Germs on the Loose

Abstract

Bloweapons tests tainted sites around the globe.

In 1988, Soviet scientists were scrambling to destroy their secret stockpile of anthrax, which they had manufactured in violation of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC). Alarmed at the possibility that the West was catching on and could call for inspections, the Soviets moved quickly to cover their tracks. Scientists placed hundreds of tons of the deadly pink powder in huge stainless steel canisters, doused it with bleach to kill the spores, then sent the drums on a 1,000-mile train ride to a remote island in the Aral Sea, a secret biological weapons testing site. There soldiers dumped the sludge into 11 shallow pits, poured in more bleach, and buried the anthrax mixture under Vozrozhdeniye Island's sandy soil. 1

Now, more than a decade later, the Aral Sea is shrinking, and the sludge may be leaching into the sand. As the lake continues to shrink, it is expected to eventually connect the island to the mainland, linking the population–and would-be proliferators–to a dangerous source of pathogens with special properties like enhanced virulence, greater environmental persistence, and antibiotic resistance. 2

Every major World War II combatant had a biological weapons program, and many of these countries' field test sites remain reservoirs of disease. Although the programs may have ended, the pathogens they released persist in the test sites' animal, bird, reptile, and insect populations. Unless extreme measures are taken to secure testing grounds, pathogens once released into the environment will adapt to new hosts and spread diseases to new areas.

As the Aral Sea dries up, it's just a matter of time before the test site on Vozrozhdeniye Island is connected to the mainland.

A serious shortcoming

In 1969 President Richard Nixon unilaterally renounced the use of biological weapons and confined U.S. biowarfare R&D to defensive measures. The United States sponsored the bwc in 1972; it was ratified by the Senate in 1975. To date, 162 countries have signed and 144 ratified the treaty. Since it came into effect, numerous countries have been reported as having–or developing–a biological weapons capability. These countries include Russia, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, North Korea, China, Israel, Egypt, Cuba, Taiwan, Romania, Bulgaria, Pakistan, India, and South Africa. 3 With the exception of Israel, each of the named countries has signed and/or ratified the bwc. If these countries do have, or had, clandestine bw programs, it is also likely that they have secret field test sites.

Whether the mess at Vozrozhdeniye and other sites around the world will be declared, investigated, and eventually remediated, could be determined later this year. While the bioweapons treaty has been relatively successful in converting large-scale biological agent production facilities, such as the facility at Stepnogorsk, to civilian purposes, it has been wholly unsuccessful in identifying–let alone eliminating–the environmental impacts associated with test sites like Vozrozhdeniye Island. The treaty is silent on whether and how to identify, characterize, and mitigate the environmental impacts and proliferation risks associated with testing grounds. What types of field test sites, facilities, and activities will have to be declared is a continuing point of contention among negotiators of the Ad Hoc Group of States Parties to the bwc.

Much has been done to stem the flow of materials, resources, and expertise to proliferant countries, but very little thought has been given to the continuing threats posed by loosely safeguarded field test sites around the world. As it becomes harder to obtain pathogenic materials from private and public sources, terrorists or nations seeking to acquire a biological weapons capability might be tempted to obtain pathogen seed stocks from wildlife collections or other environmental sources of pathogenic materials.

The declaration and investigation of past or current field test sites needs to be considered by the Ad Hoc Group when they next meet in Geneva (tentatively scheduled for mid-April) as part of the inspection regime being negotiated for “declared sites,” because declaration is the first step toward ensuring treaty compliance. Until then, more resources need to be invested in global surveillance of exotic or unusual disease outbreaks that might be the result of an accidental or intentional release of pathogens from clandestine activities and facilities.

The legacy of field testing

Field test sites were used to study the disease potential of an assortment of agents, as well as dosages, methods of delivery, dispersal characteristics, and whether an agent caused contagious disease. Bioweapons programs tested and evaluated delivery systems that included aerial bombs, bomb submu-nitions, aerial spray tanks, ballistic missile warheads, artillery shells, rockets, cruise missile warheads, and clandestine release and delivery systems. Often outwardly appearing to be “pristine” examples of undeveloped natural spaces, field test sites and their resident animal populations are in fact permanent reservoirs of disease and a potential source of agent materials that could easily be obtained by proliferant nations and would-be terrorists. Consider the former Soviet, British, and U.S. sites:

The former Soviet Union

By far the largest biological weapons complex ever created was the Soviet Union's. It had two main groups of facilities involved in r&d, production, and testing of biological weapons: a military-controlled system from the 1920s, and Biopreparat, a top-secret program under civilian cover from 1972 until 1992.

Ironically, the impetus for expanding the Soviet program was the bioweapons treaty. The Soviets believed that the United States would continue its offensive biowarfare program despite its official renunciation. As a result, the Soviet program not only caught up with but surpassed the U.S. program to become the most sophisticated biological weapons program in the world. 4 Its size and scope were enormous: By the early 1990s more than 60,000 people were involved in the R&D and production of biological weapons, stockpiling hundreds of tons of anthrax as well as dozens of tons of other pathogens, including smallpox and plague. 5

Vozrozhdeniye served for decades as the Soviet Union's major open-air bioweapons test site. The island, “the world's largest anthrax burial ground,” had a testing complex in its southern part and a military settlement in the north (now in Uzbek and Kazakh territory, respectively). 6 The test site was used to study dissemination patterns of bw agent aerosols and methods to detect them, and the effective range of aerosol bomblets filled with different types of biological agents. Experiments were conducted on livestock and lab animals. Scientists routinely released deadly organisms into the air–plague, smallpox, brucellosis, tularemia, and of course, anthrax. Local fish kills, plague outbreaks, and other cases of infectious disease have been blamed on testing, and despite almost a decade of inactivity, the island remains a danger zone: Soil samples show that some of the buried anthrax spores, and other pathogens, are still viable and potentially deadly. 7

As the Aral Sea shrinks and the island grows, so do threats to public health and the likelihood of environmental disaster and biological weapons proliferation. Easier access to the island means pathogens still contained on Vozrozhdeniye will more easily escape or be gathered for proliferation purposes. The drying of the Aral Sea has left a virtual land bridge to the Uzbek mainland, making remediation a high-priority issue.

Field testing ended in 1992 after Boris Yeltsin ordered the closure of all offensive bw programs. Official records of what happened on the island have either been “misplaced” or no longer exist. Following Yeltsin's decree, the Russian government claimed that within two to three years the island would be decontaminated and transferred to Kazakh control. Three years later, U.S. experts visited the island and confirmed that the site had been dismantled and abandoned but did not report on the extent to which it had been decontaminated.

Uzbek and Kazakh experts are extremely concerned that the buried anthrax and other pathogens tested on the island will eventually find their way to the mainland, either by way of disease-carrying animals or accidental contamination of workers involved in activities such as oil drilling, which could stir up long-dormant pathogens. The U.S. Cooperative Threat Reduction program is currently negotiating a three-year, $6 million agreement with Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan to dismantle the Stepno-gorsk anthrax production facility, and to decontaminate the anthrax disposal pits and complete the elimination of the facilities on the island. 8 Given its size and the formidable technical and financial challenges involved, it is unlikely that Vozrozhdeniye can be cleaned up without outside help.

Britain

The British biological warfare project began in February 1934. The British, ironically, became curious about the utility of germ weapons as a result of an international treaty, the Geneva Protocol of 1925, aimed at banning their use. The Biological Department Portón (bdp), just up the road from Stonehenge, was formed in October 1940 at Portón Down for the development and testing of biological weapons. With the assistance of the United States and Canada, Britain focused its offensive research on anti-livestock microbes that could be aerosolized and disseminated from bursting munitions or sprays. Bdp also studied the effects of inhaled aerosols on target and non-target organisms. 9 By the summer of 1942, Portón Down was ready to conduct field trials of anthrax in order to test the practicability of a biological bomb.

Gruinard Island, a remote and rocky body a half-mile off the northwest Scottish coast, was chosen for the first British anthrax bomb tests. The island, which lies near the fishing village of Aultbea, is a heather-covered outcrop of rock 300 feet high, 1.5 miles long, and a mile wide. The first weapon tested on Gruinard used a modified 25-pound chemical bomb, 18 inches high and 6 inches in diameter, loaded with a “brown, thick gruel” of concentrated anthrax spores. Filled with the slurry, the bomb was ferried from the Scottish mainland to Gruinard, and then dropped from a Wellington bomber. 10

The Gruinard tests proved that germs could be produced, transported, loaded into munitions, and exploded over target areas without destroying the fragile living organisms that spread the infection. The spores survived and tests continued, but the environment suffered. Anthrax-laced carcasses of sheep used as test subjects escaped from burial sites below the island's cliffs and floated to the mainland; at least one outbreak of anthrax among livestock on the Scottish mainland has been attributed to activities on Gruinard. The British eventually abandoned the testing of germ agents on the island.

The United States

The U.S. Biological Defense Research Program had its origins in World War II. Begun in 1942 within the Chemical “Warfare Service, its primary mission was research on anthrax and botulism. The U.S. policy for use of biological weapons during and shortly after World War II was retaliatory only. From the end of World War II until the U.S. renunciation of offensive biological weapons in 1969, the army developed both offensive and defensive biological weapons capabilities.

All U.S. field test sites were abandoned at the end of the war–with the exception of Dugway Proving Ground in Utah. From 1951 to 1969, hundreds, if not thousands, of open-air germ warfare tests were conducted at Dugway on human volunteers and animal test subjects. 11 Many of the aerosol dispersal tests during the Cold War introduced non-indigenous diseases (or increased the geographic range of indigenous diseases) to Utah and surrounding states, including en-cephalomyelitis, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, psittacosis, Q fever, anthrax, brucellosis, plague, tularemia, and hydatid disease, all of which are now considered endemic among the native wildlife. In 1959 and 1960 an epidemic of Q fever was found among Utah desert wildlife, but it is not known whether the disease was a result of Dugway's human and animal field trials, which began in the early 1950s. The Utah Health Department has also reported cases of Q fever among humans–all subsequent to the 1955 human and animal field tests and releases at Dugway.

Testing was not limited to Dugway proper. At least two dozen other sites nominally administered by the Dugway Proving Grounds–including unrestricted public lands–were used from the late 1940s through the 1960s to test virtually everything in the army's BW arsenal, from wheat stem rust and rice blast to anthrax and plague. The army deliberately infected and released a variety of animals and insects to determine the rate and extent of disease dispersal through native animal populations. The army's live-agent testing program, designed to include trials at sea, in the tropics, and in the arctic, reached far beyond the borders of the continental United States to include sites in Alaska, Central America, the Far East, the Caribbean, and over the Pacific Ocean. Aimed at determining animal, plant, and human reactions to exposure to putative bw agents, the army allegedly conducted clandestine tests in South Korea, Liberia, Egypt, and Okinawa. 12 In 1981, troops training at the Jungle Warfare Training Center at Fort Sherman, Panama, contracted the mosquito-borne disease Venezuelan equine encephalitis (vee)–an outbreak that was eventually linked to a military experiment conducted in 1970. As a consequence of this test, vee remains an endemic threat in certain areas of Central America. 13

Little progress has been made to date in identifying, let alone containing or eliminating the contamination at Dugway, despite the requirement to do so established in the Defense Environmental Restoration Act passed by Congress in 1986. Even less thought and attention has been given to defining the nature and extent of the problems caused by tests at Dugway and other sites around the world.

Remediation?

The environmental remediation challenges at test sites are formidable, technically challenging, and resource intensive. In some cases, testing grounds cannot be cleaned up using current technology and may, therefore, remain disease reservoirs in perpetuity, essentially becoming “national sacrifice zones.” In fact, only one former test site, Gruinard Island, has ever been “officially” cleaned up. After a series of unsuccessful attempts to rid the island of anthrax, in 1986 the British government finally eliminated the island's “hot spots,” using a mixture of formaldehyde and seawater.

July 31, 1996: Climbers at the Jungle Warfare Training Center, Ft. Sherman, Panama, where Venezuelan equine encephalitis was introduced in 1970.

It is impossible to know if anyone–whether a “rogue state” or a determined terrorist–has obtained pathogenic materials from any of the test sites. However, as Ken Alibek, former deputy chief of Biopreparat, who testified last year before the U.S. House Armed Services Committee, suggests, “A determined organization or individual could obtain virulent strains of microorganisms from their natural reservoirs.” 14 This is why the situations on Vozrozhdeniye Island and other field testing sites are so troubling.

The work of the Ad Hoc Group of the States Parties to the bwc, which began in January 1995 under the chairmanship of Tibor Tóth of Hungary, is nearing an end. The negotiators have reached general agreement on the protocol's main provisions of mandatory declarations, declaration follow-up procedures, and investigations of noncompliance concerns. But the group has not yet added former test sites, whether offensive, defensive, or “mixed,” in their definitions, facility declarations, or inspection regimes, nor have they taken steps to secure potential pathogen sources from would-be proliferators.

Cleaning up and securing current and former field test sites from would-be proliferators should be put on the agenda of the Biological Weapons Convention Review Conference when it convenes in Geneva in November 2001. Until then, increased resources need to be invested in human and animal disease surveillance for novel or suspicious outbreaks of agricultural and human diseases in order to identify, characterize, contain, and mitigate the continuing threats posed by past or current bw testing activities.

Where is U.S. leadership?

The United States spends billions on “homeland defense” programs to mitigate or minimize the human health consequences associated with potential biological attacks, but it appears to place very low priority on international or domestic proliferation prevention strategies, including strengthening the bwc. The Federation of American Scientists has observed that “instead of exercising creative leadership, the United States has become the single greatest block to reaching agreement on a protocol for verifying compliance with the international prohibitions on BW.” 15

The problems inherent in verifying the intent of medical research conducted under military auspices, and the difficulty of detecting the development or use of biological weapons, have led to seemingly intractable disputes between states parties to the bwc. Some experts have suggested that short notice, on-site inspections of declared facilities may help to resolve these disputes. But inspections can only go so far in verifying compliance with disarmament agreements.

George W. Bush's national security team, while expressing concerns about the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, has said little about the ongoing negotiations to strengthen the BWC. Equally troubling is the Bush White House's silence regarding its support of arms control agreements generally, and the bwc in particular.

Last year marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the BWC. As insurance against the risk that nations will produce or use biological weapons, the international community over the past nine years has worked to develop a framework to strengthen the treaty.

We are at a crossroads. President Bush has an opportunity to demonstrate true leadership by seeing the work of the Ad Hoc Group through to a successful conclusion. Should the group fail, the world could face new horrors that would jeopardize not only U.S. national security interests, but those of the planet itself.