Has the United States previously used methods other than incineration to destroy chemical weapons?
Prior to 1969, the Army disposed of chemical weapons using methods that would be unacceptable in the United States by today’s standards and are specifically prohibited by the CWC. The United States destroyed chemical weapons by open-pit burning, evaporative “atmospheric dilution,” and placement of munitions in concrete coffins for ocean dumping. In the 1970s the Army used a chemical neutralization process-featuring alkaline hydrolysis-to destroy some 87,000 chemical munitions at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal in Colorado. This technique produced large amounts of waste, which also had to be disposed of, and was considered to be inefficient. By 1982, the Army decided to abandon chemical neutralization in favor of high temperature incineration, the so-called baseline destruction program that has since been employed. Since that time, however, the Army has revisited the incorporation of certain neutralization techniques, specifically hydrolysis, into the overall destruction plan for the US chem
