Healing Our World: Weekly Comment

By Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D.

Weapons of Mass Destruction Pile up at Home

"One faces the future with one's past."
-- Pearl S. Buck

"There never was a time when, in my opinion,
some way could not be found
to prevent the drawing of the sword."
-- President General Ulysses S. Grant

"Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him."
-- Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Public safety remains our principal interest," said Acting Assistant Secretary of the Army Les Brownlee after he gave the order earlier this month to begin incinerating GB and VX chemical weapons, mustard gas and the rockets that carry them at the Army Depot in Anniston, Alabama. The depot lies between Atlanta, Georgia and Birmingham, Alabama, just west of Anniston and less than two hours from each of those major cities.

"The Army has demonstrated since 1990 that it can safely destroy these chemical munitions, having already destroyed over 8,000 tons of chemical agent and over 1.3 million munitions without harming human health or the environment," he said.

Les Brownlee is acting assistant secretary of the U.S. Army (Photo courtesy )

How can we trust an organization like the U.S. military that considers itself exempt from most laws, especially environmental ones? How can anything be trusted from a government that allows its military to pollute the Earth around the world, putting people and animals at risk regardless of their country of origin?

The chemical weapons incineration program at Anniston is a grim reminder that the United States, with all its government’s talk about how afraid we should be that Iraq had a fledgling chemical weapons program, has the world’ s largest stockpile of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. Chemical weapons plants exist in eight locations around the U.S. and chemical weapons have been incinerated at one site outside of the Continental U.S., on Johnston Atoll 840 miles southwest of Hawaii.

The presence of these chemical weapons places hundreds of thousands of citizens at risk every hour of every day. The stockpiles are located in Umatilla, Oregon; Tooele, Utah; Pueblo, Colorado; Pine Bluff, Arkansas; Anniston, Alabama; Richmond, Kentucky; Newport, Indiana; Aberdeen, Maryland; and Kalama Atoll.

Those stockpiles, many of which are decades old, contain chemical weapons that have already been loaded into rockets and missiles. Many of those deadly weapons are deteriorating, and the risk that one could malfunction and explode is increasing every day.

“Incineration has long been criticized internationally by scientific experts and organizations as a technology that releases toxic chemicals including dioxins, furans, and heavy metals into the environment, “ says the Chemical Weapons Working Group (CWWG) in their June 2002 report, “Learning Not To Burn.”

The report goes on to say that, “despite these facts there are thousands of incinerators of many kinds all over the world that are used to burn wastes. In the U.S., more than 100 incinerators, cement kilns, aggregate kilns and other industrial furnaces burn the nation’s hazardous wastes.”

Contrary to the military’s claim that no harm is being done, the CWWG report says, “Many of these facilities exist in communities of color, low income communities, and on tribal land. Our communities are experiencing a public health crisis from decades of exposure to toxic wastes, the impacts of which will be passed along to future generations.”

And to make matters even worse, chemical agent exposure standards were created for healthy adult male soldiers, not the elderly, women or children.

Students are encouraged to participate in class presentations given by the Anniston Outreach Office staff and Westinghouse-Anniston's public relations group. (Photo courtesy U.S. Army)

The chemical weapons depots across the U.S. were built in the 1940s in response to the nation’s entry into World War II. The depots house many types of weapons, but primarily there are two types of nerve gas - GB and VX. GB is also known as sarin, the same gas that killed 12 and injured 5,500 in a 1995 Tokyo subway attack by a religious cult. Two varieties of mustard gas, H and HD, are also at the arsenals.

The U.S. banned the manufacture of chemical weapons in 1969, and in 1985, Congress directed the Army, which has responsibility over the weapons, to destroy them. The deadline for destruction, 2007, is set by international treaty.

Modern day chemical weapons were first used in World War I when chlorine gas was released from large cylinders into the wind. This surprise operation caused massive casualties and resulted in the psychological demoralization of those who were attacked. As the war progressed, a great variety of chemical agents were used by both sides, the most damaging being the blister producing mustard gas.

After the Second World War, the United States continued to research and develop chemical and nerve agents. Most of the pesticides still used to this day were derived from those early chemical and nerve agents.

The Federation of American Scientists says that although U.S. policy renounces the first use of lethal or incapacitating chemical agents, “it retains the right to retaliate if deterrence fails to prevent the enemy's first use of chemicals.”

As is the case with nuclear weapons, the President of the United States must approve the initial use of chemical weapons. This approval procedure is known as chemical release.

The amount of chemical weapons in these stockpiles is truly staggering. The nine U.S. stockpiles contain 31,496 tons of chemical agents in rockets, missiles, mines, projectiles, and in containers! About 60 percent of this stockpile is in bulk storage containers; 40 percent is stored in munitions, many of which are now obsolete and deteriorating. Many were made during World War I. At Anniston alone, there are 2,254 tons of chemical warfare materials, all of which the Army plans to burn.

These numbers do not include the “non-stockpile” chemical weapons located on Army bases and facilities around the nation. According to Army records, there is no state in the nation that does not have chemical weapons stored in some form.

Worker exits security gates at the Anniston Chemical Agent Disposal Facility. (Photo courtesy U.S. Army)

Other disposal technologies exist, but the Army has not approved them despite several successful tests. Incinerators exist now, are relatively cheap to operate, and to our aging generals who remember burning leaves in their backyards as kids, this seems reasonable.

But the citizens of Anniston, and in particular the 35,000 residents who live around the facility, see this action as anything but reasonable. Commitments made by the Army to the town remain unmet, and few of the promised emergency gas masks and protective clothing have been distributed to the townspeople.

Those considered most at risk have been offered protective hoods, air filters and shelter kits, and Army officials have said and warning sirens have been put in place and evacuation routes have been mapped out.

But the primary protective action, the pressurization of nearby schools and businesses, has not yet taken place. Those facilities still remain exposed to outside air in the event of a leakage of the nerve agents.

I don’t think I have to spell out many more details to demonstrate how foolhardy this plan is. It is dangerous enough to burn garbage which contains plastics, PCBs, and other toxic chemicals in everyday objects, releasing those fumes into the precious air we breathe. The next breath you take may now contain the toxic byproducts of chemical weapons, brought to you by the United States Army, defender of the free world.

Don’t you feel safe now?

RESOURCES

1. The Federation of American Scientists have compiled the history of the U.S. chemical weapons program at: http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/cbw/cw.htm

2. Find out who your Congressional representatives are and e-mail them. Tell them this incineration program is nuts and that they should start listening to the non-military experts who have alternatives for them. If you know your Zip Code, you can find them at: http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/ziptoit.html

3. See an article about chemical weapons in “Government Executive” magazine at: http://govexec.com/features/1298/1298s4.htm

4. Learn about the concerns of the Anniston based Chemical Weapons Working Group at: http://www.cwwg.org

5. See the story of the Pine Bluff Arkansas chemical weapons stockpile at: http://search.csmonitor.com/durable/1999/03/09/fp3s1-csm.shtml

6. Need a primer on chemical weapons? Check out the Federation of American Scientists Special Weapons Primer at: http://www.fas.org/nuke/intro/cw/index.html

7. See the official website of the U.S. Program Manager for Elimination of Chemical Weapons at: http://www-pmcd.apgea.army.mil/default.asp

{Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D. is a writer and teacher in Seattle and the author of "Healing Our World," A Journey from the Darkness Into the Light," available at: http://www.xlibris.com/HealingOurWorld.html and “Of This Earth, Reflections on Connections,” available at: http://ofthisearth.org. Please send your thoughts, comments, and visions to him at: jackie@healingourworld.com and visit his website at: http://www.healingourworld.com}