For Toxic-Material Handlers, a Mix of Nerve Gas and Plain Nerve

The list of America’s most dangerous jobs doesn’t include the civilian Army workers who handle some of the most toxic stuff on earth at Deseret Chemical Depot, the Army’s largest stockpile of nerve gas, and mustard and blister agent.

But danger is always lurking for the Army’s toxic materials handlers, who include Becky Webster, a 55-year-old grandmother in a rubber smock with a gas mask strapped to her hips.

It’s safer than many jobs, Webster insists, and it pays $17 an hour.

“You have to work so you can retire,” she said.

A drop of nerve gas can kill, and Webster and other civilians lift, load and truck tons of it every day. These are the crew members who enter sealed ground bunkers to retrieve Cold War-era munitions.

They also find the “leakers,” those munitions or canisters that have faulty seals and must be placed in steel casks.

“You go in with flashlights and just find the leaker,” Webster said matter-of-factly.

The crew delivers pallets of weapons to a nearby incinerator that in 1996 began destroying the depot’s 13,616 tons of chemical warfare agents--weapons so terrible that the U. S. military has never used them.

Occasional spills and vapor leaks go with the territory at the chemical depot, surrounded by barbed wire fences in remote Rush Valley, 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City.

Intruders risk being shot on sight. Warning signs don’t mince words.

The incinerator was shut down last summer after 22 milligrams--about one drop--of GB nerve agent escaped the main emissions stack. The plant reopened after the private operator, EG & G Defense Materials, installed a safety valve on the emissions system.

Army officials say the risks can be deadlier in storage yards and ground bunkers, where errant vapors or spills can surprise weapons handlers, who carry injections of antidote.

Highly volatile nerve agent can paralyze the lungs, suffocating its victims. Liquid mustard and blister agent work on contact and dissolve tissue.

Dennis Mair, toxic materials supervisor, said a spill of 70 gallons of mustard agent from a leaky container seven years ago was his closest brush with disaster. It was mopped up.

“We have problems with certain munitions,” says Mair, 39, who shrugs off the dangers. The job pays him $22 an hour.

“To me, it’s safer than being out on the road every day,” said Mair, a 15-year depot employee. “We have every precaution you can think of.”

The worst-case scenario for the chemical depot is a plane crash or massive earthquake that might loosen canisters and unleash a mist of chemical agents.

Even then, Mair says a leak is unlikely to escape an earthen bunker or drift outside the depot, which sits at the center of a 19,300-acre perimeter.

Over the decades, the U.S. military created enormous stocks of nerve, mustard and blister agent, potentially enough to kill everyone on earth.

“It was the Cold War. Yeah, we’ve got a lot of them [chemical weapons] but probably less than the former Soviet Union,” said Mark Merboth, 39, director of chemical operations.

At one time, the Deseret Chemical Depot kept 42.3% of the nation’s supply of chemical munitions.

Incineration has destroyed 71% of 1.14 million pieces of munitions and 37% of the chemicals in storage tanks. The job is scheduled to be completed in 2004. The destruction of chemical weapons is governed by international treaties.

It’s not a job for the faint of heart. But it’s not a permanent occupation, so it doesn’t make the U. S. Labor Department’s dangerous job list, which leads with commercial fishermen, timber cutters and airplane pilots.

“It’s dangerous,” said Webster, who has spent five years handling agent-filled shells, mortars, bombs, missile warheads and land mines. “But with the monitoring, we’re really safe here. We’ve never had anything happen. I think [incineration] is the safest way to get rid of this stuff and I’m glad we’re doing it. I feel real good about my job”