No Easy Solution

TABUN, SARIN AND SOMAN is not a law partnership of three other worldly legal professionals; they are, in fact, the three most common chemical warfare agents, left over from the Second World War, that turn up unexpectedly in Germany every so often. In the United States, we don't have to live with that kind of unpleasant surprise. However, despite the fact that our weapons are stockpiled chemicals as opposed to strewn and forgotten remnants of a war, safety precautions and detoxification procedures must be developed.

The Department of Defense (DOD) has relegated this job to private corporations, subject to "stringent" safety precautions, such as Arthur D. Little, Inc. (ADL), located in Cambridge. A controversy arises in this seemingly simple set-up when it becomes apparent that the DOD regulations do not take responsibility for potential hazards to researchers and surrounding communities and that the citizens of Cambridge will not tolerate the risks of "supertoxic" chemical weapons research. Furthermore, ADL has dealt inconsistently with the city government and has misled the public.

In light of a State Superior Court decision, on February 26, upholding Cambridge's newly enacted halt on all "toxic and hazardous substances" research, the fact that Cambridge is the third most densely populated city in the nation clinches the argument against ADL's nerve gas testing However, the contradiction of, in effect, seeking out danger in the name of safety, only brings into focus a national issue of which Cambridge is an extreme case.

Cambridge's solution is no "average" scenario, no paradigm panacea to be adopted by other communities, and we should be wary of spotlighting the extreme population density argument. However, the fact that the DOD regulations, the only federal restrictions regarding "supertoxic" chemicals, could allow ADL to begin such research in a city with so many people per square mile clearly earmarks these inadequate regulations for national-level overhaul.

The Department of Defense does not have a monopoly on the mismanagement and problems of the chemical testing issue. ADL has itself been cited f - inconsistency. According to The Cambridge Chronicle, the city councilors were "particularly upset about how ADL released information about the testing in a piecemeal fashion." The report submitted in late 1984 to the Commissioner of Health and Hospitals by a specially created Scientific Advisory Committee cites "uncertainties" complicating a full risk analysis of ADL's Levins Laboratory. On each of six separate occasion in as many months, ADL indicated radically different maximum amounts is of toxic chemicals "on hand at the lab" ranging from 1/10 liter to 1 lite. Considering the high toxicity of the agents, this range represents huge differences for risk assessment.

On another occasion, ADL refused to tell exactly where on its 40 acre research complex, referred to benignly as a "campus" or "Acorn Park," the Levins Laboratory is located. Though security reasons could be cited, the withholding of such information could introduce an error of several hundred feet in the Advisory Committee's estimate of the range of toxic effects from a leak or explosion, and consequently, make the already highly uncertain assessment practically useless.

Whether for security reasons or for less noble objectives, these inconsistencies aggravate the situation. Even given the benefit of the doubt, ADL is still implicated in a communication problem at the heart of the issue. Along more subtle communications lines, ADL has, since 1983, carried on an extensive public relations drive to convince its "neighbors" of the benevolence of its low risk project. Though ADL should be commended for its effort to simplify and communicate to the public the technicalities of its research, it is perhaps distributing, in effect, a metaphorical kind of nerve chemical, opiate of the public in what could be seen as a misleading public appeasment project.

The "Levins Lab Fact Sheet" euphemistically refers to chemical weapons detoxification testing as "Chemical and Food Services Research." The fact sheet refers only to "hazardous chemicals," never mentioning nerve gases. Only at the end of the report, among its anticipated projects, does it mention chemical warfare agents. Continuing in the gourmand tone of its opening references, ADL reports its toxin measurements in "tablespoons" and as "1/3 cup," instead of simply coming straight out and telling the public that a few drops are lethal.

The report reads like a description of a dangerous kitchen, whatever the intentions of its authors. In a letter distributed in January to nearby residents, ADL misleadingly devalues the term "nerve gases," citing "tiny" quantities of chemicals, that are "no more volatile than water." The outrageous association of nerve gases with water refers naively to how comparable their boiling points are, when the criterion should be toxicity. Finally, in a press release on March 7, ADL president, John F. Magee, announced that "not once have city officials expressed concern to us about the safety of the laboratory." If two years of meetings, special committees, court orders, investigations, and legislation are not "concern," then ADL had better rethink its pompous self-styled role as "Protection for the Intellectual Environment" of Cambridge.

As it stands, ADL's toxin lab-cumkitchen ware will remain in use, following last week's court decision to allow the company to continue its research while it appeals Cambridge's earlier testing ban. Ironically, the appeal, and thus the research, could go on for months or years, effectively and irresponsibly ignoring the concerns and efforts of the Cambridge community to come to grips with the situation. ADL's determination to continue its research at all costs during the appeal period speaks revealingly of its behind-the-façade concerns.

The chief information source for the city councils concerns, the Scientific Advisory Committee, compiled among other things "worst case sensations" for nerve gas accidents. Perhaps this kind of local committee can be called upon by other communities facing similar problems. Cambridge is, however, automatically a kind of worse case scenario, due its population density.

Much of the discussion focusing on such assessment has been in the form of weighing risks and benefits; what emerges from the Cambridge case is the real opposition between the night of a community to say "no" versus the right of a company with reasonable safety standards to conduct its own research. The inadequate DOD regulations, perhaps more military than medical in their safety concerns, avoid real responsibility for the public safety. ADL, though it spent $1 million on developing the super safe laboratory, cannot shoulder the responsibility for a community's welfare. Then who will?

The image of inhospitable communities knocking an unwanted company around like a ping pong ball leads some to propose a central authority for arbitration. No regulations of supertoxins now exist in the U.S. except through DOD contracts. Toxic chemical legislation such as the Massachussetts Hazardous Waste Managagement Act, and the policies of such agencies as the Deportment of Public Health, apply exclusively to industrial waste and spills--certainly not to chemical warfare agents.

The Scientific Advisory Committee has already stumbled on some of the problems of sweeping chemical restrictions. As Robert A. Alberty of MIT's Department of Chemistry commented, certain of the committee's restrictions would basically wipe out a lot of research in chemistry and biology at institutions like MIT, because the regulation banned "analogue" as well as supertoxic substances. Alberty's suggestion of drawing up a very specific, list of restricted chemicals as opposed to general criteria indicates where we should go from here: comprehensive yet specific regulations. Unfortunately for easy solutions, in the detoxification issue, the risks are often local while the benefits remain national in scope.