Nerve Agent

The commanding general of the Army's Chemical and Biological Defense Command has ordered an investigation into the suspected exposure Tuesday of four civilians to VX, a liquid nerve agent being tested at the Edgewood Area of Aberdeen Proving Ground.Experts in chemical warfare agents will try to determine why one of four laboratory workers experienced myosis -- the pupil in one of his eyes grew small, said Jim Allingham, an APG spokesman.Maj. Gen. George E. Friel ordered the investigation Wednesday, Mr. Allingham said.

The monkey in the video spasms violently. He's just been injected with a massive dose of physostigmine — more than 30 times the maximum limit recommended by the Food and Drug Administration — causing vomiting, breathing difficulty, seizures and even death. The video in question was obtained from the United States Army through the Freedom of Information Act by the nonprofit Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. It's a military chemical casualty training video, and it depicts what will happen in an upcoming course at Aberdeen Proving Ground here in Maryland.

TOKYO -- When police responded to the nerve agent attack in the Tokyo subway system, they called in perhaps the most nearly invisible branch of the Japanese government -- the army, better known here as the Self-Defense Force.It is a 225,000-member army in a country that officially does not have one, a military that many Japanese had never previously encountered. On this occasion it provided gas masks, protective clothing and equipment for detecting and detoxifying the nerve agent.Polls show that more than a third of the people surveyed know almost nothing about the military.

The Army's Edgewood Chemical Biological Center at Aberdeen Proving Ground is requesting a federal permit for a munitions assessment and processing facility that is expected to handle a number of deadly chemical agents, including Sarin, a nerve agent outlawed by the Geneva Convention that was used in the deadly 1995 terrorist attack in the Tokyo subway system. Andrew Murphy, spokesman for APG's environmental division, said at a public presentation last week that the permit request would just add the facility, known by the acronym MAPS, to a list of several other hazardous-waste processing facilities at the Army installation in Harford County that would be licensed under the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency certification.

TOKYO -- Even as the coughing, the headaches, the nausea and the dizziness spread through Tokyo's trains during the morning rush hour yesterday, commuters conditioned to expect punctual and safe service said urban terrorism was the last thing on their minds."

Air monitoring after Tuesday's explosion of seven chemical rounds at Aberdeen Proving Ground found trace amounts of a nerve agent, but not enough to halt detonations scheduled for today, officials said.Col. Roslyn M. Glantz, deputy installation commander at the proving ground, said 48 sensitive monitors near the detonation site displayed low levels of the nerve agent Tabun on Tuesday. Hand-held monitors did not pick up traces of the agent, she said.Only three of the monitors detected traces after overnight testing, and monitors placed in homes five miles away in Kent County showed no presence of the agent, Glantz said.

Two Aberdeen Proving Ground laboratory workers were sent to a Bel Air hospital yesterday after showing signs of possible exposure to nerve agent, the third incident involving the same tenant at the Harford County military base in the past two months. The incident occurred at 10:50 a.m. at the Edgewood Chemical and Biological Center, a 1.5 million-square-foot research and engineering laboratory for chemical and biological defense. A worker noticed that another's eyes had become dilated, a symptom associated with possible exposure to nerve agent.

WASHINGTON -- At least eight U.S. senators were among 200 people evacuated last night from the Russell Senate Office Building after sensors in the building signaled the possible presence of a nerve agent, according to U.S. Capitol Police. An alarm in the building attic signaled the presence of a dangerous substance at 6:30 p.m., prompting the evacuation. A subsequent test was negative, but those evacuated were held in an adjacent garage for three hours, until additional testing confirmed that the scare was a false alarm.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency fined the Army $122,300 last week for violations involving the nation's prototype chemical weapons incinerator.The fine, levied against an agency at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, is the first against the controversial program to burn the nation's 30,000-ton chemical weapons stockpile at Aberdeen and seven other U.S. sites.The Army was cited for a leak of deadly nerve agent and improper waste storage and handling at its incinerator on remote Johnston Island in the Pacific Ocean, which the service is operating to prove that it can burn the weapons safely in populated areas.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency fined the Army $122,300 this week for violations involving the nation's prototype chemical weapons incinerator, which is run by an agency at Aberdeen Proving Ground.The fine is the first against the controversial program to burn the nation's 30,000-ton chemical weapons stockpile at Aberdeen and seven other U.S. sites. The Army was cited for a leak of deadly nerve agent and improper waste storage and handling at its incinerator on remote Johnston Island in the Pacific Ocean, which the service is operating to prove that it can burn the weapons safely in populated areas.

Two Aberdeen Proving Ground laboratory workers were sent to a Bel Air hospital yesterday after showing signs of possible exposure to nerve agent, the third incident involving the same tenant at the Harford County military base in the past two months. The incident occurred at 10:50 a.m. at the Edgewood Chemical and Biological Center, a 1.5 million-square-foot research and engineering laboratory for chemical and biological defense. A worker noticed that another's eyes had become dilated, a symptom associated with possible exposure to nerve agent.

Three Aberdeen Proving Ground employees were sent to a post medical clinic for observation yesterday after a brief power failure might have exposed them to chemical warfare agents that they had been experimenting with, a spokesman for the Army facility said. The electrical problem was the second in as many days that could have exposed employees at the Harford County Army facility to deadly chemicals. Yesterday's power failure, reported just before 2 p.m., affected only four laboratories in the building, said George Mercer, an APG spokesman.

WASHINGTON -- At least eight U.S. senators were among 200 people evacuated last night from the Russell Senate Office Building after sensors in the building signaled the possible presence of a nerve agent, according to U.S. Capitol Police. An alarm in the building attic signaled the presence of a dangerous substance at 6:30 p.m., prompting the evacuation. A subsequent test was negative, but those evacuated were held in an adjacent garage for three hours, until additional testing confirmed that the scare was a false alarm.

WASHINGTON - Samples of suspected chemical agents found at an agricultural site in Iraq are being flown to Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland to determine whether they are prohibited nerve and blister agents, defense officials said yesterday. Preliminary tests indicated the presence of chemical agents, according to Col. Tim Madere, the senior chemical warfare officer for the Army's V Corps. But more sophisticated testing is needed to confirm any findings. The tests at Aberdeen take about 72 hours to produce a final result.

V CORPS HEADQUARTERS, in northern Kuwait -- U.S. soldiers searching an empty military training camp in the Karbala area have found several drums that, according to preliminary tests, may contain deadly nerve agents and mustard gas. Officials here promptly notified the Defense Department about the discovery, which was made Sunday. "We're treating it as real. We're reporting it as real," said Col. Tim Madere, the top chemical warfare officer in the V Corps of the Army. But additional tests must be conducted before the possibility of a false reading can be excluded.

Deadly nerve warfare agents, including VX and sarin, were released in open--air testing conducted at the Edgewood Arsenal in Harford County in 1965 and 1969, according to information released yesterday by the Defense Department. An undisclosed number of U.S. military personnel dressed in protective suits and masks were exposed to the nerve agents in at least some of the Maryland tests. Pentagon officials said not all of them were informed that chemical and biological agents were being used.

TOKYO -- In raiding the headquarters of a secretive religious group yesterday and again early today, Japanese police were gambling that the nerve agent attack on Tokyo's subway system was foreshadowed by a less spectacular event.That event involved the group called Aum Shinri Kyo, or the Supreme Truth, and its suspected role in the kidnapping last month of a government clerk, Kiyoushi Kariya. Mr. Kariya's sister was a member of the sect but wanted to leave it -- by all accounts something not easily done.

The nerve agent linked to the Tokyo subway system poisonings is odorless, tasteless and doesn't irritate the skin. But it can kill within seconds if its vapors are inhaled.Sarin, or what the U.S. Army refers to as Agent GB, is a straw-colored liquid that to date has been developed for military use only, though it has similar properties to commercially produced insecticides such as malathion and parathion.And, apparently, it is not difficult to manufacture."That's one reason they call chemical weapons the poor man's atom bomb," said James M. Allingham, spokesman for U.S. Army's Chemical and Biological Defense Command, headquartered at Aberdeen Proving Ground.

Emergency room doctors who treat patients with chest pains usually diagnose based on readings from a 12-point electrocardiogram, or EKG, test. But soon, they could be outfitting their patients with an 80-point electrocardiac vest, and getting a reading that could allow them to see a three-dimensional picture of the heart. Meridian Medical Technologies, the Columbia-based company that makes the vest and the electronic hardware that shows the patient's condition, recently won U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval to market its Prime ECG electrocardiac mapping system in the United States.

WASHINGTON -- Disclosing for the first time the evidence behind last week's missile attack against a factory in Sudan, U.S. officials said yesterday that a soil sample collected nearby contained an important component of the deadly nerve agent VX.The chemical, O-ethylmethylphosphonothioic acid, or EMPTA, has no known commercial application and does not occur in nature, an intelligence official said. With EMPTA, "you've done the hard work" of producing VX, he said.U.S. officials aren't sure whether the substance was produced or stored at the plant, which the Sudanese say was a pharmaceutical factory.