BURIED BACTERIA AT MARYLAND ARMY BASE

“Two years of dig­ging at the U.S. Army’s Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland has unearthed more than 2,000 tons of haz­ardous waste — includ­ing vials of live bac­te­ria and non­vir­u­lent anthrax that the mil­i­tary did not know was buried there,” the Washington Post reports.

Discovery of the pathogens at the for­mer bio­log­i­cal weapons research cen­ter turned what the Army thought would be indus­trial waste removal into the biggest cleanup in its his­tory. So far, cleanup crews have dis­cov­ered more than 100 glass vials, many con­tain­ing live bac­te­ria, and in a few, a non­vir­u­lent strain of anthrax. The $25 mil­lion exca­va­tion is due to end this year.
While the Army searches for evi­dence of bio­log­i­cal and chem­i­cal weapons in Iraq, Fort Detrick’s cleanup saga shows how, nearly 40 years after the United States ended such pro­grams at home, it still strug­gles with their lin­ger­ing dan­gers. As in the Middle East, poor doc­u­men­ta­tion, the pas­sage of time and the pro­grams’ secrecy have slowed the effort.
“You find it, con­tain it and try to fig­ure out what it is,” said Col. John Ball, Fort Detrick gar­ri­son com­man­der. “We’re learn­ing, but it’s expensive.” 

(via Global Security Newswire)

May 27th, 2003 | Chem-Bio | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.