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Suggested Citation:"1: Introduction." National Research Council. 1999. Review of the U.S. Army's Health Risk Assessments for Oral Exposure to Six Chemical-Warfare Agents. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9644.
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1
Introduction

IN 1985, the U.S. Congress passed Public Law 99–145 requiring the destruction of the stockpile of lethal chemical-warfare agents and munitions in the United States. Two principal types of chemical-warfare agents are found at U.S. stockpile sites—nerve agents (e.g., GB and VX) and vesicating (blistering) agents (e.g., sulfur mustard agents). Chemical stockpile sites are located at nine sites: Umatilla Depot, Oregon; Tooele Army Depot, Utah; Pueblo Depot, Colorado; Newport Army Ammunition Plant, Indiana; Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland; Lexington-Blue Grass Army Depot, Kentucky; Anniston Army Depot, Alabama; Pine Bluff Arsenal, Arkansas; and Johnston Atoll in the Pacific Ocean.

Some chemical-warfare agents and related materiel, referred to as nonstockpile chemical materiel (NSCM), were not included in the 1985 law requiring destruction but were subsequently added to the chemical demilitarization program in the House Appropriations Report 101–822 that accompanied the fiscal year 1991 Defense Appropriations Act. NSCM includes lethal wastes from past disposal efforts, unserviceable munitions, chemically contaminated containers, chemical-production facilities, newly located chemical munitions, known sites containing significant quantities of buried chemical weapons and waste, and binary weapons and components. The U.S. Army has identified 82 NSCM locations in the United States, involving 33 states, the Virgin Islands, and the District of Columbia (Opresko et al. 1998). Table 1–1 presents a list

Suggested Citation:"1: Introduction." National Research Council. 1999. Review of the U.S. Army's Health Risk Assessments for Oral Exposure to Six Chemical-Warfare Agents. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9644.
×

TABLE 1–1 Summary of Chemical Materiel Thought to Be Located at Nonstockpile Sitesa

State—EPA Region

Site

Material of Concernb

Alabama—IV

Anniston Army Depot

GB, VX

 

Ft. McClellan

GB, VX, mustard, HD, CK, CG, BZ, CX, AC

 

Camp Sibert

Mustard degradation products

 

Huntsville Arsenal

Mustard

 

Redstone Arsenal

HD, L, uncharacterized rounds, GB, VX

 

Theodore Naval Ammunition Magazine

Mustard and/or its degradation products

Alaska—X

Adak

Mustard, L

 

Chicago Harbor

Mustard, L

 

Gerstle River Test Center

Mustard, L, GB, GA, VX

 

Unalaska Island

CAISc vials

 

Ft. Wainwright

CAISc

Arizona—IX

Navajo Depot Activity

Mustard, white phosphorus, PWP

 

Yuma Proving Ground

Mustard, GB, VX

Arkansas—VI

Ft. Chaffee

CAISc residue

 

Pine Bluff Arsenal

Mustard, HN, L, and degradation products, CAISc

California—IX

Ft. Ord

Mustard, CAISc

 

Santa Rosa Army Airfield

CAISc

 

Edwards AFB

Mustard, GB, phosgene, CK, HCN

Colorado—VII

Rocky Mountain Arsenal

GB, mustard, CG, VX

 

Pueblo Army Depot Activity

Mustard

District of Columbia—III

American University

L, adamsite

Florida—IV

Brooksville Army Air Base

Mustard

 

Drew Field

Mustard, CAISc

 

MacDill AFB

Mustard

 

Withlacoochee

Mustard (Levinstein)

 

Dry Tortuga Keys

Mustard

 

Zephyr Hills Gunner Range

Mustard

Georgia—IV

Ft. Gillem

Mustard

 

Ft. Benning

G-agents

 

Manchester

Mustard

Hawaii—IX

Kipapa Ammunition Storage Site

Mustard

 

Schofield Barracks

H, L, CK, HCN, and residues, CAISc GB, BZ

 

Waiakea Forest Reserve

CAISc GB, BZ

Idaho—X

Targhee National Forest

Phosgene, NO2

Illinois—V

Savanna Army Depot Activity

Mustard and residue

Suggested Citation:"1: Introduction." National Research Council. 1999. Review of the U.S. Army's Health Risk Assessments for Oral Exposure to Six Chemical-Warfare Agents. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9644.
×

State—EPA Region

Site

Material of Concernb

Indiana—V

Camp Atterbury

Mustard, CAISc

 

Naval Weapons Support Center

Mustard, CAISc

 

Newport Army Ammunition Plant

VX and residue

Kansas—VII

Marysville

Mustard

Kentucky—IV

Blue Grass Army Depot

Mustard

Louisiana—VI

England AFB

CAISc, phosgene

 

Ft. Polk

CAISc (mustard, L)

 

Mississippi River near New Orleans

Bombs with unknown fill

 

Concord Spur

Mustard

Maryland—III

Edgewood Area-APG

VX, mustard, GA, GB, white phosphorus, riot control agents; spectrum of US, foreign, and experimental CW

Mississippi—IV

Columbus Army Airfield

Mustard

 

Horne Island

Mustard, arsenic-containing agents, unspecified others

 

Camp Shelby

Mustard

Nebraska—VII

Nebraska Ordnance Plant

Mustard

Nevada—IX

Hawthorne Army Ammunition Plant

Mustard, phosgene, unspecified others

New Jersey—II

Lakehurst Naval Air Base

Unspecified ''toxic agent shells"

 

Raritan Arsenal

Mustard and residues

 

Delaware Ordnance Depot

Phosgene

 

Ft. Hancock

Unspecified "gas storage cylinders"

New Mexico—VI

Wingate Ordnance Depot

Mustard

New York—II

Mitchel Field

CAISc

North

Camp LeJeune

CAISc, CN, unspecified others

Carolina—IV

Laurinburg-Maxton Army Air Base

Mustard

Ohio—V

Ravenna Army Ammunition Plant

Mustard

Oregon—X

Umatilla Depot Activity

Mustard, VX, other "mixed contamination"

Pennsylvania—III

Defense District Region East (formerly New Cumberland Army)

CAISc

South

Charleston Army Depot

Mustard

Carolina—IV

Naval Weapons Center

Mustard

Suggested Citation:"1: Introduction." National Research Council. 1999. Review of the U.S. Army's Health Risk Assessments for Oral Exposure to Six Chemical-Warfare Agents. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9644.
×

State—EPA Region

Site

Materiel of Concernb

South Dakota—VIII

Black Hills Ordnance Depot

Mustard, CG

Tennessee—IV

Defense Depot Memphis

Mustard, CAISc

Texas—VI

San Jacinto Ordnance Depot

Phosgene, mustard

 

Ft. Hood

Mustard, CN

 

Camp Stanley Storage Activity

Mustard

 

Camp Bullis

Mustard, CN, CS, phosgene, PS, white phosphorus

Utah—VIII

Dugway Proving Ground

VX, GA, GB, GD, CS, mustard, agent residues, foreign chemical munitions, unspecified others; biologicals

 

Defense Depot Ogden

CAISc, mustard, phosgene, smoke bombs

 

Tooele Army Depot

Mustard and residues, smoke pots, GA, incendiaries

Virginia—III

Ft. Belvoir

CAISc

Washington—X

U.S. Naval Magazine

Phosgene

Virgin Islands—II

(Former) Ft. Segarra (St. Thomas, Water Island)

CG, CK, HCN, phosgene, H, HT, GA

a Data from USACMDA (1993a,b).

b GA, GB, GD, and VX are organophosphate nerve agents with anticholinesterase properties; H, HD, and HT are various formulations of sulfur mustard (vesicant); HN is nitrogen mustard (vesicant); L is the organic arsenical vesicant, lewisite. The following are less common: adamsite is an organic arsenical vomiting agent; AC is hydrogen cyanide (HCN); BZ is 3-quinuclidinyl benzilate, a hallucinogen; CK is the casualty agent cyanogen chloride; CG is phosgene (carbonyl chloride), a choking agent; CX is phosgene oxime (vesicant); CN is chloroacetophenone ("tear gas") and is used as a riot-control agent; CS is o-chlorobenzalmalononitrile ("tear gas") and is used as a riot-control agent.

cChemical Agent Identification Set, a training aid containing vials of various chemical-warfare agents normally in dilute chloroform solution.

Source: Opresko et al. 1998.

of specific sites and the chemical materiel present at those sites. Sulfur mustard agents is the most frequently identified materiel. Historically, disposal of chemical-warfare agents was accomplished through burial, although some NSCM was placed in bodies of water. Thus, there is potential for soil and groundwater contamination at many of the NSCM sites.

Suggested Citation:"1: Introduction." National Research Council. 1999. Review of the U.S. Army's Health Risk Assessments for Oral Exposure to Six Chemical-Warfare Agents. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9644.
×

In the past, the destruction of NSCM was not addressed as intensely as the disposal of existing chemical-weapon stockpiles, because most NSCM sites do not pose an immediate risk to public health or the environment. However, the urgency for destroying NSCM has recently increased because of the discovery of buried NSCM and the signing of the chemical-arms-control treaty (Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling, and Use of the Chemical Weapons and on Their Destruction) by the United States and 150 other nations to eliminate chemical weapons from the inventories of all nations. The 1993 Defense Authorization Act (Section 176 of Public Law 102–484) directed the Army to examine the scale of effort and to consider plans needed to dispose of NSCM.

The NRC's Board on Army Science and Technology is involved in studies of the destruction of stockpile and nonstockpile chemical munitions. The Committee on Review and Evaluation of the Army Chemical Stockpile Disposal Program and the Committee on Review and Evaluation of the Army Chemical Non-Stockpile Materiel Disposal Program are reviewing the technical aspects of the Army's disposal methods on an ongoing basis (see NRC 1999a, b).

The U.S. Army Environmental Center (USAEC) serves as the program manager for the Army's Installation Restoration Program and is involved in the Army Base Realignment and Closure program. It has responsibilities for supporting installation-restoration (environmental cleanup) activities at Army installations and property nationwide. The USAEC and the Army Corps of Engineers investigate, characterize, and remediate sites where contamination is found. In recent years, there has been an increasing need for decision-making criteria to determine the scale of installation restoration required at active military installations and formerly used defense sites where chemical-warfare agent contamination has occurred. The goal of the restoration efforts is to ensure that chemical contamination is reduced to safe concentrations in these areas before they are used for residential, occupational, or wildlife purposes. Therefore, health-based exposure limits must be established to protect the public and the environment. Although people can be exposed to chemical-warfare agents in different ways, including ingestion of contaminated drinking water or soil, inhalation of vapors or contaminated dust, and dermal contact from contaminated soil, the subcommittee was asked to consider only the oral pathway.

Reference doses (RfDs) are toxicological values used as reference points to limit human oral exposure to potentially hazardous amounts of

Suggested Citation:"1: Introduction." National Research Council. 1999. Review of the U.S. Army's Health Risk Assessments for Oral Exposure to Six Chemical-Warfare Agents. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9644.
×

chemicals that are thought to have thresholds for their effects. An RfD is an estimate (with uncertainty spanning an order of magnitude or greater) of the daily oral exposure to a potential toxicological hazard that is likely to have no risk of deleterious effects during a human lifetime (EPA 1989). The RfD is derived by identifying the no-observed-adverse-effect level or lowest-observed-adverse-effect level from animal and human studies, and dividing by uncertainty factors, that reflect the uncertainties associated with the types of data used, and a modifying factor, that is based on a professional judgment of additional uncertainties not addressed by the standard uncertainty factors.

For those chemicals identified as carcinogens (e.g., sulfur mustard), slope factors (SFs) are derived in addition to RfDs. An SF is the slope of the dose-response curve for an agent in the low-dose region. An SF is used to estimate the lifetime cancer risk from chronic exposure to an agent and is typically determined by modeling an agent's dose-response curve as the doses approach zero. An upper-bound on the slope is usually used instead of the slope itself. For agents that do not have an appropriate chronic toxicity study from which to model a dose-response curve, SFs can be determined by comparing the carcinogenic potency of an agent with that of a well-known carcinogen.

The Army uses RfDs and SFs to make site-specific decisions on cleanup of sites contaminated with chemical-warfare agents and to make decisions on the potential uses of military installations. Because RfDs and SFs are applicable to the oral exposure route, they are used to calculate exposure limits for drinking water, soil, and other media that have the potential to be ingested by persons at or near remediation sites. Although RfDs and SFs can be applied to more than one site, exposure limits are more appropriately determined on a site-specific basis. RfDs and SFs are not media (e.g., water and soil) standards for purposes of safe cleanup or decontamination goals. RfDs and SFs are translated into safe media concentrations by incorporating information on site-specific exposure variables, including exposure frequency; exposure duration; estimated amount of contaminated soil, water, or specific food ingested; ingestion rate; and body weight. The site-specific exposure variables and the RfD or SF are incorporated into a health risk assessment according to approved methods and calculations of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Thus, safe public and environmental standards are calculated from the RfD or SF and are dependent on the situation.

At the request of the Army, Oak Ridge National Laboratory conducted

Suggested Citation:"1: Introduction." National Research Council. 1999. Review of the U.S. Army's Health Risk Assessments for Oral Exposure to Six Chemical-Warfare Agents. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9644.
×

health risk assessments and derived RfDs for six chemical-warfare agents—GA, GB, GD, VX, sulfur mustard, and lewisite—and an SF for sulfur mustard (see Appendices AF). These agents are considered priority chemicals, because they are the ones most commonly found at stockpile and NSCM sites. GA, GB, GD, and VX are nerve agents, and lewisite and sulfur mustard are vesicating (blistering) agents. Because immediate establishment of the RfDs and SFs for those agents was believed to be necessary to ensure that consistent, health-based criteria would be applied in ongoing initiatives requiring decisions on the safety of contaminated sites, the Army's Surgeon General accepted the proposed RfDs and SFs as interim values until an independent review of them was conducted by the National Research Council (NRC). In 1996, the Army requested that the NRC review the scientific validity of the RfDs and SFs for the six chemical-warfare agents. The NRC assigned this task to the Committee on Toxicology (COT), which assembled the Sub-committee on Chronic Reference Doses for Selected Chemical-Warfare Agents to review the scientific validity of the RfDs developed for GA, GB, GD, VX, lewisite, and sulfur mustard and the SF for sulfur mustard. The multidisiplinary subcommittee of experts was asked to (1) determine whether all the relevant toxicity data were appropriately considered; (2) review the uncertainty, variability, and quality of data; (3) determine the appropriateness of the assumptions used to derive RfDs (e.g., application of uncertainty factors); and (4) identify data gaps and make recommendations for future research.

To address its task, the subcommittee critically reviewed the health-risk-assessment documents on the individual chemical-warfare agents provided by the Army (see Appendices AF, which were published in 1998 by Opresko et al.), published and unpublished studies cited in the Army's reports, and conducted its own literature search to identify any relevant data that were missing. Although the potential exists for multiple agents to be present at NSCM sites, the subcommittee was asked to evaluate the agents only on an individual basis. Furthermore, although the most likely routes of exposure to chemical-warfare agents at stockpile and NSCM sites are the inhalation and dermal routes, the subcommittee was only asked to evaluate toxicological risk from the oral route of exposure at this time. The Army informed the subcommittee that inhalation exposure guidelines are in development. The subcommittee was not asked to address issues related to risk management, such as technology, detection, and feasibility.

Suggested Citation:"1: Introduction." National Research Council. 1999. Review of the U.S. Army's Health Risk Assessments for Oral Exposure to Six Chemical-Warfare Agents. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9644.
×

The results of the subcommittee's evaluations are presented in Chapters 2 through 9. Chapter 2 reviews the method used by the Army to derive RfDs, and also includes a discussion of the benchmark dose method as a point of departure for calculating RfDs. Chapters 3 through 6 evaluate the RfDs for the nerve agents GA, GB, GD, and VX. Chapter 7 evaluates the RfD and slope factor for sulfur mustard, and Chapter 8 provides an evaluation of the RfD for lewisite. Research recommendations are presented at the end of Chapters 38 for each of the specific chemical-warfare agents.

REFERENCES

EPA (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency). 1989. Risk Assessment Guidance for Superfund, Vol. I, Human Health Evaluation Manual (Part A), Interim Final. EPA/540/1-89/002. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Emergency and Remedial Response, Washington, D.C.


NRC (National Research Council). 1999a. Carbon Filtration for Reducing the Emissions from Chemical Agent Incineration. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

NRC (National Research Council). 1999b. Tooele Chemical Agent Disposal Facility: Update on National Research Council Recommendations. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.


Opresko, D.M., R.A. Young, R.A. Faust, S.S. Talmage, A.P. Watson, R.H. Ross, K.A. Davidson, and J. King. 1998. Chemical warfare agents: Estimating oral reference doses. Rev. Environ. Contam. Toxicol. 156:1–183.


USACMDA (U.S. Army Chemical Materiel Destruction Agency). 1993a. Interim Survey and Analysis Report. Program Manager for Nonstockpile Chemical Materiel, Nonstockpile Chemical Materiel Program, U.S. Department of the Army, Chemical Materiel Destruction Agency, Aberdeen Proving Ground, Edgewood, Md.

USACMDA (U.S. Army Chemical Materiel Destruction Agency). 1993b. Survey and Analysis Report. Program Manager for Nonstockpile Chemical Materiel, Nonstockpile Chemical Materiel Program, U.S. Department of the Army, Chemical Materiel Destruction Agency, Aberdeen Proving Ground, Edgewood, Md.

Suggested Citation:"1: Introduction." National Research Council. 1999. Review of the U.S. Army's Health Risk Assessments for Oral Exposure to Six Chemical-Warfare Agents. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9644.
×
Page 9
Suggested Citation:"1: Introduction." National Research Council. 1999. Review of the U.S. Army's Health Risk Assessments for Oral Exposure to Six Chemical-Warfare Agents. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9644.
×
Page 10
Suggested Citation:"1: Introduction." National Research Council. 1999. Review of the U.S. Army's Health Risk Assessments for Oral Exposure to Six Chemical-Warfare Agents. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9644.
×
Page 11
Suggested Citation:"1: Introduction." National Research Council. 1999. Review of the U.S. Army's Health Risk Assessments for Oral Exposure to Six Chemical-Warfare Agents. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9644.
×
Page 12
Suggested Citation:"1: Introduction." National Research Council. 1999. Review of the U.S. Army's Health Risk Assessments for Oral Exposure to Six Chemical-Warfare Agents. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9644.
×
Page 13
Suggested Citation:"1: Introduction." National Research Council. 1999. Review of the U.S. Army's Health Risk Assessments for Oral Exposure to Six Chemical-Warfare Agents. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9644.
×
Page 14
Suggested Citation:"1: Introduction." National Research Council. 1999. Review of the U.S. Army's Health Risk Assessments for Oral Exposure to Six Chemical-Warfare Agents. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9644.
×
Page 15
Suggested Citation:"1: Introduction." National Research Council. 1999. Review of the U.S. Army's Health Risk Assessments for Oral Exposure to Six Chemical-Warfare Agents. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9644.
×
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