Sarin Nerve Agent Leaks From Ala. Bunker

[redqueen]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=519&ncid=519&e=2&u=/ap/20040303/ap_on_re_us/chemical_weapons_leak_2

ANNISTON, Ala. - A trace amount of sarin nerve agent leaked from a weapons storage bunker at Anniston Army Depot, but no one was injured.

Workers were conducting routine checks for leaks Tuesday when a monitor detected the agent outside the airtight bunker where the weapons are stored.

Sarin did not escape the area, and the concentration was not enough to hurt anyone, said Cathy Coleman, a spokeswoman Anniston Chemical Activity, which oversees the stockpile. Tons of munitions are stored in dirt-covered, concrete igloos at the depot 50 miles east of Birmingham.

Since 1982, the Army has found 897 leaking chemical weapons in storage at the depot, where the military is using an incinerator to destroy the aging weapons.

[underpants]

1. Aha so W WAS in Alabama

must have been doing very early research on products Poppa could sell the mad dictators in the midst of a war.

[demsrule4life]

6. Those bunkers at Anniston

have exisited long before the Bush idiots were ever in office. They are working at getting rid of them.

[slackmaster]

2. That's very, very scary

We need to accelerate the process of incinerating the stockpile.

[RobertSeattle]

3. Are Ala-Bama and Al-Queda related?

WMD connection.

[maggrwaggr]

4. WMD's found in Alabama! Invade! Invade!

Oops. It's us.

Oh, WE can have them, no problem.

God is on our side, after all.

[klook]

5. Time for a trip upwind?

Calhoun County AL is ready:
http://www.calhounema.org/csepp.html

If you live there and there's a deadly leak, quickly don your gas mask--assuming you were foolish enough to inhale--while you log on to the Internet and find out which evacuation route to take.

[redqueen]

7. Thank God people are taking this seriously.

Sarin leaked from an airtight bunker?

Do journalists bother with proofreading anymore? :eyes:

[demsrule4life]

8. LOL good point

but another thing to consider is the age of those bunkers. I have seen them, trust me, they were built to be airtight, but I doubt if they are anymore.

[redqueen]

11. Interesting

I don't know exactly how old they are (obviously older than 24 years), but wouldn't it be a good idea to ensure the containers' integrity can be guaranteed for a longer period of time than the weapons they contain remain effective? I hope that made sense. I'm a terrible, terrible writer. :cry:

[demsrule4life]

17. You made more sense then I ever could

Comes down to money. The bunkers are built, but money is never allocated to keep them in pristine condition.

[wackywill]

18. Has this been privatized?

Reading the article it looks like this is being handled by a private company rather than the US Army or other agency. More of our tax dollars at work.

[redqueen]

19. Easier question: what hasn't?!

Yes it has, as you noted it's being 'handled' (*cough, cough*) by a private company. And as usual, we're getting our money's worth!

Welcome to DU! :hi:

[klook]

23. Blood - Death - Smokescreen

I'm not sure if the same companies doing the PCB cleanup at Anniston are also responsible for the WMD elimination. Here's some background on the PCB stuff: Feds, companies forge PCB cleanup agreement.

Monsanto uses our tax dollars to create a deadly chemical hazard. Then, through the miracle of capitalism, Pharmacia (new name for Monsanto and now owned by Pfizer) and Solutia (spun off from Monsanto in 1997), again paid with our tax dollars, do the cleanup!! Isn't that neat? Instead of the perpetrators having to pay crippling fines, and their top execs going to jail, they get paid to clean up their mess! Think of it as a kinder, gentler Superfund.

And who's at risk? Just a bunch of Bama hillbillies, so who cares? (Insert incest joke here.)

Remember the old Monsanto slogan "Food - Health - Hope"? The now-defunct web site Mutanto.com (undoubtedly forced off the 'net by Monsanto lawyers) parodied this with "Fraud - Stealth - Hype." As my subject line indicates, I think it's gone way beyond that.

[newyawker99]

26. Hi wackywill!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[Dogmudgeon]

9. It's possible

Maybe the bunker had walls made of a material that was porous to Sarin but not to air.

However, it probably really is idiot journalists at work.

--bkl

[redqueen]

10. True

Science, what a concept! Oh, dopey me...

Thanks for opening a tiny little window of credibility. Anything's better than the idiocy option, eh?

[Chicago Democrat]

12. Damn! Glad detector worked.

Remember last month 2 Russians missiles failed because they were so old. These weapons of mass destruction are dangerous and should be destroyed by all nations. What the hell do we need this shit for?!!

[klook]

25. Thanks again, Monsanto

Another (literally) sickening example of Monsanto's legacy of death.

See also: Monsanto Hid Decades Of Pollution: PCBs Drenched Ala. Town, But No One Was Ever Told by Michael Grunwald (Washington Post, Jan 1, 2002).

ANNISTON, Ala. -- On the west side of Anniston, the poor side of Anniston, the people ate dirt. They called it "Alabama clay" and cooked it for extra flavor. They also grew berries in their gardens, raised hogs in their back yards, caught bass in the murky streams where their children swam and played and were baptized.

They didn't know their dirt and yards and bass and kids -- along with the acrid air they breathed -- were all contaminated with chemicals.

They didn't know they lived in one of the most polluted patches of America.

<snip>

...for nearly 40 years, while producing the now-banned industrial coolants known as PCBs at a local factory, Monsanto Co. routinely discharged toxic waste into a west Anniston creek and dumped millions of pounds of PCBs into oozing open-pit landfills. And thousands of pages of Monsanto documents -- many emblazoned with warnings such as "CONFIDENTIAL: Read and Destroy" -- show that for decades, the corporate giant concealed what it did and what it knew.

In 1966, Monsanto managers discovered that fish submerged in that creek turned belly-up within 10 seconds, spurting blood and shedding skin as if dunked into boiling water. They told no one. In 1969, they found fish in another creek with 7,500 times the legal PCB levels. They decided "there is little object in going to expensive extremes in limiting discharges." In 1975, a company study found that PCBs caused tumors in rats. They ordered its conclusion changed from "slightly tumorigenic" to "does not appear to be carcinogenic."

How many people have died, gotten sick, or been born with birth defects because of this outrageous criminal behavior?

[boobooday]

13. nice

There goes the neighborhood.

http://www.wgoeshome.com

[TroglodyteScholar]

14. Yoiks

I'm orignally from Anniston...and I can say without a doubt that those stockpiles have been a HUGE controversy in the area. Well....not really a controversy, because that would imply that someone WANTS them there. All of the citizens are sick of having that shit in such close proximity.

I hope this speeds up the process of destroying them...My parents still live out in that area. :(

ON EDIT: Corrected spelling ok

[jeanmarc]

15. Bush was brave

to remain AWOL against such a threat.

[bushisanidiot]

16. Oopsie Daisy! Ya'll Were Just "accidentally" tested!

thanks for being good little guinea pigs for the boss!

[JPZenger]

20. Good Thing Terrorists Aren't Trying

I'm becoming increasingly amazed about how vulnerable our country is. All these systems are falling apart - even without any terrorist attacks. For example:

- The entire Mississippi River channel was recently blocked because one ship sunk in the deep channel and no other ship could go around it.

- The electric power for most of the Northeastern U.S. went out last year because of problems with a couple sets of transmission lines in Ohio were screwed up. What if terrorists had taken those electric towers down, instead of simply having the lines go out of service?

- The air traffic control radar for the Philadelphia airport went out last month, as well as ALL of the backup systems. The air traffic controllers were operating completely blind and had to radio flights to divert flights to other cities.

- The U.S. has Sarin gas stored in leaky containers. How hard would it be for terrorists to blow them up? I believe the U.S. has the largest stores of chemical and biological weapons in the world - how safe are they from attack?

[redqueen]

21. Yep

The next president had better start paying attention to infrastructure.

[bmbmd]

22. Next thing you know

Richard Dreyfuss shows up to hitch a ride with the aliens.

[wjittermoss]

24. So, the US is the rogue nation with the world's most dangerous WMDs?

I knew it all along.