Web site offers info on chemical-weapons test sites

The Department of Defense has launched a Web site to educate people about when and where chemical and biological field tests were performed during World War II and the Cold War.

For one longtime, local military watchdog, it's too little too late.

"They wait until everybody's dead, and then they reveal the truth," said Steve Erickson, director of the Utah-based group Citizens Education Project. "It should have been done long ago."

The Web site, announced this month by the Defense Department, is located at fhp.osd.mil/CBexposures

/index.jsp. According to the site, the Defense Department identifies whether veterans have been exposed to chemical and biological agents, including anthrax and mustard gas. The Department of Veterans Affairs then notifies individuals of their potential exposure and provides treatment, if needed. The VA also adjudicates any claims for compensation.

The site has links to information about tests involving 17 different chemical and biological agents at Dugway Proving Ground. The Web site also provides phone numbers, e-mail addresses and snail-mail addresses for people — such as service members, veterans and their families — who want to know more.

"I think that I may have been involved in a test. How can I confirm it or get more information?" reads a frequently asked question at the top of one of the Dugway pages on the Web site.

A Dugway spokesman did not immediately return a phone call Monday seeking comment.

At the Deseret Test Center, headquartered at Fort Douglas, tests using chemical and biological agents were conducted from 1962 to 1973 in numerous locations at sea and on land, including here in Utah, under the name Project Shipboard Hazard and Defense.

"The purpose of the land-based tests was to learn more about how chemical or biological agents behave under a variety of climatic, environmental and use conditions," the Web site states.

The SHAD tests also were intended to help identify vulnerabilities that U.S. warships might have to a chemical or biological attack from the enemy. The Defense Department claims there were 50 tests conducted out of 134 planned at the Deseret Test Center, involving 5,842 service members.

The department is currently investigating "potential exposures" and plans to complete the study by 2011.

"By that time, DOD will have visited all known locations believed to contain exposure data," the Web site says. "However, it (DOD) will energetically follow up on any information provided by veterans or other sources that may lead to the identification of additional potentially exposed veterans."

Erickson described the site as "skeletal," with only basic information and not enough on what he called abuses.

"It doesn't provide a great deal of detail on individual tests that took place," he said. "If you think you were exposed, then you have to use the contact info to get a hold of records that might verify your participation and exposure."

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E-mail: sspeckman@desnews.com