HMMWV designed to detect biological agents.
Oct 23, 2000
Dave Eberhart
Stars and Stripes Veterans Affairs Editor
In Louisiana, the towns of Deridder and Leesville are known
primarily for their proximity to Fort Polk, the home of the Army's Joint Readiness
Training Center. Relations between the 199,000-acre base and surrounding civilian
community have long been excellent - until now.
But when the Department of Defense announced quietly in the back notice pages of the Beauregard
Daily News on Aug. 26 that it planned to spray a biological agent in an
"urban" test of bio-agent detection hardware, the long ties of friendship began
to unravel.
Residents who read the fine print quickly began to challenge the Army's plan. Dan Nance,
the post's deputy public affairs officer, soon had his hands full.
Today, a growing number of the post's civilian neighbors are angry over the way the Army
has handled both the proposed spraying and the concerns voiced by nearby residents.
"We are really disgusted with the Army," said Kathy McDaniel, a local
resident-turned-activist. "They have told us it does not matter at this point how
many phone calls against the testing or how many letters against the testing they
receive."
McDaniel told The Stars and Stripes Oct. 23 that the Army has only gone through the
motions of sharing information about the tests and has said it intends to begin the
spraying by the end of the year. "If that was their attitude all along why did they
bother posting the notice and why did they bother extending the comment period?" she
asked.
Opponents of the spraying say they were upset the Army did only the minimum required to
inform them of the test. "I needed a magnifying glass to read it," McDaniel said
of the newspaper notice.
After the notice was published and the controversy began to grow, Fort Polk officials
circulated copies of the environmental assessment document to local libraries. The Army
also posted factsheets and other information on the Fort Polk internet website.
Fort Polk is the home of the 7th Chemical Co., a specialized Army unit set up to detect
the presence of biological agents. Its primary equipment is the Biological Integrated
Detection System, a Humvee-mounted suite of sensors that can detect and identify the type
of biological agent and its concentration in the atmosphere. The system was developed on
an expedited basis after the 1991 Persian Gulf War, when U.S. officials learned the extent
to which Iraq had developed and "weaponized" biological warfare agents,
including anthrax.
The Environmental Assessment document, available at local libraries, portrayed the planned
Fort Polk tests as benign:
"The proposed training activity poses virtually no
risks to human health or the environment. It involves the use of a simulated biological
agent so that soldiers of the 7th Chemical Company can train with the Biological
Integrated Detection System (BIDS) .... "
"The simulant to be used is a dead form of the bacterium Bacillus subtilis-a
non-pathogenic bacterium commonly found in soils, water and decomposing plant residue.
This substance has been tested extensively and is not considered toxic to humans, plants
or animals.
"This simulant has been used at Dugway Proving Ground, Utah, for more than 40 years
and at Fort McClellan, Alabama, for over six years under conditions similar to those
proposed at Fort Polk. During the period of use, no environmental or health effects have
been documented at those installations.
"The release of the simulant poses virtually no risk to the public or environment. It
would be released in water in an aerosol spray through an agriculture-type sprayer to
allow the BIDS system operating in the vicinity to detect the simulated agent. The only
effect it will have will be to trigger a response in the BIDS system.
"The spores to be used would be irradiated with gamma radiation rendering it dead
before it arrived at Fort Polk. The use of gamma radiation is a common sterilization
process used by the food industry to make food safer and by the medical industry for
instrument sterilization. Spores will then be tested to insure that the radiation
procedure was effective and that the spores are in fact dead.
"Only three areas at Fort Polk will be used for this training and it will only be
conducted in weather conditions favorable to prevent off-post drift of the release. This
training would occur only 12 times a year .... "
The factsheet did not quell a growing concern over the safety of the proposal, and a
number of curious and still wary citizens began to do their own investigation.
One concern was that the troops spraying a supposedly "dead" spore would be
outfitted with level-4 "MOPP" gear, the Pentagon's term for the highest level of
protective clothing and gas masks.
Readily available medical references revealed the fact that Bacillus subtilis can cause
upper respiratory distress and provoke an attack of conjunctivitis (an inflammation of the
eye).
And this particular bacterium was not something right off nature's shelf, either. Army
officials now admit the spray to be used has been genetically altered.
And how could anyone guarantee that the spores would stay on the base, the activists
argue. Not even the Army can control the prevailing winds, they contend.
The testing at Folk Polk is now scheduled to begin in Jan. 2001.