Is fog oil an environmental and health problem?

[Center for Public Environmental Oversight <cpeo@cpeo.org>]

The previous posting had unusual line breaks. Hopefully this postin is
better. Sorry for the inconvenience.

CPEO

The below referenced EA for Guard training is for the use of 66,000
gallons of fog oil, light mineral oil, per year to create obscurant
clouds for chemical warfare training. The obscurant is vaporized by
contact with the exhaust gas of a pulse jet engine, however, the
obscurant cloud is not a combustion product. They will use bladders and
tankers. Starting this spring-summer, mobile source battlefield smoke
generators will be used to create tactical smoke clouds using fog oil to
screen friendly actions against agressor positions. Units will generate
smoke for a duration of two hours or less for each event. The obscurant
and devices used to produce the obscurant are not unproven technologies,
so they say. The US Army Chemical school has produced extensive Standard
Operating Procedures on the use and effects of fog oil both in the US
and abroad, they say. All this according to the below referenced EA.
This training is to be, and presently is being, done at the Dona Ana
Range, New Mexico, of Ft. Bliss Texas/NM right over the Texas state
line in New Mexico.

Of concern to local low income minority communities in the area, is that
this has already been done, and the clouds drifted off the training
range creating haze that required initial consideration of an emergency
response. According to sources working for the State of New Mexico local
Environmental Quality Office, the military training was beomg conducted
by contractors, and these training contractors were fined. The EA
references a short 1995 letter from the New Mexico Enviro Dept to Ft.
Bliss, saying that FT. Bliss is not at Title V major source of pollution
and not subject to 20 NMAC 2.70 permit requirement (sorry haven't a clue
what this means) but gather this is being taken as an OK to do this
training.

Mitigations, well they don't call them such, rather they are stated
factually as "we will's", monitor for atmospheric inversions and only
train with this stuff when there are inversions. This is rather
unbelievable, as inversions are what force pollutants to the ground onto
troops, and publics in adjacent areas. But may be this is what they want
for realistic training. Oh, it is stated that they are simulating
Southwest Asia conditions.

Sorry folks, I'm a lands activist, but this looks bad to me. And I am
unsure of what Club should do if anything. I did call and alert the
State Environment Dept Air Quality monitoring officers. They indicated
that since my initial hoopla a while back over interstate, intra air
shed concerns, Texas and NM AGs offices are now talking to each other.

It appears to me that this EA raises three issues, EQ-AIR,
EQ-Environmental Justice, and what is going on? contract training? and
all that is done when they foul up is get a fine???

Environmental Assessment for Rio Bravo Combined Foreces Training
Exercise, Fort Bliss, Texas 1998to 2003
for 460th Chemical Brigade, North Little Rock, AR; 323rd Engineer
Company, El Paso, TX;
285th Engineer Company, Baton Rouge, LA; 420th Engineer
Brigade, Bryan
TX.

April 1998
Contact person, and requests for copies of the document to:
Cambell Ingram
USAADACENFB
Attn:ATZC-DOE(Ingram)
Fort Bliss, Texas 79916-6816
phone 915-568-3908
Marianne