what is up with the incineration of sarin nerve gas in Alabama?

[Wonder]

Is this the start of a trend? It looked pathetic on CNN. The army is disposing of this stuff by burning it into the air in a small town in Alabama whose pop us primarily Afr.Am. The DOD is handing out these strange plastic gas masks to the population in this town. What is this about? It strikes me all wrong...

Any thoughts?

[NYC]

1. It's on hold.

There was another thread posted this evening. This is on hold while it goes to court.

[Wonder]

2. Thanks I missed that thread.

I caught a segment on this on CNN at this place I have lunch, and as usual it is just flying by everyone... and there I am with that damn tinfoil hat... say WTF... this is guaranteed to kick off a progrom of "quarantine" if ever I saw one.

[ElsewheresDaughter]

3. Trent can bring home the bacon fry it up in an incinerater

and never never let you forget he's the man

[Syrinx]

7. He's from Mississippi

[ElsewheresDaughter]

9. opps

[diamond14]

4. incineration is the best way to get rid of these toxins...but, perhaps

they have little confidence in their furnace design...and that is a HUGE issue....if this was done right...there would be constant air monitors, with the final stack gasses bubbled through some neutralizing chemicals or brine solutions...


there should be NO exposures to local citizens...they could also check out the wind patterns when incineration is going on, only operate the furnace when the wind is blowing away from populated areas...this sounds like it's all done wrong...starting with...

1. do not put incinerators in populated areas
2. do not use CHEAP incinerators that puke out toxic air pollutants...spend the money necessary to properly burn the waste, and properly monitor the operation of the furnace
3. do not issue gas masks to the general population (these are frequently mis-used, with inadequate training, and can cause other major medical problems)...if there is such a concern, then MOVE the people during furnace operation, or MOVE the furnace to an area of no population...

on edit: it would be best if the USA STOPPED MAKING THESE BIO-WEAPONS..very dangerous, very toxic, too much money wasted on such insanity...we need to stop making these nerve agents, and start using our money in more productive ways...perhaps making things that benefit the world, rather than creating terror and destruction...

[Wonder]

5. well that sounds very pragmatic but then WHAT

is with those strange gas masks and WHY does this seem to be going on in an Afr. Am community. Or is the DOD planning on burning sarin gas in affluent neighborhoods as well?

[Syrinx]

6. They're doing it at the base

It would be very dangerous to move these old, volatile weapons to another location. And Anniston is is about 50/50 white and black.

[Wonder]

8. well according to the waitress who grew up in this town in Alabama

she told me it was a primarily Afr Am. community that was pretty broken down. Interestingly she had literally just returned from there from a family reunion. It just seems like regardless of how they have it filtered, this is an irresponsible thing to do. But OK.

[Syrinx]

14. I wouldn't mind seeing the Feds pay to relocate those that want to

But that would probably finish Anniston off.

[diamond14]

12. people MUST get out there and FIGHT....here's one that I fought

for many years...in Denver Colorado - the Rocky Mountain Arsenal....a furnace was constructed to incinerate this "Basin F", which was a lake, containing pesticides, heavy metals, benzene, nerve agents, diisomethyl phosphonate (DIMP) and dimethymethyl phosphonate (DMMP)....there was a HUGE fight...and at least the pond is now gone (incinerated over a period of TWO years), which was the best solution...but still, there are many people who continue to live in mobile homes and other cheap housing North of this site, where toxic nerve agents are in their daily bath water, and drinking water, playgrounds, and air on a dusty treeless desert of worthless real estate...they won't move, because lawyers have told them that they won't get a HUGE settlement if they leave...so they stay and are daily poisoned by these toxins...there was time in the mid-90's when each and every household would have enough money to buy a beautiful new home in Evergreen or Vail Colorado...it was the lawyers that stopped that...and these people are now stuck there in their mobile homes, poisoned, with no way out and no settlement money either...and most of these people are poor white people...the toxic suffering is enormous...and anybody near a toxic waste incinerator needs someone to fight for them...and they need to fully support the fight,too...if they don't want to or can't, the very least they could do for their families and their futures is to MOVE now...

http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/facility/rocky.htm


-snip-

Efforts to contain liquid wastes began soon after the discovery that contaminated groundwater caused crop damage north of RMA in the mid-1950s. In 1956, the Army built Basin F, an evaporation pond designed to store liquid wastes. Believed to be the first of its kind in the country, the 93-acre, asphalt-lined pond was capable of holding 243 million gallons of contaminated liquid.


on edit: it's about time that the cost of all this be added into OUR war costs...the military is the worst environmental polluter of all times, and nobody adds that cost to the MILITARY...just like the cost of Veterans, rumsfeld prefers to stretch these costs across all kind of other Federal departments to disguise the TRUE cost of wars...

[Syrinx]

16. Do we still make this stuff?

As bad as it is, I think we do need to keep nukes. Hopefully they will just be used for negotiations. But with nukes spreading, we have to keep our's for self-defense.

But there's no good reason to keep making these nasty chem and bio weapons. At all.

[diamond14]

20. Yes...that's what they do in Toole, Utah (the Morman state), and

in Maryland at Ft. Detrick, where the anthrax came from....

and in a few other places that shouldn't be mentioned here...

YES ! America...the BIGGEST producers AND SELLERS of weapons, atomic bombs, chemical and biological warfare products WORLD-WIDE....

IMHO, it should be stopped...near the end of his term, Bill Clinton had actually pushed through not only the stopping of Nuclear Bomb production, but the opening of the records from the Defense Facilities (so Americans could view the mess, and know the clean-up costs), and which cost Department of Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary her job....Clinton also had a program at the Pan-Tex plant for disassembling nuclear bombs from both here and Russia....it was great...

but bush* stopped all that...now bush* only talked of his hydrogen car initiative from the Department of Energy, which is simply a lame cover-up for the restarting of the DOE Nuclear Bomb facilites, and the secretization of all DOE operations (ho ho, look, we're studying the hydrogen car, while spending really all our billions on nuclear bomb production)....

the chemical and biological weapons are much easier to make...America has made them for many years, and used them...just read how we are using NAPALM again (an old stand-by from Vietnam) in Iraq...it's a horrible chemical fire, mix with melting plastic that is dropped from planes onto people and other things...the melting plastic makes a horrible and deadly chemical burn that torment people to a painful death...in Vietnam, we also used Agent Orange, a chemical defoiliant, an herbicide, where NOTHING ever grows again after we drop in on jungles...real chemical warfare...made by DOW Chemical, Midland Michigan....

[diamond14]

23. (link) to short summary of USA Biological & Chemical Weapons

Programs...it's important to note: WMD (Weapons of MASS Destruction are only Nuclear Weapons - also known as Atomic Bombs)....Biological and/or Chemical weapons just cannot kill as many as Nuclear Bombs...so don't let shrub brainwash you into thinking that these are WMD....Biological Weapons (anthrax, west nile virus) and Chemical Weapons (Agent Orange, Napalm) are NOT WMD....

http://uscrusade.com/murder/biochemical.html

and I fully agree that these programs need to be toned down, but shrub has restarted all of it with massive amounts of money and effort...and I also think that THESE programs should be included as part of our military expenditures, which they are not...they often come under other departments, like the Department of Energy...and somehow manage to get pushed elsewhere in OUR tax budget, so we don't realize how much is spent on our so-called Defense...

[The Lone Liberal]

10. Not trying for the “little green men” award

But this is too good. What if they are not disposing of the sarin, instead they are only doing a show and the sarin is on its way to Iraq to be discovered by some military unit?

[Ellen Forradalom]

11. So THAT's where the WMDs are!

Boy, that Saddam is one clever guy.

[Stuckinthebush]

13. They've been working on this plan for years

Anniston, AL has been developing and testing this technology for a while now. Here in North-Central Alabama, we have been hearing about it for a long time. There have been many public announcements regarding warnings about dangerous airborne gas that may happen during the incineration process. It seems that the officials have done a fine job of getting people and the equipment prepared.

I'm glad they are getting rid of the stuff. Somebody has to do it.

[Stephanie]

15. The burning will go on for years

I heard on NPR, can't remember exactly, but I think it is 10-12 years. Also, there are less-toxic ways to dispose of it, methods that are being used in other states right now.

[Syrinx]

18. What are the less-toxic ways?

That's the first I've heard about that.

[Stephanie]

19. Can't remember, it was on the radio - last week?

Had to be on Morning Edition on NPR. Unless it was local WNYC radio talk show. There was an activist on who is trying to prevent the burning, and she said less toxic ways are being used elsewhere - maybe in Colorado? I think her point was that those communities had organized to make sure it was done that way.

[Syrinx]

22. If there's a safer way, I don't see why anyone would be against it

:shrug:

[Stephanie]

24. Why do you think? $$$$$$$$

Costs more. Duh! What do you think is a higher priority: your health, or tax breaks for the wealthy?

[Syrinx]

28. I'm against shrub's tax cuts, but i don't see the connection

narrowly, at least.

[oasis]

17. Why don't they just incinerate the nerve gas programs?

[fabius]

21. Been in the works for some time.

We have an incinerator under construction outside of Hermiston here in Oregon, next to a big nerve gas stockpile. They have to get rid of this stuff, it was decided a few years back.

One would hope that the air quality issues were all worked out (this was started in the Clinton Admin. so I dont' necessarily distrust the whole process) but they haven't been very forthcoming about the research on air quality and health effects.

Philosophically to me it's a fine thing to incinerate this stuff as long as the process is safe.

Of course it's right by the Columbia River, they could load the stuff up on barges and have it on a ship for Iraq pretty quickly!

[diamond14]

26. shrub has cut all funding for all evironmental clean-ups...there is

nothing being done on any clean-up stuff...the EPA is in tourmoil from shrub and his minions...not even a boss anymore over there at EPA...the US Army Corp has also had major environmental cut-backs...and all that nerve gas just becomes more and more unstable and more and more dangerous, especially to people living in the vicinity...

all this stuff got shoved back as shrub spent all that money on his wars in Afganistan and Iraq, and basically started up all the chemical and Biological and nuclear programs here in the USA, which is why rumsfeld and the reTHUGlicans are so excited about shrub*, they were all awful mad at Clinton who felt that way too much money was spent on this madness...and Clinton had started to tone it down because we really have way too much and spent way too much on military....

.....yes, the USA Military is the biggest polluter in America and world-wide...

and shrub didn't tell us that is part of the cost of his wars...

[DemBones DemBones]

25. I started a couple of threads on this months ago but couldn't get

anybody interested then. Initially, the Army was just going to give everyone some plastic and duct tape to seal their windows and doors -- no, I am not making this up! But then-governor DonSiegelman (a Dem!) sued the govt and FEMA ponied up to buy everyone a gas mask. The puke who's now governor, Bob Riley, was at that time a rep for the Anniston area and seemed not to think it was anything to worry about. . . I'm sure they have it all planned to be safe but we all know that things do not always go according to plan and that's the scary part. Would the guys at the Pentagon who came up with this plan be willing to move their families to Anniston for the duration?

I still want to know what they plan to do about babies and small children -- do they get tiny little gas masks? And what about pets and livestock? Not to mention crops and gardens. This is going to take SEVEN YEARS!!! Anniston has been screwed over before -- lots of PCB contamination there and dioxin as well. And when you're low income and work for the Army Depot or GE, you're afraid to complain.

I am worried about my own safety as well since when it's raining in Anniston, we can count on the rain being here soon afterwards. (It takes about an hour to drive to Anniston from here.) I hate to be picky but I would really prefer that the rain didn't include any sarin gas or products of combustion of sarin gas. Can I get a guarantee from the Army?

[diamond14]

27. move ASAP....it's not safe for children especially...many of these

toxins have long-term effects that you won't even realize until "later" in your life, or that of your children....