04/19/2004

Send waste to India or perhaps Texas

I know where DuPont can send VX nerve gas. Send it to India. Just think of all the money you can save on cheap labor. If this is not acceptable send it to Crawford, Texas. George W. Bush sees nothing wrong with pollution.

John V. Ciarlo, Rehoboth Beach

Explain solid waste from VX treatment

The News Journal has provided a detailed account of the VX disposal problem. However, it dealt only with the liquid byproduct and the controversy over whether it would be harmless to the Delaware River. What about the solid waste the process creates? One sentence in reference to Pueblo, Colo., acknowledged this must be sent to a hazardous waste site.

After acid neutralization and oxidation pretreatment, the main process is described as twofold: using aerobic microbes to consume organic portions of the waste, and activated carbon to adsorb at the atomic level (not absorb) the resulting and remaining constituents. The use of microbes is a conventional step in the activated sludge treatment of industrial and sewage wastes. Activated carbon is widely used in major cities to remove taste, odor and color from drinking water. Both of these processes produce large volumes of solid waste.

The active sludge grows microbes as they live on organic waste. Activated carbon physically attracts a one-molecule-thick layer of impurities onto its vast surface area, and then its job is finished. The continual growth of microbe sludge and all of the spent activated carbon, together with the many impurities they have purposely acquired, must go somewhere after removal from the process water. Where?

How will it be transported? Is burning to be considered? Just how hazardous is this solid waste anyway?

This area already has a serious solid waste problem. Where would VX treatment fit in? Let's have the rest of the story.

Jim Kniskern, Newark