Introduction - Occupational Health and Workplace Monitoring at Chemical Agent Disposal Facilities - page 1

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Introduction

For more than 50 years, the United States has main-
tained a stockpile of chemical agents and munitions
distributed among eight sites in the continental United
States and on Johnston Island in the Pacific Ocean. The
nation is currently engaged in a concerted effort to
destroy the materials stored at these sites safely and
efficiently. An estimated cumulative total of more than
8,600 operating and oversight personnel will be re-
quired to staff currently operating and future chemical
agent disposal facilities, and the safety and health of
these employees is a high priority. This report exam-
ines and evaluates workplace chemical monitoring and
worker health monitoring practices at currently operat-
ing disposal facilities.

Nerve agents include organic phosphorus com-
pounds designated VX, GB (sarin), and GA (tabun).
These chemicals present a significant toxic hazard be-
cause of their action on the nervous systems of humans
and animals through inhibition of the acetylcholinest-
erase enzyme. VX is more acutely toxic than GB, but
the latter represents a greater initial exposure hazard
because of its higher volatility (about the same as
water) and the greater likelihood of its being inhaled.
Cancer has not been associated with exposure to nerve
agents or chemically and toxicologically similar com-
mercial organic phosphorus insecticides (U.S. Army,
1999a). In general, chronic health effects in humans
have not been associated with either long-term, low-
level exposures or short-term, high-level exposures to
nerve agents (CDC, 1988).
Some concerns have been expressed about the in-
duction of organophosphorous-induced delayed neur-
opathy (OPIDN) by the nerve agents, as well as other
possible delayed or persistent effects, such as cardiac
dysfunction, psychological effects, and electro-
encephalographic abnormalities. In a comprehensive
study of these effects, Munro et al. (1994) came to the
following conclusions: (1) no exposures to nerve
agents have resulted in OPIDN; (2) these agents are
not likely to be carcinogenic; (3) these nerve agents are
not teratogenic; and (4) they do not have deleterious

CHEMICAL AGENT AND MUNITIONS STOCKPILE

Two basic types of chemical agents comprise the
stockpile: cholinesterase-inhibiting (nerve) agents and
blister (mustard and Lewisite) agents. Both types are
frequently, and erroneously, referred to as “gases” even
though they are liquids at normal temperature and pres-
sure. 1

1 The stockpile (the subject of the Army's Chemical Stockpile
Disposal Program) consists of (1) bulk containers of nerve and blis-
ter agents and (2) munitions, including rockets, mines, bombs, pro-
jectiles, and spray tanks, loaded with nerve or blister agents. Buried
chemical warfare materiel, recovered chemical warfare materiel,
binary weapons (in which two nonlethal components are mixed
after firing to yield a lethal nerve agent), former production facili-
ties, and miscellaneous chemical warfare materiel are not included
in the stockpile. The disposition of these five classes of materials is
the subject of a separate Non-Stockpile Chemical Materiel Pro-

gram. Information on the Army's overall chemical material disposal
programs is available online at <http:www-pmcd.apgea.army.mil/
text/w_body.html>.

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