Analysis of chemical weapons decontamination waste from old ton containers from Johnston Atoll using multiple analytical methods

Decontamination waste from chemical weapons (CW) agents has been stored in ton containers on Johnston Atoll since 1971. The waste was recently sampled and analyzed to determine its,chemical composition in preparation for disposal. Due to the range of products and analytical requirements, multiple chromatographic and spectroscopic methods were necessary, including gas chromatography/ mass spectrometry (GC/MS), gas chromatography/ atomic emission detection (GC/AED), liquid chromatography/ mass spectrometry (LC/MS), capillary electrophoresis (CE), and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR). The samples were screened for residual agents. No residual sarin (GB) or VX was found to detection limits of 20 ng/mL, but 3% of the samples contained residual sulfur mustard (HD) at <140 ng/mL Decontamination products of agents were identified. The majority (74%) of the ton containers were documented correctly, in that the observed decontamination products were in agreement with the labeled agent type, but for a number of the containers, the contents were not in agreement with the labels. in addition, arsenic compounds that are decontamination products of the agent lewisite (L) were observed in a few ton containers, suggesting that lewisite was originally present but not documented. This study was a prototype to demonstrate the level of effort required to characterize old hulk CW-related waste.