Chemical arms pose risk worldwide

They were no-shows in Iraq, but tons of chemical weapons are stoking fears and costing billions to clean up elsewhere in the world, from concrete “igloos” in Oregon, to the Panama rain forest, to the highlands of China, where Japanese war leftovers reportedly have killed hundreds.

More chemical munitions have turned up lately in Australia than in Iraq, where the Bush administration said up to 500 tons would be found. As Baghdad arms hunters searched in vain, chemical-weapons material was being unearthed even in Washington, four miles from the White House.

At least 8 million such weapons are stockpiled worldwide, and concern is deepening not only over the health and safety of nearby communities, but also over the threat of theft or attacks on depots brimming with sarin or VX, fearsome nerve agents that can kill with one drop.

“Chemical terrorism is something we should all be very concerned about,” said chief international watchdog Rogelio Pfirter. His Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) oversees destruction of such weapons under a 1997 treaty.

As troubling as the potential is for terrorism, “these weapons are leaking and pose a threat even without terrorist involvement,” said Jonathan Tucker, a specialist in unconventional weapons at Monterey Institute of International Studies Center for Nonproliferation Studies. “The sooner we get rid of them, the better.”

Inside U.S. chemical depots, shells filled with old sulfur mustard sometimes bubble over like a deadly type of champagne. Outside, the government is handing out thousands of emergency-warning radios to nearby residents. At least 12 leaks — all apparently contained on-site — occurred last year at one Army depot alone, in Tooele, Utah, say researchers at Washington’s Henry L. Stimson Center think tank.

National Guard companies have thrown cordons around these U.S. installations since the September 11 attacks. In terrorism-plagued Russia, specialists fret over the security protecting its 36,000 tons of nerve agent.

Chemical warfare reached its depths in World War I, when mustard, phosgene and other gases left more than a million wounded and dead on European battlefields. It is World War I leftovers that cleanup crews have been uncovering since 2001 at an old Army test site in residential Spring Valley, up Massachusetts Avenue from central Washington.

Poisonous clouds also were unleashed in the 1930s, by Italian troops in Ethiopia and Japanese invaders in China, and in the 1980s by Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war. It is thought that Egyptian gas was used in Yemen’s civil war in the 1960s.

The Chemical Weapons Convention, the 1997 treaty outlawing the weapons, gave governments declaring possession — today the United States, Russia, India, South Korea, Albania and Libya — 10 years to destroy them.

Even if extended to 2012, as the treaty allows, that deadline looks unachievable by either big holder, the United States or Russia, a U.S. government study found. By April the Americans had eliminated barely 20 percent of their stockpiles, and the Russians 1 percent.

“The greatest difficulty is purely one of resources and cost,” said Richard Guthrie of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

The U.S. Army has learned how complex and costly it is to eliminate the dangerous stockpiles — originally more than 30,000 tons, mostly sarin, a thin liquid; VX, with the consistency of motor oil; and the molasses-like sulfur mustard.

Absorbed through skin or inhaled as gas, the nerve agents can produce convulsions, paralysis and death. Mustard severely blisters skin and internal membranes.

These agents are packed into bombs and aircraft spray tanks, artillery shells, rockets and land mines, mostly stored beneath earth-covered concrete domes at eight depots across the United States.

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