State asked to explain traces of chemical agents

This story was published Thu, Feb 15, 2001

By Mary Hopkin
Herald Oregon bureau

HERMISTON - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency wants the state to explain why air monitors at the Umatilla Chemical Depot showed traces of sarin and chemical agents nearly 60 times last summer.

The EPA made the request in a letter to the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality after investigating reports of a Sept. 15, 1999, incident during which 34 construction workers became suddenly ill. The workers were helping build an incinerator plant to destroy the 6.6 million pounds of sarin, VX and mustard stored at the depot, seven miles west of Hermiston.

The EPA also suggests the DEQ require the Army to test soil near the storage igloos to make sure chemical agents are not leaking into the ground.

In the letter, Richard Albright, EPA's director of waste and chemicals management, said studies show 59 positive hits of sarin and VX agents between May 18 and July 17.

However, Wayne Thomas of the DEQ questioned the EPA's conclusion, saying the amounts found are below levels at which monitoring equipment can accurately detect the agents and below levels which could threaten human health.

For instance, the positive hits Albright referred to have agent concentrations from a low of 0.000000097 milligrams to a high of 0.000000115 milligrams found in the monitors' filters. The DEQ doesn't record levels detected below 0.000003, or what is known as the general population limit, Thomas said.

The general population limit is the amount of agent a person could be exposed to over a 72-hour period of time and still show no effects of being exposed to a chemical agent, he added. Yet, DEQ officials believe those leaks are too minuscule to be of consequence.

"That's why we are concerned about how they presented this data," said Thomas.

Albright said EPA experts studied the data and reports on the Sept. 15 incident at the request of Griffin McCandlish, a Portland law firm representing 18 of the 34 construction workers suing the Army and its contractor.

Investigations by the U.S. Occupational Safety & Hazard Administration, the Army and the incinerator contractor, Raytheon, have ruled out chemical agents but have not established what caused the illnesses.

The DEQ has performed subsequent tests, which also rule out chemical agent as a cause. But those tests also show that perimeter monitors may have detected chemical agent byproducts, which are not toxic to humans but may be evidence of a prior release.

The DEQ asked the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to review the depot's monitoring system in January.

The airborne chemical agents may have gone down drains inside storage igloos into the ground, said EPA chemist Brian Woods, in his report.

But depot spokeswoman Mary Binder said the Army recently finished plugging drains in some igloos, and that soil tests done in the late 1980s revealed nothing, according to The Associated Press.

The letter was a source of frustration for Lt. Col. Tom Woloszyn, depot commander, who said the EPA's conclusions are based on reports by people who have never set foot on the depot.

"They are essentially compounding assumption and presumption and making it fact," Woloszyn said. "It bothers me that other government organizations would take pot shots without ever coming out here to see how we do business or to talk about it."

Woloszyn said he would like Albright to come to Hermiston and see how the Army handles, stores and monitors its chemical weapons.

"I welcome them to come scan the grounds," he said. "I would be vindicated."

Portland lawyer James McCandlish, who represents 18 of 34 workers who became sick in September 1999, told The Associated Press the trace amounts were substantial.

"These records we just got ... confirm that they are leaking," McCandlish said Tuesday. "Meanwhile, construction workers still on-site are still in danger on a daily basis."

Thomas said that state DEQ officials are planning to talk to the EPA about its data charts and how the agency arrived at its conclusions.

 

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