Report: Burning chem weapons feasible

WASHINGTON, Dec. 5 (UPI) -- The United States can use incinerators to destroy its stockpile of chemical weapons safely, a new National Research Council report concludes, but critics of incineration challenged that conclusion on Wednesday.

Although incidents have occurred during past incineration operations, safe disposal operations are possible at sites in Tooele, Utah, Anniston, Ala., Umatilla, Ore., and Pine Bluff, Ark., said committee chair Charles E. Kolb, chief executive officer of Aerodyne Research in Billerica, Mass.

"None of the events we identified threatened residents beyond the perimeters of the facilities, but they did raise safety concerns among local residents and elected officials," Kolb said. "(We) concluded that safe incineration is feasible and should proceed as quickly as possible with continued strict observation of safety precautions."

However, Craig Williams, director the Chemical Weapons Working Group, a coalition of U.S. public-interest organizations located near weapons depots, said the NAS panel has too many close connections with either the Department of Defense or companies directly involved with the incineration plants.

Several committee members have been involved in other NAS reports supporting incineration, he told United Press International.

Instead of an objective evaluation the incidents, the report is a "review of carefully selected information on the Army's incineration program which in no way represents the real-life risks of the technology to workers and the public," Williams said. "Unfortunately, it is the citizens living near the incinerators who will bear the consequences of its failures."

Chemical agents are one class of weapons of mass destruction. The U.S. stockpile includes nerve agents, which kill by interrupting the nervous system's electrical signals, and mustard gas, which is less often lethal but can cause painful skin blisters, as well as eye and lung damage.

The United States faces a treaty-imposed deadline of April 2007 to dispose of its stockpile, and initial efforts have centered on high-temperature incineration plants such as those covered in the report. A U.S. Army incinerator on Johnston Atoll in the Pacific Ocean destroyed its stockpile in late 2000, but community concerns over possible health hazards have stalled similar efforts within continental U.S. borders.

The committee gathered information on 123 incidents reported by the U.S. Army, as well as public and governmental reports on actual or suspected incidents. They studied seven of the most unusual occurrences due to possible serious outcomes and extensive documentation. Two incidents -- one at Johnston Atoll in the Pacific Ocean and the other in Utah -- received special attention because agents reached the outside environment, triggering detailed investigations.

"State-of-the-art quantitative risk assessments have determined the major hazard to the surrounding communities arises from potential releases of agent from stockpile storage areas, not the (incineration) facilities," the report said.

The committee's selection process, however, excluded several incidents pointed out by local governments and public groups, Williams said. The report also fails to consider alternative methods for destroying chemical agents, he said, due to such technologies being outside the committee's purview.

Such techniques, involving water or a sodium hydroxide solution to break down the weaponized chemicals, were basically endorsed by a separate NAS report earlier this year. CWWG members near existing weapons incinerators have called for those facilities to be retrofitted with the alternative equipment.

The latest report makes several recommendations for continuing incineration operations, including:

-- establishing uniform, consistent criteria for a chemical event, to facilitate event analysis and comparison;

-- using actual chemical events to test the comprehensiveness of risk assessments, and considering additional assessments for cases of terrorism or war;

-- maintaining conservative agent exposure thresholds, unless improved sensors are available to prevent false alarms at lower exposure levels;

-- analyzing all chemical-agent-related incidents to spot patterns in factors leading to the incidents; and

-- updating the computer models used to model and predict the path of chemical releases, including tests involving inert tracers.