Deseret News
Wednesday, July 16, 2003

Survey cites nerve gas risks; Tooele plant workers tell of safety woes in survey

By Lee Davidson
Deseret Morning News

WASHINGTON - After years of whistle-blowers' claims of safety being given short shrift at a Utah chemical arms incinerator, and following some serious accidents there, the Defense Department inspector general decided to survey plant workers at the Tooele Chemical Agent Disposal Facility.

The results of the survey were alarming:

· More than half say the plant puts production above safety.

· About one of every six say they have been asked to fix a problem but not report it.

· About one of every nine say they know someone who was fired after reporting a safety concern.

· One of every five predict that any safety concerns they report likely will be dismissed, and one in five say management did not respond to concerns that they actually did raise.

· One of every 25 say they know of workers exposed to nerve gas who didn't report it.

With that, the inspector general concluded that the Tooele Chemical Agent Disposal Facility does "not have a healthy safety culture."

Alaine Southworth, spokeswoman for the plant, said managers have no comment on the report itself but have taken numerous steps to improve safety in recent months.

Assessing safety

The survey findings were actually a sidebar in a report, which the Pentagon has posted on the Internet, designed mostly to look into the adequacy of probes into a July 15, 2002, accident that exposed one worker to sarin nerve gas.

The report said an investigation by the contractor that runs the plant, EG&G Defense Materials, was "insufficient" and put too much blame for the accident on policy that allowed the worker to wear inadequate protective clothing at the time rather than finding root causes behind the gas leaking into unexpected areas.

The report, however, praised a separate Army investigation that identified 12 direct and 20 indirect causes leading to the accident - and made 97 recommendations for corrective action at Tooele and sister plants elsewhere.

The inspector general also decided to assess safety procedures at the plant by surveying 212 workers anonymously.

In one question, 52 percent said the plant places production over safety, while 42 percent disagreed and the rest did not answer. Other Army probes have raised similar concerns, the report noted.

A possible motive behind that, at least in part, the report said, is that EG&G's contract once included a $1 million bonus if it could complete the destruction of all sarin stored at the Deseret Chemical Depot before the opening of the 2002 Winter Olympics.

The report said the assistant secretary of the Army over installations and environment "believed this increased the risk of a chemical agent accident and stated he had the contract changed." The plant is also under pressure to complete destruction of all chemical arms by 2007, as mandated by international treaty.

Unreported exposures?

In other questions, 16 percent of those surveyed said they have been asked to fix a problem and not report it. The report noted that would hinder identifying problems to avoid repeated difficulties, especially on new plants elsewhere that are based on Tooele's design.

One disturbing result was that eight respondents indicated knowledge of an unreported worker exposure" to sarin, the report said.

It added, "The survey results indicated that approximately one-quarter of the survey respondents believed that their management either dismissed or did not adequately respond to their concerns."

The inspector general said that proving whether all that is correct is difficult because EG&G had an informal process for reporting and resolving safety concerns.

"We conclude that due to a lack of a documented process, neither the contractor nor the Army could verify or disprove this belief" that safety is not the top priority, the report said.

The report, like the earlier Army report it was evaluating, said the plant should strive for a healthy safety culture that encourages "the reporting of near misses and potential problems without the fear of reprisal to improve procedures and deter the recurrence of problems."

'Management tool'

Southworth said the inspector general's report "is a management tool, so we don't discuss it."

However, she said numerous safety changes were made after the July 15, 2002, accident, which closed plant operations until March 28. "We had an extensive safety program implemented. We could not start production again until the state, the Army and everybody felt that safety steps implemented were adequate," she said.

In that accident, two contractor maintenance workers entered the liquid incinerator room - while the incinerator was shut down - to remove a section of pipe with an air pressure regulator they planned to replace. Instead of wearing full protective suits, they wore overalls, leather gloves and light-duty industrial respirators.

When a sarin alarm sounded, they removed their industrial respirators to use heavier duty respirators. One worker had sarin on his glove and transferred it to his head, hair and new respirator. He developed reduction of the eye pupil, disorientation, headaches, blurry vision, tightness in the chest, a runny nose and a drop in the level of the enzyme cholinesterase in his blood, all signs of exposure to sarin.

The Army said the worker returned to work the next day, without apparent serious injury. However, it was the first time a worker had been exposed to actual nerve agent during the destruction process.

E-mail: lee@desnews.com