Evaluation of Chemical Events at Army Chemical Agent Disposal Facilities (2002) / Chapter Skim
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6. Findings and Recommendations
6. Findings and Recommendations
Pages 51-56
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From page 51... ...
Accidental or deliberate release from a chemical demilitarization facility, while potentially serious, is a lesser threat because the agent inside the facility is maintained under stringent and effective engineering controls and because there is substantially less agent present in the demilitarization facility at any given time than there is in the storage facility. While chemical demilitarization operations at both Johnston Atoll Chemical Agent Disposal System and Tooele Chemical Disposal Facility have released small amounts of chemical agent into the environment, these releases were negligible compared with environmental releases from chemical weapons stockpiles (U.S.
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From page 52... ...
The Army should maintain conservative chemical demilitarization exhaust stack and in-plant airborne agent exposure thresholds. If current limits for exposure to stockpiled chemical agents are further reduced, the Army should not further reduce existing monitoring thresholds unless chemical agent monitors can be made both more sensitive and more specific so that lower thresholds can be instituted without significant increases in false positive alarm rates or unless health risk assessments demonstrate that lower thresholds are necessary to protect workers or the public.
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From page 53... ...
Finding 8a. Repeating patterns of causal factors evident in the incidents at Johnston Atoll Chemical Agent Disposal System and Tooele Chemical Disposal Facility reviewed by the committee included, in particular, deficiencies in standard operating procedures, design failures, and understandable, although inappropriate, assumptions made by operations personnel.
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From page 54... ...
Much of the needed improvement in safety at chemical weapons facilities can come from increased attention to factors that contribute to and/or cause chemical events. For example, the Program Manager for Chemical Demilitarization and chemical demilitarization facility managers should ensure that standard operating procedures are in place, up to date, and effective, performing hazard operations analyses on new process steps and design changes even when such changes are viewed as trivial and recognizing that chemical hazards are posed by things other than agent (e.g., waste)
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From page 55... ...
The extent of this overall training will be a matter of judgment for plant management, but the training should focus on how an individual's activities affect the integrated plant and its 55 operational risk. Each facility should develop training programs using the newly designed in-plant simulators to present challenges that require knowledge-based thinking.
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