If you think Utah highways are dangerous now, try putting chemical weapons on them.

The Defense Department wants to study moving stockpiles of mustard gas from Pueblo, Colo., to the chemical weapons incinerator in Tooele County. Plans to construct an incinerator at Pueblo were canceled for a lack of funding -- all the money was spent on the war in Iraq.

So far, U.S. Sen. Orrin G. Hatch has joined with Colorado's senators to block funding for the study, while U.S. Rep. Jim Matheson has written a letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld protesting the idea of hauling chemical munitions overland to Utah.

The more voices the better in denouncing this patently bad idea.

It's supposed to be illegal to move chemical weapons across state lines. That law was put in place because of the dangers chemical weapons pose, dangers that will not go away just because the Defense Department has a war to fight. As the old saying goes, poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on our part.

While mustard gas isn't as lethal as nerve gases, it still poses a significant threat to public health and safety. Mustard gas is a blistering agent, burning the skin and eyes of its victims. If it's inhaled, it can damage the lungs and other internal organs. It either kills people outright, gives them cancer or leaves them disfigured and ailing the rest of their lives.

Unlike nerve agents that quickly kill, then rapidly dissipate from a battlefield, mustard gas victims may not experience symptoms for hours after exposure. And mustard gas lingers in a geographic area long after it enters the environment.

Mustard gas was responsible for gruesome carnage in World War I and was outlawed by international treaties in 1925. The United States didn't sign onto the ban until the 1970s and continued to maintain a substantial stockpile.

Mustard gas has continued to be used by rogue nations -- by Iraq, for example, during its war of attrition with Iran in the 1980s, and in Saddam Hussein's campaign against Iraqi Kurds.

A train or truck accident involving a mustard gas shipment has the potential for injuring or killing nearby people and first responders, who likely don't have the training or proper equipment to deal with a chemical weapons accident. Severe economic damage would result from an accident in a populated area.

Alternate routes could keep trucks away from heavily populated areas on the Wasatch Front -- Interstate 70 to U.S. 50 to U.S. 6, for example. But even then, poison gas would pass several small communities, such as Salina and Delta, on its way to Tooele. That's not acceptable. The U.S. Government must never again be allowed to look at Utah's people as acceptable risks, as it did during the Nevada bomb tests of the past century. We are not statistics to be brushed off in the name of some government program.

Further, in the post-9/11 age, the government must never make it easier for a terrorist to inflict mass casualties by blowing up a truck or railroad car.

Instead of finding a way around the transportation ban, the Defense Department should look at ways to pay for an incinerator at the Pueblo site. That would be better than risking the lives of Utah's residents.