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This from the AP today: Army to burn Chemical Weapons



To give some insight, I  have appended the full text of the Philadelphia

Inquirers Russian report of last December reporting the lethal results

of the Russian burning of chemical agents.



Article 1.) Army to Burn Chemical Weapons



Article 2.) CHEMICAL-ARMS PRODUCTION KILLED THOUSANDS, RUSSIANS SAY THE

SCIENTISTS SAID THOUSANDS  OF  WORKERS  DIED.  THEY  ALSO  CITED

CONGENITAL  ILLNESSES AND ECOLOGICAL DAMAGE. Philadelphia Inquirer (PI)

- FRIDAY December 24, 1993



I  am posting them both because our government simply will not

learn from the Russian Experience and none of the depots are located in

Washington, DC.





AP: >Army To Burn Chemical Weapons

Tue, 12 Apr 94

13:40 WASHINGTON (AP) --

The Army intends to proceed with plans to burn the nation's chemical

weapons stockpiles after new risk assessments at the eight sites where

the munitions are stored, officials said Tuesday. In a report to

Congress, the Army rejected calls from citizens groups that the $9

billion incineration program be replaced with alternative technologies

to neutralize and treat the chemical agents at each site after they are

separated from the munitions. ``We have demonstrated ... that

incineration can safely get rid of the risk and these munitions once and

for all,'' said Charles Baronian, manager of the Army's chemical

demilitarization program. ``The advantages of neutralization remain to

be demonstrated.'' Construction of the first incinerator at Tooele Army

Depot in Utah has been completed, and the second is scheduled to begin

this fall at the Anniston Army Depot in northeast Alabama. Other sites

where chemical weapons are stockpiled include Umatilla Army Depot, Ore.;

Pueblo Army Depot, Colo.; Pine Bluff Arsenal, Ark.; Blue Grass Army

Depot, Ky.; Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md., and Newport Army Ammunition

Plant in Indiana. Gen. Walter Busbee, commander of the Army's Chemical

Material regulatory officials in the eight states to issue the

environmental permits needed to build the incinerators, despite growing

public opposition. ``There will be some bumps in the road,'' he said.

``We may end up in litigation at some locations. But the option of doing

nothing is unacceptable.'' A panel at the National Academy of Sciences

in February endorsed incineration as the safest existing method for

destroying the nation's chemical weapons stockpiles but urged the Army

to explore potential alternative technologies. The Army agreed in the

report Tuesday to seek authorization from Congress to begin immediately

a research and development program on two proposed alternatives, both

involving neutralization of the chemical agents. But the report said

those alternative technologies, even if they prove workable, will serve

only as backup programs for chemicals weapons stored in bulk at the

Maryland and Indiana sites.

(reprinted without permission)





From the Philadelphia Inquirer, December 24, 1993



CHEMICAL-ARMS PRODUCTION KILLED THOUSANDS, RUSSIANS SAY THE SCIENTISTS

SAID THOUSANDS  OF WORKERS  DIED.  THEY  ALSO  CITED  CONGENITAL

ILLNESSES AND ECOLOGICAL DAMAGE.



Philadelphia Inquirer (PI) - FRIDAY

December 24, 1993 By: Sergei Shargorodsky, ASSOCIATED PRESS Edition:

FINAL  Section: NATIONAL  Page: A04 Word Count: 640 TEXT:

MOSCOW - Tens of thousands of workers died while producing chemical

weapons in  the former Soviet  Union,  and  about  one  million  people

live  in contaminated  areas  where  cancer rates are high and many

babies are born sick or abnormal, Russian scientists said yesterday.

"From  the medical point of view, our preparations for chemical war had

disastrous consequences,"  said  chemist  Lev  Fyodorov,  president of

the independent Union for Chemical Safety. At  a  news conference, the

scientists detailed the extensive ecological and  medical  damage they

say  resulted  from the Soviet chemical weapons program, which remains

largely a secret. Fyodorov  said  the  Russian  government was doing

little to reveal past secrets  and  help those  people affected. There

was no immediate official reaction to the charges. Official  casualty

figures  or  details on the dumping and contaminated sites have never

been published. The numbers provided yesterday appeared to far exceed

Western estimates. The former Soviet Union began producing chemical arms

in 1924 in Moscow, and production later spread to other regions,

becoming especially intensive before  and  during  World War II,

Fyodorov said. Russia officially stopped production last year. Fyodorov

estimated that "tens of thousands" of plant workers died, most before

the mid-1950s, from effects of poisonous substances. World  War  II-era

factories  had no proper means of protection, dumped contaminated  water

into rivers, could not filter gas discharges and burned dangerous

materials such as mustard gas at open sites, he said. "Only  two people

who worked at the shop No. 4 in Chapayevsk, (a central Russian town)

where they produced mustard gas, remain alive. Just two women from  shop

No.  5,  where  artillery  shells  were  filled  with gas, have

survived," Fyodorov said. "The rest are all dead." In  the  1960s,  a

group of army servicemen died of cancer after burning mustard gas at a

chemical weapons base in Kambarka, in the Russian province of  Udmurtia,

Fyodorov  said. Burning the gas releases the poison into the air. He

said  he  had  written  testimony  and a list of names from a former

senior officer at the base. About  300  towns, cities and other spots

across the former Soviet Union where chemical weapons were produced,

stored, tested or destroyed have been contaminated, he said. Those sites

are home to about one million people, he said. Chemical arms also were

dumped, "apparently until the mid-1980s," in the Baltic,  Barents  and

Beloye  Seas  off  Russia's  northern coast, the Far Eastern seas of

Japan and Okhotsk and other coastal waters, Fyodorov said. "Neither  the

government, nor ecological and medical organizations have paid attention

to these consequences," he said. "We have cities that were 'burned' by

chemical weapons and thousands of people who need urgent help." In

Novocheboksarsk,  a town of 130,000 on the Volga River, thousands of

workers  who  produced  a  nerve  gas  called  V-gas  in the 1970s were

not receiving  proper  help and "have to prove they are invalids of the

weapons industry," he said. Forty percent of the town's children have

chronic illnesses and up to 90 percent of newborns have abnormalities,

he said. Vladimir  Uglev,  a  scientist from the Soviet chemical weapons

program, said  his  home  town of Shikhany had the region's highest

cancer rates, as did other chemical weapons production sites. Uglev

and  Fyodorov  said  the  Russian  military  was  still keeping

information about the deadly program and its consequences secret.

Fyodorov  would  not  name  his own sources, saying: "Nobody wants to be

called a traitor." It  was  apparently  a  reference  to his  co-author,

Vil Mirzayanov, a chemical  arms  expert  who  was arrested in fall 1992

after reporting in a newspaper  article that Russia had tested powerful

binary chemical weapons, seemingly in violation of international

accords. He was charged with disclosing state secrets and later

released. No date was  set  for the trial. If convicted, Mirzayanov

faces a punishment of two to five years in prison. Copyright

Philadelphia Newspapers Inc. 1993



(reprinted without permission)





                        Maynard H. Evans <mevans@netcom.com>



:wq