Councilman Asks Probe of Safety : Navy Jet Crashed Near Nerve Gas Test Labs

When a Navy jet crashed in Sorrento Valley on Monday, it exploded less than a block from the offices of S-Cubed, a defense contractor conducting experiments with nerve gas.

Worried that deadly gas could have leaked into the air if S-Cubed had been hit, San Diego City Councilman Dick Murphy on Thursday asked the city attorney and city manager to investigate the risks of such experiments and suggest ways to regulate them.

“If there is a need to do nerve gas experiments and they want to go out in the Borrego Desert or miles from any employees,” that is proper, Murphy said. “But the question is (if such tests should be performed) in Sorrento Valley, in a highly populated area.”

Recalling his Army training, Murphy said that “my familiarity with nerve gas was that it was pretty damn lethal.”

So, Murphy asked, if a plane crash had “sent any nerve gas into the air, would it have killed somebody in Sorrento Valley?” S-Cubed is within Miramar Naval Air Station’s “crash hazard zone,” as was Monday’s crash site.

S-Cubed officials argued Thursday that there was no cause for alarm. And county health director Dr. Donald Ramras generally agreed.

If a plane had hit S-Cubed’s labs, the nerve gas--actually three toxic agents in liquid, not gaseous, form--would not have been released into the air; it would have simply burned up, said Mike Concannon, manager of administration for S-Cubed.

He noted that his firm keeps only small quantities of the lethal agents on hand in a vault and tests them in amounts of about 10 milliliters.

“Our total inventory is about 150 milliliters--the size of half a coffee cup maybe,” Concannon said.

But Concannon also said that “exposure of a person to an agent in any form . . . without any medical precaution, it’s lethal . . . If you spilled it on your finger and did not take atropine it could be lethal.” (Atropine is an alkaloid used to relieve spasms.)

No testing was in progress when the plane hit. But if a jet ever did crash into the company’s labs, “I expect the plane would kill one of our employees. The nerve agent wouldn’t (kill anyone),” Concannon said.

Besides, “there are many other things that give me much more cause for concern” if a plane crashed again in Sorrento Valley, Concannon noted. “Any metal plating operation, with the likelihood for release of cyanide, scares me,” he said. “And the prospect of gas tanks on automobiles exploding certainly gives me pause.”

S-Cubed, a division of Maxwell Laboratories of San Diego, holds a $2.1-million Army contract to test three lethal nerve agents--mustard, VX and GB. Although the contract began in September, 1983, and extends through December, 1985, the firm only began the testing part of the project four months ago. The rest of the time was spent designing and outfitting the labs and securing various government approvals, Concannon said.

But soon after S-Cubed got the contract, workers from other Sorrento Valley firms raised questions about the experiments’ safety. Ramras referred the matter to experts in toxicology at the state Department of Health Services.

The state’s April 6, 1984, report called the testing safe.

“One can summarize the potential public health risks by saying that the probability of any adverse physical effects is so small that it approaches the vanishing point,” the report said.

“These materials are extremely toxic and could cause serious harm to people directly exposed to them. However, even in the case of earthquake or fire, it is difficult to see how significant exposure could occur to people outside the S-Cubed premises.”

The report did note that “the public perception” of such testing might hold “the potential for panic,” and for that reason suggested that the tests should be held “in a more remote location.”

(Concannon said Thursday that S-Cubed at one time had considered a remote site but rejected the idea because it was concerned about vandalism. The state report, however, said S-Cubed officials had decided against a remote site because “it was inconvenient to travel that distance.”)

Ramras said Thursday that in their investigation last year, neither he nor state officials had considered the possibility of a plane crash. “But since we asked the question of an earthquake breaching the facility or a fire or an explosion, I couldn’t see that that would very different,” Ramras said.

“The amounts they are using are so very very small that (state officials) said there really wasn’t a risk.”

Ramras also noted that other toxic chemicals “are used all the time in much greater quantities at other plants” and at local universities.

In his memo Thursday, Murphy asked the city attorney and city manager to answer 10 questions concerning S-Cubed. Among the questions:

- “What can the city do to protect the citizens of San Diego from any risks associated with toxic gas experiments?

- “What control can the city legally exert over nerve gas experiments?

- “Can the city prohibit by ordinance nerve gas experiments within its limits?

“Is this, in the city’s opinion, a safe area in which to conduct these experiments?”