Toxins in Upscale DC Neighborhood

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DC TOXINS DATE BACK TO WWI

The federal government had evidence 15 years ago of possible burial sites

of toxics leftover from World War I in an upscale neighborhood of

Washington, D.C., but failed to fully investigate, The Washington Post

reports. New soil test results last month found arsenic at four properties

atop the former trench, including some twice the level at which the

Environmental Protection Agency recommends emergency removal, the newspaper

say. " The Army caused people from 1986 to the present to be exposed to

unacceptable levels of contamination that they could have identified and

corrected 15 years ago, " says Don , a former district environmental

scientist. However, in 1993, chemical munitions were accidentally uncovered

in the Spring Valley section of Washington. After the United States entered

World War I, the trustees of American University offered the government free

use of its 92-acre campus in the northwest section of Washington. " Hundreds

of toxic substances, including mustard gas, lewisite, cyanide phosgene and

arsenic, were developed or tested over several hundred acres by more than

1,200 chemists and engineers, U.S. Army records show, " the Post says.