chemicals found at UN [last FRIDAY] were stored ---"a decade ago"

[rodeodance]

Reuters: Dangerous Iraq chemicals found stored at U.N. (from 10 yrs ago)


http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070830/us_nm/un_chemicals_... ;_ylt=AtVAyoqDtKcs2udSmDi.tshH2ocA
Dangerous Iraq chemicals found stored at U.N.

By Evelyn Leopold 29 minutes ago

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United Nations found vials of a chemical warfare agent, which had been removed from Iraq a decade ago, in a U.N. building near the body's headquarters in New York but officials said on Thursday there was no danger.


The FBI was called in to remove the substances, which were discovered last Friday and included phosgene, an older generation chemical warfare agent, taken in 1996 by inspectors from a former Iraqi chemical weapons plant at Al Muthanna, the inspectors said in a statement.

Phosgene was used extensively during World War I as a choking agent, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.

The inspectors, who are closing down their offices several streets from U.N. headquarters, discovered two small plastic packages with metal and glass containers, ranging in size from small vials to tubes the length of a pen with liquid substances, their spokesman, Ewen Buchanan, said.

[DURHAM D]

1. And we worry so much about unsecured

biological and chemical weapons in the former Soviet-satellite countries...

Don't we look like idiots.

[The Magistrate]

2. Cupboards Can Be Fun, Ma'am

Once years ago, working with a crew cleaning out an old factory, we came upon several fist-sized vials of picric acid, that must have been at the back of the cabinet for several decades....

[Cirque du So-What]

3. I encountered some picric acid as well

in a lab over which I had just taken responsibility. It was in several bottles with ground-glass stoppers which hadn't been disturbed for several years. The bottles were crusty with residue all around the stoppers. Recognizing the hazardous conditions, I called in a professional chemical disposal company to remove them from my facility.

[Jim__]

4. A decade ago?

Then Clinton did it!!!!

[AZBlue]

5. "Huh....so THAT'S where they put those chemical weapons!

I was wondering where they were."

Unsettling.