Throughout history,
chemical weapons
A chemical weapon (CW) is a specialized Ammunition, munition that uses chemicals chemical engineering, formulated to inflict death or harm on humans. According to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), this can be an ...
have been used as strategic weaponry to devastate the enemy in times of
war
War is an intense armed conflict between states, governments, societies, or paramilitary groups such as mercenaries, insurgents, and militias. It is generally characterized by extreme violence, destruction, and mortality, using regular o ...
. After the mass destruction created by
WWI
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
and
WWII
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, chemical weapons have been considered to be inhumane by most nations, and governments and organizations have undertaken to locate and destroy existing chemical weapons. However, not all nations have been willing to cooperate with disclosing or demilitarizing their inventory of chemical weapons. Since the start of the worldwide efforts to destroy all existing chemical weapons, some nations and
terrorist organizations
A number of national governments and two international organizations have created lists of organizations that they designate as terrorist. The following list of designated terrorist groups lists groups designated as terrorist by current and fo ...
have used and threatened the use of chemical weapons to leverage their position in conflict. A notable example includes the use of such weapons by the US government that sprayed more than 20 million gallons of various herbicides over Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos from 1961 to 1971.
Agent Orange
Agent Orange is a chemical herbicide and defoliant, one of the "tactical use" Rainbow Herbicides. It was used by the U.S. military as part of its herbicidal warfare program, Operation Ranch Hand, during the Vietnam War from 1961 to 1971. It ...
, which contained the deadly chemical dioxin, was the most commonly used herbicide. Other examples of the use of chemical weapons are Iraq’s Saddam Hussein on the Kurdish village
Halabja
Halabja ( ku, هەڵەبجە, Helebce, ) is a city in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and the capital of Halabja Governorate, located about northeast of Baghdad and from the Iranian border.
The city lies at the base of what is often referred to ...
in 1988 and
their employment against civilian passengers of the Tokyo subway by
Aum Shinrikyo
, formerly , is a Japanese doomsday cult founded by Shoko Asahara in 1987. It carried out the deadly Tokyo subway sarin attack in 1995 and was found to have been responsible for the Matsumoto sarin attack the previous year.
The group says tha ...
in 1995. The efforts made by the United States and other chemical weapon destruction agencies intend to prevent such use, but this is a difficult and ongoing effort. Aside from the difficulties of cooperation and locating chemical weapons, the
methods
Method ( grc, μέθοδος, methodos) literally means a pursuit of knowledge, investigation, mode of prosecuting such inquiry, or system. In recent centuries it more often means a prescribed process for completing a task. It may refer to:
*Scien ...
to destroy the weapons and to do this
safely are also a challenge.
The United States has been at the forefront of the chemical weapons reduction efforts since the late 1960s, when
President
President most commonly refers to:
*President (corporate title)
*President (education), a leader of a college or university
*President (government title)
President may also refer to:
Automobiles
* Nissan President, a 1966–2010 Japanese ful ...
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and was ...
imposed a moratorium on the production of
chemical weapons in the U.S. In 1979, the first pilot program for chemical weapons destruction was established; the preferred disposal technology commonly used today originated from this program.
[Utah Department of Environmental Quality, Division of Solid and Hazardous Waste Fact Sheet](_blank)
/ref> The first major program to destroy chemical weapons stockpiles in the United States began in 1990, two years before the drafting of an international agreement that called for a halt in production as well as the destruction of existing chemical weapons.[US gains momentum destroying chemical weapon stockpiles](_blank)
/ref> The first destruction site was located at Johnston Atoll, just over southwest of Hawaii. Since then two sites have been set up under management of the Department of Defense and six locations managed by the Army, all located within the United States. While there is an almost universal agreement that the elimination of chemical weapons is in the best interest of all mankind, there are many concerns surrounding the destruction operations. Safety of personnel and surrounding communities is a main concern, and this has been addressed in several ways. The pollution produced by the preferred destruction method involving the incineration of the chemical agents and the munitions that contained them was another concern. The program has been incredibly expensive; in the 2011 budget proposal submitted to Congress in February 2010 just over half a billion dollars was allocated for two of the destruction sites. This amount of money would create many benefits for the surrounding communities in the form of both jobs and equipment provided to local cities and counties.
Methods
Incineration
There are two common methods that the United States uses to dispose of chemical warfare agents and weapons. The primary method is incineration, where liquid agents are burned in a furnace of temperatures over . For chemical agents in delivery vessels (i.e. Mortars, Bombs, Artillery shells, etc.), this is a multi-step process. First the delivery vessels are robotically disassembled in a reverse order from that which they were originally assembled. Next the chemical agent
A chemical weapon (CW) is a specialized munition that uses chemicals formulated to inflict death or harm on humans. According to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), this can be any chemical compound intended as a ...
is drained out of the projectile and sent to the liquid incinerator as the disassembled projectile parts are placed on a conveyor belt and fed into a metal furnace where they are melted at close to for 15 minutes to ensure that any contamination has been completely destroyed. This method was originally developed in a pilot scale program which began in 1979 and is known as the Chemical Agent Munition Disposal System (CAMDS).
Neutralization
In the United States, neutralization was first selected as an alternative to incineration to destroy stockpiles of chemical agent stored in bulk. Depending on the type of agent to be destroyed, neutralization destroys the chemical agent by mixing it with hot water or hot water and sodium hydroxide. The U.S. Army’s Chemical Materials Agency applied this method to safely eliminate its stockpile of mustard agent in Edgewood, Maryland
Edgewood is an Unincorporated area, unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Harford County, Maryland, Harford County, Maryland, United States. The population was 25,562 at the 2010 census, up from 23,378 in 2000.
Geography
E ...
, and VX nerve agent in Newport, Indiana
Newport is a town in Vermillion Township, Vermillion County, in the U.S. state of Indiana. The population was 515 at the 2010 census. The town is the county seat of Vermillion County.
History
A post office has been in operation at Newport since ...
. Both stockpiles were stored in large steel containers without explosives or other weapon components. The industrial wastewater
Industrial wastewater treatment describes the processes used for treating wastewater that is produced by industries as an undesirable by-product. After treatment, the treated industrial wastewater (or effluent) may be reused or released to a sa ...
produced by the process, known as hydrolysate, was sent to a permitted commercial hazardous waste storage, treatment and disposal facility for treatment and disposal.
Neutralization is the selected method for the Department of Defense’s Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives facilities in Pueblo, Colorado
Pueblo () is a List of municipalities in Colorado#Home rule municipality, home rule municipality that is the county seat and the List of municipalities in Colorado, most populous municipality of Pueblo County, Colorado, Pueblo County, Colorado ...
, and Richmond, Kentucky
Richmond is a home rule-class city in and the county seat of Madison County, Kentucky, United States. It is named after Richmond, Virginia, and is home to Eastern Kentucky University. In 2019, the population was 36,157. Richmond is the fourth-la ...
.
Sites in the United States
Pine Bluff
The Pine Bluff Arsenal
The Pine Bluff Arsenal is a United States Army installation in Jefferson County, Arkansas, about eight miles northwest of Pine Bluff and thirty miles southeast of Little Rock.
Pine Bluff Arsenal is one of nine Army installations in the United ...
is a former chemical weapons production, storage and disposal site located in southeastern Arkansas. Established in 1941, this facility was a manufacturing port for many chemical weapons. The Northwestern portion of the site contains of land that holds a 3,850 ton stockpile of weaponry.[Milestones in U.S. Chemical Weapons Storage and Destruction, fact sheet, http://www.cma.army.mil/fndocumentviewer.aspx?docid=003676918 ]
Blue Grass Army Depot
As one of the two sites administered by the defense department, the Blue Grass Army Depot
Blue Grass Army Depot (BGAD) is a U.S. Army Joint Munitions Command storage facility for conventional munitions and chemical weapons. The facility is located in east central Kentucky, southeast of the cities of Lexington and Richmond, Kentucky. ...
has been storing chemical weapons since 1944. Located near Richmond Kentucky, this facility has been home to over 500 tons of chemical weaponry ranging from mustard gas to VX nerve agent. Like Pine Bluff it is an extremely vast site that encompasses of land. The storage began in the 1940s with mustard gases and was greatly expanded in the 1960s with GB and VX (O-ethyl S-methylphosphonothioate or nerve agent) . Construction is currently underway on water oxidation facilities that will drive the destruction of the weapons at this facility; completion of these facilities is expected in the near future.
Johnston Atoll
The Johnston Atoll
Johnston Atoll is an Unincorporated territories of the United States, unincorporated territory of the United States, currently administered by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS). Johnston Atoll is a National Wildlife Refuge and ...
is an island territory owned by the United States approximately west of Hawaii
Hawaii ( ; haw, Hawaii or ) is a state in the Western United States, located in the Pacific Ocean about from the U.S. mainland. It is the only U.S. state outside North America, the only state that is an archipelago, and the only stat ...
. The island began as a site to test nuclear weapon
A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions ( thermonuclear bomb), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bom ...
s in the 1950s and 1960s and was later converted to a storage facility for chemical weapons.
Hawaii
The U.S. Army
The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cl ...
dumped 16,000 bombs in deep water south of Pearl Harbor
Pearl Harbor is an American lagoon harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, west of Honolulu. It was often visited by the Naval fleet of the United States, before it was acquired from the Hawaiian Kingdom by the U.S. with the signing of the Re ...
after World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
. Each bomb contained of mustard gas
Mustard gas or sulfur mustard is a chemical compound belonging to a family of cytotoxic and blister agents known as mustard agents. The name ''mustard gas'' is technically incorrect: the substance, when dispersed, is often not actually a gas, b ...
. The Army intends to leave the weapons at the site because moving them could pose more of a threat to people and the environment.[ A 2010 study led by Margo Edwards indicated that the munitions were not a hazard, but that they were deteriorating and should continue to be monitored. Researchers made 16 dives in submersible vehicles to depths of over three years, locating more than 2,000 munitions. The site is too deep for easy public access, and fishing boats do not trawl near them.][
The military used the ocean as a dumping ground for munitions from 1919 to 1970.]
Anniston Army Depot
Located in Alabama, the Anniston Army Depot
Anniston Army Depot (ANAD) is a major United States Army facility for the production and repair of ground combat vehicles, overhaul of Small Arms Weapon Systems and the storage of chemical weapons, a.k.a. the Anniston Chemical Activity. The depot ...
has stored chemical weapons since the 1960s. It accounts for approximately 7 percent of the United States' stockpile of chemical weaponry. The United States Army
The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cla ...
began incinerating the stored weapons on August 9, 2003. .
Deseret Chemical Depot
The Deseret Chemical Depot
The Deseret Chemical Depot () was a U.S. Army chemical weapon storage area located in Utah, 60 miles (100 km) southwest of Salt Lake City. It is related to the Tooele Chemical Agent Disposal Facility.
History
The area was used to store chemi ...
is located in Tooele, Utah. One of Deseret's primary functions is to store and destroy chemical weapons. At one point the depot stored as much as 44 percent of the nation's entire chemical stockpile.
Umatilla Chemical Depot
Located in Oregon, the Umatilla Chemical Depot
The Umatilla Chemical Depot, (UMCD) based in Umatilla, Oregon, was a U.S. Army installation in the United States that stored chemical weapons. The chemical weapons originally stored at the depot consisted of various live munitions and storage con ...
has maintained and stored 12 percent of the nation’s chemical weapons stockpile. Disposal of the weapons commenced in 2004. Th.
Aberdeen Proving Ground
The Aberdeen Proving Ground
Aberdeen Proving Ground (APG) (sometimes erroneously called Aberdeen Proving ''Grounds'') is a U.S. Army facility located adjacent to Aberdeen, Harford County, Maryland, United States. More than 7,500 civilians and 5,000 military personnel work at ...
is an army facility in Maryland. With many components, the facility includes the Edgewood Chemical Activity which was a storage facility for chemical weapons. Currently all of the chemical weapons have been destroyed.
Newport Chemical Depot
Located in Indiana, the Newport Chemical Depot
The Newport Chemical Depot, previously known as the Wabash River Ordnance Works and the Newport Army Ammunition Plant, was a bulk chemical storage and destruction facility that was operated by the United States Army. It is located near Newpor ...
once stored over 1,000 tons of chemical weapons. Agent destruction operations began in May 2005 and completed in August 2008. NECDF’s permit was officially closed in January 2010.
Pueblo Chemical Depot
The Pueblo Chemical Depot
The Pueblo Chemical Depot is a chemical weapons storage site located in Pueblo County, Colorado, United States. The Pueblo Chemical Depot is one of the last two sites in the United States with chemical munitions and chemical material. The Pueblo ...
is located in Colorado and has stored over 2500 tons of chemical weapons. This number accounts for approximately 7 percent of the United States' stockpile. Destruction of the stockpile began in 2016.
Sites outside the United States
The San Jose Project contains thousands of unexploded chemical weapons scattered around an island.
Safety
Safety has been the primary concern in all matters pertaining to the destruction of chemical agents. Two years before the U.S. Army began wide scale destruction of chemical agents, they released a "Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement" which considered four possible actions to take pertaining to the chemical weapon stockpiles in the United States. These included: continued storage, destruction at the storage site, development of two main destruction sites then transporting the agents to the sites, or developing a single destruction site to which all chemical weapons would be transported. The Army decided that the safest alternative would be to build eight individual destruction sites at the eight stockpile locations to effectively eliminate the need for transporting any chemical weapons through civilian populations. One month from the date the statement was released that on-site disposal was the safest method this decision was enacted.
Many safety precautions are set in place at each disposal site to ensure that any agents released into the environment are well within the safe ranges shown in the table below.
Note: The U.S. Army standards shown in the first three columns set the minimum level of performance required for gas release by an alternative process and are applicable to all four process streams.
LCt and LD represent dosage and dose, respectively, that result in 50 percent lethality.
Workers column: 8 hour exposure.
Stack Emissions column: Maximum concentration in exhaust stack.
General Population column: 72 hour exposure.
Source: US Army 1974, 1975, 1988; NRC, 1993a.
Each disposal facility is equipped with a cascading negative air system, which ensures that in the event of an accident or structural failure, any chemical agent released stays within the facility. This system is complemented with carbon air filters, which would remove any chemical agents from the air. Structural robustness was ensured during construction with the incinerators being built with concrete walls.
In addition to the safety precautions at the disposal locations, a significant amount of attention has been directed toward disaster preparedness in the event that the precautions should somehow fail. Millions of dollars of federal funds have been provided to the communities near the disposal sites in the form of communications equipment, emergency operations centers, decontamination equipment, etc. Emergency exercises are conducted, in which both base and community emergency sirens are sounded, to ensure the readiness of response plans in nearby communities. Officials also encourage local families and businesses to be prepared with their own emergency response plans.
If the precautions would somehow fail, human exposure to chemical agents can result in a variety of consequences varying anywhere from mild effects such as minor discomfort to as serious effects, such as death, depending on the agent and dosage. The dosages that humans intake are measured in mg-min/m3. Of the critical three agents, mustard is the least lethal while VX is the most lethal.
Mustard is a blistering agent that works to destroy different substances with cells of living tissue. Effects of exposure typically appear within a day. While acute mortality is low, death can occur from long term complications. Humans exposed to a non-disabling dose of 12 mg-min/m3 will have signs of mild discomfort and conjunctival injection. With a more disabling dose of 60 mg-min/m3, humans will experience generalized conjunctivas, edema, photophobia and eye irritation. For a lethal dose, the agent would have to be extremely concentrated as 1500 mg-min/m3 give a 50 percent lethality rate.
GB or Sarin is the least lethal of the nerve agents. Nerve agents act to disable enzymes responsible for transmitting nerve impulses. Initial effects can appear almost immediately after exposure and can cause death within minutes. Humans exposed to a non-disabling dose which would be about .05 mg/m3 for twenty minutes, can experience headaches, eye pain, tightness in chest, rhino rhea, cramps, nausea, malaise and miosis. With a slightly more potent dose of .05 mg/m3 for 30 minutes effects include inhibition, dyspnea and SFEMG changes. The required dose for a rate of 50 percent lethality is 70 mg-min/m3. VX is also another nerve agent like GB but is much more lethal. At the non-disabling and disabling levels, VX causes the same effects as GB but at much lower doses, 12 times less than that of GB. Also, a mere 30 mg-min/m3 will give a death rate of 50 percent.
Effects on local communities
Jobs
The chemical weapons disposal program has had a huge impact on communities surrounding the disposal sites. In the communities around Pine Bluff, residents are relieved that the threat of chemical exposure from the stockpile is over. However, with the project now completed, many people stand to lose their jobs. The Pine Bluff Chemical Activity issued 180-day layoff notices to many employees on February 1, 2010. In all, the region stands to lose an estimated 970 jobs at the Pine Bluff disposal site. In order to soften the blow to local communities, Pine Bluff Arsenal opened a Transition Center on November 4, 2009. Employees will be given information on educational and workforce training opportunities, retirement counseling, job placement assistance, free access to government human resource personnel and resume writing assistance.
Equipment and funding
In addition to providing jobs, millions of dollars has been allocated to communities for equipment to increase preparedness in the event of a chemical disaster. This equipment is now the property of the agencies and organizations it was purchased for and will continue to benefit the communities for years to come.[Arsenal Plan a Future Boon](_blank)
/ref>
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Destruction Of chemical weapons
Chemical weapons demilitarization