Defense Environment Alert
March 26, 2002

ARMY COMPLETES DESTRUCTION OF GB AGENT STOCKPILE AT UTAH SITE

The Army announced March 15 that it had completed destruction of its single largest stockpile of GB nerve agent, weighing more than 12 million pounds. The Army incinerated the stockpile of 5,709 GB bulk containers at its Tooele, UT, facility, according to an Army news release.

"As of today we have destroyed over 75 percent of the nation's chemical stockpile of GB weapons," Maj. Gen. John C. Doesburg, commander of Soldier Biological Chemical Command, said in a March 15 news release from the Army. "This signifies a remarkable beginning to an end of the U.S. chemical stockpile." Army officials in statements emphasized the weapons had been "safely" destroyed. The Chemical Weapons Convention requires the United States to destroy all its stockpiled chemical weapons by 2007.

The last GB agent was eliminated in the Tooele plant's liquid incinerator March 7, the Army reports. The stockpile of GB agent had been stored at Deseret Chemical Depot in Utah. Incineration of the bulk containers began in August 1996, the Army says. The Army decided to destroy GB agent first because it says the agent posed the "greatest threat to the community." It is more likely to aerosolize and migrate as a vapor than other agents, the Army says. Other agents still to be destroyed from the Deseret depot are VX, GA, lewisite and mustard.