Examples of the use of chemical weapons since World War II are Iraq’s Saddam Hussein on the Kurdish village Halabja in 1988 and their employment against civilian passengers of the Tokyo subway by Aum Shinrikyo in 1995.
[2] 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.
The pollution produced by the preferred destruction method involving the incineration of the chemical agents and the munitions that contained them was another concern.
[1] 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.
[1] 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.
[2] 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).
In the United States, neutralization was first selected as an alternative to incineration to destroy stockpiles of chemical agent stored in bulk.
[4] Neutralization is the selected method for the Department of Defense’s Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives facilities in Pueblo, Colorado, and Richmond, Kentucky.
The Pine Bluff Arsenal is a former chemical weapons production, storage and disposal site located in southeastern Arkansas.
The Northwestern portion of the site contains 431 acres (1.74 km2) of land that holds a 3,850 ton stockpile of weaponry.
As one of the two sites administered by the defense department, the Blue Grass Army Depot 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.
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)
[7][8][9] Johnston Atoll is an island territory owned by the United States approximately 1,400 miles (2,300 km) west of Hawaii.
The U.S. Army dumped 16,000 bombs in deep water 5 miles (8.0 km) south of Pearl Harbor after World War II.
The Army intends to leave the weapons at the site because moving them could pose more of a threat to people and the environment.
[11] Researchers made 16 dives in submersible vehicles to depths of 2,000 feet (610 m) over three years, locating more than 2,000 munitions.
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.
[1] 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.
Officials also encourage local families and businesses to be prepared with their own emergency response plans.
[18] 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.
In order to soften the blow to local communities, Pine Bluff Arsenal opened a Transition Center on November 4, 2009.
[19] 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.