Mustard gas leak

DENVER (Reuters) - Mustard gas vapors were detected seeping from a chemical weapons depot in southern Colorado on Tuesday, but no one was sickened or injured, the U.S. Army said in a statement.

Workers at the Army Chemical Depot in Pueblo, Colorado, detected the vapors during a routine monitoring operation.

As a result, workers installed an air-filtering system on the earth-covered igloo where the gas is stored to supplement a similar containment system already in-place, the military said.

Crews will return to the site on Wednesday to trace the source of the leak, the Army said. The Pueblo Army depot is one of five U.S. facilities charged with storing and destroying chemical weapons.

Mustard gas was used repeatedly during World War One, and was later prohibited under the Geneva Protocol in 1925.

Exposure is usually not fatal and less than 5 percent of those exposed to the agent during World War One died, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

(Reporting by Keith Coffman: Editing by Alex Dobuzinskis and Cynthia Johnston)

news.yahoo.com...

Wow really? How does this type of thing happen? why do we still store this stuff in depots all around the Nation?

reply to post by CitizenAlpha


probably happened because its corrosive id imagine so that might explain the leaks as for why we have it still possibly for if the time ever comes to start using anything and everything in a last ditch defence of some sorts might be why we still have such things,although it does seem kinda odd that they would store it for so long as it cant be hard to remake new stores(illegal im pretty sure) so im not sure if thats even an option.Its problay better then dumping it in the ocean like i think they did for a few years but i could be wrong on that

The US signed on as Party to the Chemical Weapons Convention but failed to destroy it's chemical/biological weapons stockpile by the timeframe in the Treaty.

The US asked for and was granted a 5 year extension. The 5 year extension came and went and the United States still didn't destroy it's Chemical Weapons stockpile.

We just asked for another extension....along with a letter stating we refuse to cease manufacturing banned biological/virus's.

www.opcw.org...