United States:  Army Proposes to Accelerate Sarin Destruction

The U.S. Army has requested permission from Alabama authorities to destroy some chemical weapons at a faster pace than ever before, but the state’s governor and other critics oppose the plan, the Associated Press reported today.

The Army plans to destroy many of the 28,000 rockets containing sarin gas using a standard method of draining the nerve agent from the shells and incinerating the agent in a high-temperature furnace.

In 3,600 M55 rockets, however, sarin liquid has gelled into rock-hard crystal and is impossible to drain, according to the Associated Press.  The Army has proposed to destroy those munitions using a “chop and drop” method — chopping up the rockets with the gelled agent inside and dropping them into a furnace at the Anniston incinerator, the Mobile Register reported, according to AP.  The furnace was not designed to destroy rockets filled with chemical agent, according to tAP.

The Army also plans to destroy the weapons at a rate of 34 rockets per hour, AP reported.  The fastest previous rate has been one per hour, according to Ted Ryba, deputy project manager for the Tooele Chemical Agent Disposal Facility in Utah.

Under the Army’s plan, the destruction of the gelled rockets would begin this winter, before official trial burns to determine whether the incinerator is safe, according to AP (see GSN, June 15).  The Alabama Environmental Management Department is reviewing the Army’s request to use the “chop and drop” method and will make a decision following a 60-day comment period that begins this week.

Alabama Governor Don Siegelman opposes the Army’s proposals and has sued to prevent the incinerator from becoming operational.  The Chemical Weapons Working Group, a coalition of citizens living near chemical weapons storage sites, also objects to the Army plan.

“The method of disposal is flawed in the first place.  Then you have the fact that they’re running this test of chop and drop at this unheard-of rate before they’ve even done the trial burn, which doesn’t make any sense from any kind of engineering or public safety perspective,” the group’s head Craig Williams said.

The Army would start the process slowly and gradually increase the destruction speed, incinerator spokesman Mike Abrams said.

“We’re not running into this helter-skelter.  The Army will do everything it can to ensure the safety of its workers and the public,” he said (Associated Press, July 11).

For further information, see:

CDC List of Chemical Agents

Federation of American Scientists Information on Chemical Weapons

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Hamas:  No Evidence of Suicide Bombers Using Poisons, Commentator Says

Slate commentator Jack Shafer yesterday suggested U.S. media reports that Palestinian militant groups have used chemical weapons in suicide bombings are poorly substantiated (see GSN, June 17).

“The rat poison bomb story is the sort of tale that newsroom cynics call ‘too good to check,’” Shafer wrote in an article examining the media’s handling of the claims.  “We so want to believe that the Palestinians are stinking up their bombs with rat poison that we won’t even ask for evidence.”

Reports of Palestinian militants incorporating chemical weapons into suicide bombings began with the Associated Press coverage of a December 2001 bombing in Jerusalem that was reported to have included poisonous chemicals, perhaps rat poison, Shafer said (see GSN, Dec. 10, 2001).  Further stories in publications such as the Washington Post, Time, Newsweek and yesterday in the New York Times have also contained anecdotal reports of bombs that contained poisons, according to Shafer.  There has been, however, no forensic proof of chemical weapons usage included in these stories, he said.

Shafer praised the Israeli media for challenging the veracity of the poison bomb claims.  A Feb. 8 article in the Jerusalem Post reported that later forensic tests conducted on evidence recovered after the Jerusalem bombings found that the samples had been contaminated by rat poison used in the area earlier, Shafer said.

“Perhaps the most embarrassing thing about the rat bomb dispatches is that Israeli reporters — who have a very personal stake in the war — have been more demanding of their government on this story than their U.S. counterparts,” he said (Jack Shafer, Slate, July 8).

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United States:  Army Leaks Lewisite During Test

A filter stack released trace amounts of the blister agent Lewisite during a July 2 test of the Chemical Agent Munitions Disposal System at the Deseret Chemical Depot in Utah, the U.S. Army said yesterday (see GSN, March 25).

The agent posed no threat to workers at the site, surrounding communities or the environment, the Army said.

The CAMDS test site, which is separate from the Tooele Chemical Agent Disposal Facility (see GSN, March 18), is working to find safe ways to destroy Lewisite.  The entire U.S. Lewisite inventory, which was first produced in World War I, is stored at the depot (Associated Press, July 8).

For further information, see:

CDC List of Chemical Agents

Federation of American Scientists Information on Chemical Weapons

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