Army team cleans up chemicals
Vials that were found at Great Salt Plains helped train soldiers.
Army team cleans up chemicals

CHEROKEE — Glass chemical vials discovered at Great Salt Plains National Wildlife Refuge last weekend are from now-obsolete kits the U.S. military used to train soldiers in identifying chemical weapons, an Army spokesman said Saturday.

A 20-member team from the U.S. Army's 22nd Chemical Battalion in Maryland arrived at the refuge's public selenite crystal-digging area Friday and began cleaning up the site Saturday morning.

"These vials were part of what's called a chemical agent identification set,” 1st Sgt. Scott Boatman said. "There were over 200,000 of these sets made from the 1930s to the 1960s, and they were used to train soldiers to identify chemical agents.”

The glass vials were discovered last weekend. A Boy Scout digging for crystals unearthed a vial that, when broken, caused the boy's throat to burn and his eyes to water.

The boy suffered no lingering damage, and, said 1st Sgt. Michael Moon, the kits don't contain chemicals in deadly concentrations.

"They're irritants, but they're not lethal,” Moon said. "The chemical agents like mustard gas are diluted.”

Moon said the vials would be collected and shipped to an incineration facility.

"We've found them in South Dakota, North Carolina, Alaska, Alabama, Guam — all over the place,” Moon said. "The military stopped using them in the late '60s, but there were a lot of them made up to then.”

Boatman estimated the military team would be on the site at least two days collecting chemical vials, but refuge officials are still scratching their heads about how the vials ended up there in the first place.

The 40-acre crystal-digging site on the west side of Great Salt Plains Lake, which attracts up to 30,000 visitors a year, was closed to the public after U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials discovered additional vials, refuge manager Jon Brock said.

"From 1942 to 1946, the salt flats were used by the Army Air Corps as a practice bombing and strafing range, but the main range was located one to two miles north, ” Brock said.

Brock said the Army Corps of Engineers has conducted a number of unexploded ordnance surveys, "but they wouldn't be looking for something like this.”

Unfortunately for tourists, the chemicals' discovery coincided with the refuge's annual Birding Festival, a popular event for regional bird watchers and nature enthusiasts.

"Most of the festival is held at other parts of the refuge and won't be affected,” Brock said.

"But on a nice day like this, we would normally have 400 or 500 diggers out here.”

Instead, armed guards turned away the few diggers who hadn't heard the news.

Brock said the area would remain closed until officials deemed it safe for diggers.

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