Pine Bluff Destroys Last Chemical Precursors

Destruction of the last remaining chemical precursors at the Pine Bluff Arsenal binary destruction facility in Arkansas began this week, officials said (see GSN, April 11).

The U.S. Army Chemical Materials Agency Nonstockpile Chemical Material Project estimates the process will last six to eight weeks, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported.

Workers are to destroy 291 drums of QL, or diisopropyl aminoethylmethyl phosphonite, which is all that remains of the U.S. inventory of the binary precursor chemical.

Binary munitions were designed to combine chemicals to form a weapons agent during delivery. Using QL and another agent would have produced the nerve agent VX. The U.S. military developed one type of binary agent munition, but it was never used (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, June 8)

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