EPA concerned about chemical depot air quality

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EPA concerned about chemical depot air quality

The Associated Press

2/14/01 5:27 PM

HERMISTON, Ore. (AP) -- The Environmental Protection Agency says nerve and

mustard gas agents caused readings on Umatilla Chemical Depot air monitors

nearly 60 times last summer even though the agency doubts that a leak was

responsible for sending 34 construction workers to the hospital in 1999.

In a letter to the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, the EPA says

more tests are needed to find out why air monitoring stations showed trace

amounts of the components of sarin, VX and mustard gases 59 times between

May and July last year.

But Wayne , program administrator for the state DEQ, questioned the

EPA's analysis. He said the " positive hits " of the agents are below levels

at which instruments are calibrated to reliably detect danger and well below

levels that pose any threat to human health.

said that state DEQ officials are planning to talk to the EPA about

its data charts and how the agency arrived at its conclusions.

Several agencies, including the DEQ and the Army, have asked the U.S.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to review the depot's monitoring

system.

The depot's commander, Lt. Col. Tom Woloszyn, said he was frustrated that

the EPA hadn't contacted the depot about its investigation or its

recommendations to the DEQ.

The EPA's letter asks the state DEQ to do several things, including sampling

soil at the depot for possible degraded byproducts of chemical weapons and

to conduct soil and soil vapor sampling at its storage and construction

sites.

Bruce Woods, an EPA chemist, speculated in a recent report that airborne

chemical agents may have gone down drains inside storage igloos into the

ground.

But depot spokeswoman Binder said the Army recently finished plugging

drains in some igloos, and that soil tests done in the late 1980s revealed

nothing.

Officials were quick to note the trace amounts detected last summer were

significantly below the amounts the U.S. Surgeon General's office says would

cause any ill effect, even over a lifetime.

But Portland lawyer McCandlish, who is representing 18 of 34 workers

who became sick in September 1999, believes 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. "

Charts from the EPA show that low-level readings of sarin were found 56

times between May and July of 2000. Mustard was detected twice and VX once.

Some of the readings may be " false positives " disproved by another sampling

tube in the same station.

The workers allege they were sickened by exposure to a chemical agent while

constructing an incinerator complex that will be used to destroy the

chemical weapons stored at the depot, beginning in late 2002.

The Army has said it detected no amounts of chemical agents present above

the acceptable amount for chemical workers on the day the construction crew

fell ill.