it from happening again, they said.

"We learned a lot from this that we're going to try to get done," said Bob Love, project manager for Westinghouse Anniston, the Army's contractor at the site.

Sarin is deadly at very low levels, and the effects of even lower exposures are unknown.

Currently, the incinerator is working to destroy M-55 rockets containing sarin that has jelled or crystallized. Originally, the incinerator was designed to drain the liquid sarin from the rockets and burn that in a separate furnace.

Since discovering that sarin has solidified or jelled in about 20 percent of the rockets, the Army has tried a variety of ways to destroy them. At an incinerator in Utah, they were burned extremely slowly, at a rate of 1.6 an hour.

Here, the Army is trying such techniques as catching the crystals in a net sock and sending in a worker to change out the sock. It was during that maneuver that the workers were exposed, Love said.

They got sarin on their hands, while making a "hot entry" completely covered in protective clothing. Instead of immediately decontaminating their gloved hands, they continued their work and spread the sarin all over their suits, Love said.

They both went through a decontamination shower with a caustic agent and water before taking their suits off. Since they knew they were contaminated, one of the mechanical technicians showered three times.

Nonetheless, when they came to the next airlocked room, the air around their suits measured at 165 and 185 times the level that would set off an alarm at the incinerator complex.

At that point they were cut out of their suits by workers also in protective gear who tried to avoid touching either of the men with the contaminated suits. However, some of the sarin must have touched the cotton coveralls they were wearing under their suits, officials said.

They were taken to the clinic, where in the decontamination area one of them registered sarin at a level about twice what would be expected to set off an alarm, but less than the level listed as a health hazard under federal standards.

The other worker showed only trace amounts of sarin on his body. Both were given blood tests that did not register within dangerous levels, according to the Army.

13 new steps:

Working in protective suits during "hot entries" is extremely hot, exhausting and stressful, which can lead to mistakes, said Tim Garrett, the Army's project manager at the incinerator.

Nonetheless, he said the Army and Westinghouse came out with 13 new steps to avoid further worker contamination. Garrett and Love said they plan to complete the retraining in 30 days.

"The objective is making sure our workers are protected," Garrett said.

He said the community was never at risk since the sarin did not escape the facility.

But Craig Williams, executive director of the anti-burn group Chemical Weapons Working Group, said the Army is putting workers at risk by trying to burn rockets in a fashion the incinerator was not designed for.

"They're having to violate their own cardinal rule about limiting the number of hot entries they do - because that's the No. 1 worker safety rule," Williams said. "They're risking these workers' well-being to show everyone they can do it."

Now, the Army is in a "shakedown" period, trying to prove to the state the maximum number of rockets it can burn. Its performance will determine what its state permit allows.

If the Army reaches its goal of 14 crystallized or gelled rockets per hour, that would be a far faster rate than any previous incinerator.

The Army is at the beginning of a 10-year plan to destroy more than 660,000 Cold War-era weapons loaded with nerve and blister agents.