Drama Along the Columbia

On Monday, GAP sent out a press release alerting the media that an Oregon Department in charge of overseeing the Umatilla Chemical Depot had decided to hold a meeting that was closed off from the public. Oh, and journalists were welcome, but on background information only. Meaning they couldn't write anything about it.

What about Umatilla were they discussing? Partially, a lawsuit filed by GAP in November for the depot’s decision to allow the incineration of secondary wastes, along with seeking a court order for the State to make a determination of the ‘best available technology’ for the disposal of mustard agent (HD). Incineration of the HD, the current plan, would probably result in the release of significant amounts of harmful mercury into the surrounding environment. 

However, according to the Associated Press, the Oregon department voted "to reopen public comment on the disposal of secondary waste from the destruction of aging chemical weapons stored at the Umatilla Chemical Depot…,” along with committing to the state “completing best available technology determinations for the pollution filtration system and the mustard blister agent by August 2008.”

So this appears to be good news. We’ll keep you updated on developments.

-- Dylan Blaylock

Comments

[terror mouse]

Analysis of troduction

This report was posted to the Cryp

‘Deficiencies of Detecting Nerve Gas in Air’

report found on

http://cryptome.org/cryptomb20.htm, nerve-gas.htm

posted August 12, 2006

Abstract

The United States is obligated under the terms of the Chemical Weapons Convention to destroy all of its chemical weapons.
This document is an in-depth review of a report located at http://cryptome.org/cryptomb20.htm, nerve-gas.htm. The report details a number of extremely serious problems with the methods that are used to monitor the air in the vicinity of chemical weapons storage or handling facilities for the presence of chemical weapons, specifically the nerve gases GB and VX, which is the most dangerous nerve gas in the stockpile.
The following major points of failure of the monitoring technology are made clear in the report.

1) The method has a degree of variability in agent detection that precludes its effective use for measuring agent levels, on the order of 1000-fold.

2) The sampling tubes used in the method are very fragile and improper use or preparation makes the tubes useless for agent monitoring, and damaged tubes are currently being used at monitoring sites.

3) The conversion pads used for the detection of VX nerve gas can cause the level detected to be significantly underestimated due to competing side reactions that form products that are not detected by the instrumentation.

4) The sampling tubes in daily use at one of the sites engaged in agent destruction were found to be significantly degraded. Agent spiked onto the tubes was not detectable at levels many times the danger level.

As a result, it is clear that the methods used to monitor the safety of the chemical weapons are so flawed as to preclude effective monitoring for the presence of chemical weapon vapors in the air.
There are eight sites scattered around the continental U.S. where these agents are stockpiled, and many more places such as abandoned training sites and firing ranges where chemical munitions are known or suspected to exist.
This report calls into question all of the reassurances of the US Army and its contractors have made as to the safety of these sites. It is apparent that there has never been effective safety monitoring at these facilities, and that anyone living near or up to several hundred miles down wind of these installations is and has been in grave danger of poisoning.
The physiological effects of low level exposure to these chemicals are poorly understood. There is a hypothesis that low level agent exposure is the cause of ‘Gulf War Syndrome’, and there is an ever increasing body of scientific evidence that exposure to chemicals of this class are responsible for human diseases including asthma, lupus and cancer.
This report makes clear that we all have reason to be very concerned that we and or our loved ones have been negligently exposed to these chemicals by people motivated by the basest of human vices, greed. This report should be seen as a call to action to stop this quietly progressing environmental catastrophe. We must all take a stand and demand that this atrocity be stopped.