Chemical warfare agents disposal

Production, Import/Export, Use, Release, and Disposal. The risk for exposure of the general population to substantial levels of diisopropyl methylphosphonate is quite low. GB (Sarin) and diisopropyl methylphosphonate have not been produced in the United States since 1957, and there is no indication that U.S. production of these chemicals will resume (EPA 1989). No information exists regarding the import or export of diisopropyl methylphosphonate. Diisopropyl methylphosphonate has no known commercial uses, but has been used by the military as a simulant for chemical warfare agents (Van Voris et al. 1987). 

PRO, WO 193/712, Disposal of German Chemical Warfare Stocks (19 June 1945). PRO, WO 195/9236, Porton Report No. 2747, Preliminary Report on the Potential Value of Nerve Gases as Chemical Warfare Agents (18 January 1947). 

Figure 1. Extracts from recommendations by National Academy of Sciences on disposal of chemical warfare agents and munitions...

Several military bases contaminated with chemical-warfare agents as a result of storage and past disposal practices are slated to be closed pursuant to the Base Realignment and Closure Act. Before those military bases can be transferred to civilian use, contaminated soil and water must be cleaned to levels that are considered safe. To help make decisions on restoration required at contaminated sites and on the potential uses of the former military installations (e.g., for housing, occupational, or wildlife purposes), the U.S. Army developed interim chronic oral reference doses and, where appropriate, oral slope factors for six chemical-warfare agents that are likely to be encountered at contaminated sites. Similar information for inhalation exposure is under development. 

February, 1998— Worker on the hazardous waste crew discloses that vials filled with chemical warfare agent, and having contamination on the outside of the vials, were misplaced for a few days. Later they were found in the toxic maintenance area. Had these vials not been located, they would have been sent off-site as generic waste to be disposed of at a commercial facility. 

Information on the environmental fate of chemical warfare agents (CWAs) is needed in order to facilitate destruction of aging stockpiles, cleanup of non-stockpile sites and waste areas and formulate response and recovery from possible warfare use by rogue nations or terrorists. Emphasis is placed on chemicals that were part of chemical stockpiles in several countries (Carnes and Watson, 1989 OPCW, 2005), with information on sites of manufacture and disposal as available. In this chapter, CWA degradation products will be evaluated by assessing their likelihood of formation, as well as characterizing their chemistry, toxicity and persistence. 

Between 1927 and 1945, the Japanese Army operated a chemical warfare agent factory on Okuno-jima, an island of the Inland Sea (Wada et al, 1962 Watson et al., 1989 Yamakido et al., 1996). At peak capacity (1937), this facility produced sulfur mustard (450 tonnes/month), lewisite (50 tonnes/month), diphenylcyanarsine (sneezing gas, 50 tonnes/month), hydrocyanic acid (50 tonnes/month), chloroacetophenone (tear gas, 25 tonnes/month) and phosgene (unreported). After the war, the factory was closed and the remaining agents were disposed of at sea. 

The CWC requires disposal of the first two groups of miscellaneous materiel (Blackwood, 1998). The ton containers are not controlled by the CWC because they are used to store commercial chemicals as well as chemical warfare agents. While the Army currently lists no items in the RDT E group, it may reclassify some chemical sample materiel as RDT E for future chemical defense research allowed by the CWC (Blackwood, 1998). 

In 1985, the U.S. Congress initiated a program to dispose of our entire stockpile of lethal chemical agents. There are multiple reasons for destroying these chemical warfare agents ... 

The following presentation will highlight some methods of sensor and recovery techniques applied in Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD). On the basis of a project application to the European Union we will explain some possibilities for the investigation into chemical munitions on the seabed and finally we will present an innovative and environmentally safe process for the destruction of chemical warfare agents. 

Blister and nerve agents can be destroyed using saturated methanolic solutions of sodium or potassium hydroxide. Decontaminated chemical warfare agents must be disposed of in an environmentally approved method according to local legislation. 

Destruction of chemical warfare agents is another application for Na/NHa detoxifrcatioa Cost effective methods, other than combustion, are needed to dispose of aging stockpiles of chemical weapons. In extensive testing, the chemical agents GA, GB, GD, GF, Lewisite, VX, HD, HT, HN-1, HN-2, HL, picric acid, CG and CK have been destroyed with efficiencies greater that 99.9999% by Commodore. The reaction products have been characterized. The product mixtures were found to be CLASS 1 or CLASS 0 level materials when tested for acute toxicity. Scheme 4 illustrates the destruction of VX by rapid electron transfer to VX followed by 70% P-S and 30% C-S cleavage with evolution of ethane. 

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