Better chemical alarms needed, watchdogs say

This story was published Wed, Apr 21, 2004

By John Stang

Herald staff writer

The Army should add infrared-based gas monitors to the chemical alarms at its eight chemical weapons storage and disposal sites, including Umatilla, several watchdog organizations contended Tuesday.

The groups, including Oregon's GASP, contend that the current alarms for escaped nerve gas vapors are too slow to warn people in a timely manner.

State and federal spokespersons said the proposed infrared alarms don't detect gas vapors at low enough concentrations to be an effective early warning.

In a telephone news conference, the Kentucky-based Chemical Weapons Working Group and other allied groups, including GASP, advocated installation of a Fourier Transform Infrared gas analyzer, or FTIR, which shoots an infrared beam reflected back from a mirror. Alarms sound if the beams intersect any gases programed into the units.

The watchdog groups argued that the Army should install FTIR alarms around the storage areas, incinerators and other disposal facilities at its chemical weapons depots.

Two other monitors are in current use:

-- Agent Continuous Air Monitoring Systems, or ACAMS, are triggered when a specifically programed gas hits a spectrographic detector inside. A drawback is that the device is easily triggered, resulting in routine false alarms, said Craig Williams, executive director of the Chemical Weapons Working Group.

At the Umatilla Chemical Depot, ACAMS monitors are placed within the nerve gas incineration plant.

-- Depot Area Air Monitoring Systems, or DAAMS, are tubes with a gas absorbent material inside. These are located near the ACAMS, and the absorbent material is tested in labs to confirm whether an ACAMS alarm is legitimate or false.

Williams criticized this approach, saying it can take 20 minutes to 12 hours to test the absorbent material, which he argued is much too slow to be an effective alarm.

At the Umatilla depot, DAAMS monitors are outside the incineration plant but inside the overall depot reservation.

Williams said U.S. Rep. Jim Bunning, R-Kentucky, has requested $2 million from Congress for fiscal 2005 to install FTIR monitors around the Blue Grass Army Depot at Richmond, KY. Williams contended the cost to install these monitors at Umatilla and seven other depots would be about $25 million.

He contended FTIR alarms should be in place before a depot begins incineration or other disposal activities. "The risk (of a poison gas release) spikes up when you open the doors (of bunkers) and start handling around the materials," he said.

The fastest scenario calls for moving and burning Umatilla's GB nerve gas to begin in July. The depot has 3,700 tons of nerve and mustard gases to be burned for at least the next six years.

GASP spokesman J.R. Wilkinson criticized the state of Oregon for not pushing for the FTIR monitors. "We hope the state can get off the dime and support this technology," Wilkinson said.

However, Army spokeswoman Mary Alice Binder and Oregon Department of Environmental Quality spokeswoman Shelley Ingram said the FTIR monitors don't have a track record of detecting gases at low concentrations.

And that's what the Army wants for safety reasons, Binder said.

The Army wants the ACAMS to trigger at the slightest hint of escaped gas so workers will take protective measures immediately, she said.

The DAAMS monitors are to make sure gas has not made it beyond the plant's or bunkers' indoor quarters and are routinely checked. Four years of checks at the perimeters marked by the DAAMS monitors have shown no sign of escaped gas, Binder said.

The Umatilla depot recorded its first outdoor vapor reading a few months ago after a worker left a bunker with two leaking 750-pound gas bombs. That vapor was detected and dealt with several feet from the bunker.