Anniston Incinerator Gets False Positive Alarm

Date: November 4, 2003

Source: News Room

A positive reading on a sarin monitor at the Anniston (Ala.) chemical weapons incinerator was triggered by a worker who accidentally tested a live nerve gas monitor rather than by a machine taken offline for maintenance. Both an initial and a backup test confirmed the presence of sarin, but officials suspected employee error because the readings in both tests were exactly the same. Under normal circumstances, the readings would have had slight differences. The incinerator has been operating for the past three months working to destroy more than 660,000 chemical weapons that have been stockpiled at the depot for decades.

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