2007 > June > 18

Texas incineration of toxic nerve gas byproduct gets suspended, for now

By Asher Price | Monday, June 18, 2007, 03:38 PM

The U.S. Army has agreed, temporarily at least, to suspend shipments of toxic VX nerve agent by-products to Texas from Indiana while the federal court in Terre Haute, Indiana sets a date for a preliminary hearing on the matter.

That’s the news from the Chemical Weapons Working Group, a Kentucky outfit that has been challenging the shipment of the nerve agent by-product from Indiana to Port Arthur, Texas, where it has been incinerated without much citizen consent.

The Army is destroying its entire supply of the Cold War-era nerve agent, which can kill with a single drop, at a chemical depot in Indiana, according to the Associated Press. The wastewater created in the process, known as VX hydrolysate, will be shipped in 4,000-gallon containers across eight states and nearly 1,000 miles to Port Arthur, a poor, largely black city in the heart of a chemical-industrial area.

A federal suit filed by the Chemical Weapons Working Group and the Sierra Club says the risks associated with transporting the VX waste are not fully recognized, primarily due to inadequate analysis of the concentrations of VX nerve agent and other deadly compounds in the tankers hauling the material through portions of Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas.

Of an estimated two million gallons of the waste, approximately 375,000 gallons have already been shipped. How much of that has been burned in Port Arthur to date is unknown.

Should there be any question about just how toxic VX nerve gas is, just review this dialogue from the 1996 movie "The Rock". Dr. Stanley Goodspeed (played by Nicholas Cage) and John Mason (Sean Connery), have essentially broken into Alcatraz to disarm a VX nerve gas warhead:

[Mason And Goodspeed are defusing a poison gas rocket]

John Mason: What exactly does this stuff do?

Stanley Goodspeed: If the rocket renders it aerosol, it could take out an entire city of people.

John Mason: Really? And what happens if you drop one?

Stanley Goodspeed: Happily, it'd just wipe out you and me.

John Mason: How?

Stanley Goodspeed: It's a cholinesterase inhibitor. Stops the brain from sending nerve messages down the spinal cord within thirty seconds. Any epidermal exposure or inhalation and you’ll know. A twinge at the small of your back as the poison seizes your nervous system…

[Mason has lifted the device to look at it]

Stanley Goodspeed: DO NOT MOVE THAT! Your muscles freeze, you can't breathe, you spasm so hard you break your own back and spit your guts out. But that's after your skin melts off.

John Mason: My God…

Stanley Goodspeed: Oh, I think we'd like God on our side at the moment, don't you?