Tooele Transcript Bulletin

June 7, 2001

Depot completes destruction
of agent identification sets

by Jeff Schmerker
Staff Writer

The U.S. Army has completed its destruction of chemical agent identification kits that were stored at the Deseret Chemical Depot.

Destruction of the 1,226 kits was completed on May 17 at the Rush Valley base using the Rapid Response System, a mobile decontamination device that specializes in the disposal of small, non-stockpile materials.

Over 100,000 sets were produced for all branches of the military after World War II for training. Soldiers used the kits, which contained small amounts of chemical agent, to learn to identify agent by smell while in the battlefield. The agent " diluted or in small quantities " were in glass vials, ampules and bottles.

By the spring of 1971 the Army had declared all of the chemical agent identification kits obsolete and from the late 1970s through the early 1980s over 20,000 were collected and destroyed at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal near Denver. Before that, the unused sets were buried, then a common method for
disposal.

The Rapid Response System now goes to Alabama where it will spend a year being modified but will remain operational in order to respond to any emergency which might require its use.