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evil_lurker
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Department of Homeland Security proposing anti-terror regs worse than anything DEA ever dreamt about...
Its pretty quiet, but the DHS is pushing to make every single chemical that could possibly be used as a weapon by terrorists a controlled substance.
I haven't seen anything concrete as far as details goes, but from what I heard its going to be a nightmare for anyone in the chemical business if the
regulations go into effect.
For example, every single university would have to come up with a security and threat assessment plan and keep track of chemicals with a zero
reporting exemption threshold.. and trust me it is a long list of rather common reagents.
Same goes for fertilizer and agricultural distributors, plastics manufacturers, and the list of affected industry goes on and on.
Basically under the regulations any person who deals with certain chemicals in a certain amount would have to be inspected and go thru a shitload of
red tape to become compliant... for those in the industry it would literally cost billions of dollars in lost productivity.
Right now a bunch of chicken farmers in the northeast are up in arms over the regulations because they use propane to heat their barns which would
push many over the limit...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070822/ap_on_re_us/terror_chick...
I hope congress has enough common sense to step in and does something to derail these rules... they are the worst things to come down the pipe ever.
Here is a couple more things I dug up...
http://www.ehs.iastate.edu/publications/handouts/chemofinter...
http://membership.acs.org/c/ccs/pubs/white_papers/DHS_Commen...
[Edited on 22-8-2007 by evil_lurker]
Not all chemicals are bad. Without chemicals such as hydrogen and oxygen, for example, there would be no way to make water, a vital ingredient in
beer.
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evil_lurker
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Here is one more on the Secure Handling of Ammonium Nitrate Act of 2007:
http://www.tfi.org/mediacenter/pr072707.pdf
[Edited on 22-8-2007 by evil_lurker]
Not all chemicals are bad. Without chemicals such as hydrogen and oxygen, for example, there would be no way to make water, a vital ingredient in
beer.
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Sauron
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If I read you right the controls are triggered by a certain threshold (X number of units of weight I guess.)
This is similar to CWC but in that case the units of weight in most cases are tons.
DEA I believe goes by a much smaller qty and on an annual basis (so much per year without causing a response.)
The industry will have a shitfit, and so will many chemical using industries and sectors. Hopefuly their lobbyists will prevail. This sounds like the
sort of general stpidity that would be dreamed up by the likes of ATF, as opposed to the FBI or DEA, who have better things to do than generate
make-work empirebuilding BS like this.
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evil_lurker
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Ok there we go...
Not too bad except for halogen materials and associated gasses...
http://www.ombwatch.org/info/IP_ChemicalFacilitySecurity.pdf
Not all chemicals are bad. Without chemicals such as hydrogen and oxygen, for example, there would be no way to make water, a vital ingredient in
beer.
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Sauron
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Pay close attention to anything listed as "any amount"
The others are as I expected, only worried about in amounts over a few tons.
The others are mostly CW precursors or obvious explosives.
There are a few monkey wrenches in there.
BF3 for starters. I guess they mean the gas. However they listed BF3 in methanol seperately, and make no mention of BF3 etherate.
Why muck around about a Lewis acid?
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Nerro
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Wow I sure am gladder and gladder to be living in Europe... Surely this will be a deathblow to many smaller chemical companies.
#261501 +(11351)- [X]
the \"bishop\" came to our church today
he was a fucken impostor
never once moved diagonally
courtesy of bash
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The_Davster
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It was minorly discussed in this thread:
https://sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=412&p...
Relavent documents are also linked to there including full list
Great ideas include:
Ammonia: anhydrous and >20% (farmers and lab use)
Acetone
chlorine
bromine
butane
ethyl ether
ethylene
ethane
methane heats your home and now something that comes out of your ass could
piss off DHS
>30% peroxide
nitric acid
phosphorus
propane...hey all the bottled gasses are here now
KNO3
KClO4
SOCl2
sodium chlorate
sodium nitrate
urea...now all my body functions offend them
[Edited on 23-8-2007 by The_Davster]
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Sauron
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Sorry,but you have apparently not read Appendix A (attached) which is the proposed list of DHS chemicals of interest and the threshold amounts that
would trigger inspection.
None of the chemicals you mentioned above (except phosphorus) are in the "any amount" category
Here are the first few - you can look up the rest yourself
Ammonia: anhydrous 7500 lbs
Ammonium hydroxide >20% (farmers and lab use) 15,000 lbs
Acetone 2000 lbs
chlorine 1875 lbs
bromine 7500 lbs
butane 7500 lbs
Potassium nitrate, potassium cyanide and potassium chlorate all 2000 lbs - which I believe is one ton.
So if you are buying your chemicals by the rail car or ISO tanker you may have a chat with DHS agents but few if any amateurs and not so many
professionals will be affected.
I am a little more concerned with the "any amount" items, which include BCl3 and BF3. Those items require further attention.
[Edited on 23-8-2007 by Sauron]
Attachment: AppA.pdf (56kB)
This file has been downloaded 834 times
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Rosco Bodine
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When it comes to conversations with cops ,
be afflicted with amnesia due to separation anxiety from your lawyer 
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The_Davster
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Ah, thank you for posting that. I had not read the proscribed ammounts.
You just know it will show up in the papers when any of these chemicals are found by police 'xxxx is regulated by the DHS' instilling more chemophobia
into the masses.
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Sauron
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It will take more time for me to analyze Appendix A, however, as it stands it does not look too intrusive.
Most of the more commonplace reagents and solvents on the list are already on DEA's lists and at far lower threshold values. The DHS list by and large
appears to be focused on very large (industrial scale rather than lab scale) movements of chemicals of real concern either as CW precursors or
explosives precursors, or explosives proper.
It is true that there is always the camel's nose under the tent to worry about and it is also perfectly true that once DHS has this in place with
congressional approval, shifting something from the ton category to the Any Amount status is simply administrative fiat. As would be appending the
list of Chemicals of Interest. The CWC for example is very open ended that way.
All this was probably inspired by that Canadian muslim purchase of three tons of AN last year.
I'd still like to know why boron trihalides are on the list and whether BF3-etherate is included. Any Amount.
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halogen
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It might not look too bad now, but you know the saying; "Give them an inch, they take a mile".
Is it possible that boron trihlides could be used as nerve gas precursors? Or as a toxic gas on and of itself?
F. de Lalande and M. Prud'homme showed that a mixture of boric oxide and sodium chloride is decomposed in a stream of dry air or oxygen at a red heat
with the evolution of chlorine.
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evil_lurker
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I know that triethanolamine can be used to make nitrogen mustards, but damn thats a pretty mundane chemical from what I know... it falls under the any
amount catagory too.
[Edited on 23-8-2007 by evil_lurker]
Not all chemicals are bad. Without chemicals such as hydrogen and oxygen, for example, there would be no way to make water, a vital ingredient in
beer.
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Sauron
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Hydrogen chloride gas, hydrogen bromide gas and hydrogen iodide gas are all in the Any Amount class, which means that a single lecture bottle purchase
will get you inspected. Hydrogen sulfide as well.
This is nonsense.
I am utterly unaware of any potential use of BF3 or BCl3 in a chemical warfare agent context.
Ethylene oxide too.
I have compiled all the Any Amount chemicals into a list and I am annotating it as to apparent rationale or lack thereof. Will post it as soon as
finished.
[Edited on 24-8-2007 by Sauron]
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Rosco Bodine
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Maybe it's another government counter intelligence operation , where confusion about the meaning of that
has them thinking that operating in a way that is most
counter (contrary) to whatever is intelligent ....is smart 
We won't do what's smart ...because the enemy would be expecting that ....so let's fool 'em all and act dumb
Hmmmm....when should we stop pretending ,
and just be real , it's all so confusing
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Sauron
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There are dozens and dozens of CW agents (not precursers) on this list, none of which are commercially available anywhere AFAIK. All of these are on
the CWC, all of them are on the State Dept. ITAR, so why one earth do they need to be on a DHS list?
I mean Aldrich does not sell Sarin or Lewisite of BZ or HN3. Neither does Eastman or MC&B. They are not articles of commerce. If any institution
or company has any in inventory it is likely on a military contract and that is the jurisdiction of the DoD not DHS. That is certainly the case for
any in armed forces stockpiles (probably awaiting destruction.)
There are a few apparent stupidities on the list, for example hydrogen cyanide is listed, and seperately hydrocyanic acid is listed. No comment is
made about concentration of the acid, and while the hydrogen cyanide is Any Amount, the hydrocyanic acid is not, there is a four figure threshold in
lbs. Do they mean an aqueous solition of HCN? As opposed to the neat HCN in a cylinder, as vapor over liquid. This is an important industrial
chemical as well as a lab reagent and it is produced and consumed in vast quantities so DHS will be busy. (The same goes for phosgene.)
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pantone159
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The main problem (for labs as well as hobbyists) seems to be the 'Any Amount' thresholds. The whole affair is obviously aimed at industrial scale use
(notice that almost all of the specified thresholds are a ton or more). If they would replace many of the 'Any Amount' thresholds with a reasonable
amount (which could still be << 1 ton), I'd be happy, and the universities probably would be as well.
If I read this stuff right, hitting the thresholds doesn't necessarily mean that you have to do anything different, just that you have to report to
DHS. THEY then decide if you have to change anything, but as uni labs are likely not a big concern for them, they are unlikely to impose too much.
(I hope.)
I for one don't really have complaints, in principle anyway, about DHS doing this. A large industrial plant generating Cl2, for example, is indeed a
tempting terrorist target, and it seems appropriate for the feds to take note of such facilities.
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Ozone
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What about the agents listed twice, one with "any amount' and another with something like a ton? There are quite a few of these. (SOCl2 is listed
thusly).
WTF about :
BF3? CO???? COS? diborane (who buys this anyway? we always made it before use)? HCl (g)? MeSH? methyldiethanolamine (scrubbers beware)? SO2???
trimethylamine?
Where will it stop?
I'm already swabbed everytime I try to fly (try to explain that you are in a lab 12hr a day to THEM!).
*sigh*,
O3
-Anyone who never made a mistake never tried anything new.
--Albert Einstein
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pyrochem
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Hydrogen sulfide is restricted in any amount? It makes me mad enough to throw a rotten egg at someone.
But seriously, for the "Any Amount" chemicals, do they set any kind of minimum purity or concentration? If a listed chemical was present as a
significant impurity in another chemical, would it be a problem?
Edit: It would appear from the ACS letter that the concentration of the chemicals is not made clear in the regulations.
[Edited on 23-8-2007 by pyrochem]
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Sauron
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O3, I'm perplexed as well. Few of the ones you mention make any sense at all. The methyldiethanolamine COULD be a nitrogen mustard precursor (they
list four or five such) but obviously most of these are industrially important and so putting them in Any Amount class is arbitrary and capricous.
SO2's sole fault from their point of view is its use to make SO2Cl2 but sulfuryl chloride itself is not Any Amount.
I have railed about pinacolyl alcohol elsewhere. It's a harmless alcohol. By the logic of classifying it this way they ought to do same with isopropyl
alcohol. And ethanol. Ethanol after all is used to make GA and VX. Evil stuff! Clearly that won't fly, but AFAIK there is no other major
technological application for pinacolyl alcohol than in making GD so it was included in stupid CWC and hence, on this list too. Like thionyl chloride
and thiodiglycol it is a politically incorrect chemical.
Chloropicrin and methyl bromide are agricultural fumigants. SO2 is also used in agro/food industry.
I am also struck by a number of things that are NOT on the list but I am not going to enumerate them!
@pantone, I think you had better wake up and smell the coffee. Universities are already being harassed by the government over students from certain
countries particularly in physics, chemistry, and microbiology. That has been going on not so quietly since the WTC and the anthrax attacks (despite
the fact that the latter is now known at least in certain circles to have been an inside job by a defense contractor employee and nnot a terrorist act
at all.) So what makes you think that academic labs are of no great concern? Were you not also paying attention to all the witch hunting that has
been going on for the last few years within certain DOE national laboratories aimed at ethnic Chinese scientists? Same mentality at work. But a
different rationale.
Here is the annotated (by me) extract of all the Any Amount chemicals on the proposed DHS list. NOTE as of 4 Dec I have been informed this file is
corrupted and cannot be opened, I verified this myself. Accordingly I am deleting it and will replace it shortly with a good version.
I hope Thailand does not follow suit. Presently I can buy all the hydrogen halides except HF without special permission, that is required for HF, Cl2,
SO2, F2, and not much else. I can buy cylinders or they will fill LBs for me. But I have to supply the LBs.
[Edited on 4-12-2007 by Sauron]
Attachment: DHS.txt (4kB)
This file has been downloaded 1127 times
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Ozone
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Nevermind that we had Hatfill. . I'd like to sympathize with him as a potential
victim of the new regime, BUT, if it is true, forging a PhD puts you somewhere between pond-scum and a paramecium's anus (if you can call it that--OK,
contractile vacuole).
They are about to "get midieval" on Chemical security here, too. I think they will be wanting resticted access and keyed cards. The campus itself has
been locked down, with faculty/staff access only (on main streets for auto traffic) using RF devices. These devices are keyed with the individuals'
info. They know who goes where and when.
It is what it is, friends,
O3
[Edited on 23-8-2007 by Ozone]
-Anyone who never made a mistake never tried anything new.
--Albert Einstein
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MadHatter
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Idiotic Laws
More idiotic laws so DHS appears to actually be doing
something with all those federal tax dollars they've been
wasting all along. Expect these idiotic regulations to
ultimately affect us all. Shit rolls down hill !
From opening of NCIS New Orleans - It goes a BOOM ! BOOM ! BOOM ! MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHA !
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Sauron
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Hatfill was not who I was referring to. Hatfill never worked at Dugway where that anthrax was made, and while he did work at Detrick, he was an ebola
specialist and never worked with anthrax.
The weaponized anthrax, Ames strain, produced at Dugway (Utah) Proving Grounds in a GOCO facility is shipped only to Detrick where it is irradiated
(killed) with gamma, then used as a simulant to develop detectors and countermeasures. The best simulant for weaponized anthrax is weaponized anthrax.
The anthrax in the Leahy and Daschel letters was the pre-irradiation, weaponized Ames strain with a 100% DNA match to the Dugway product. Hence, that
is where it came from. The list of people with access to the material at those two facilities is rather short. And Steve is not on that list.
I happen to know Steve, socially, we have mutual friends in the DC area. He is a character with outspoken politically incorrect views and attitudes
that would not endear him to many. It is highly likely that he was the person who once placed a FAKE anthrax device outside of the Bnai Brith office
in DC and this suspicion is probably what led to his high profile in the anthrax case. But just as we saw in the Richard Jewell case, the Atlanta
Olympics bombing, the Bureau likes to appear to have the perp even when they know they do not. Jewell was ultimately cleared. Hatfill is not the
anthrax mailer. The anthrax case is still open, the Atlanta case was solved (the bomber was an anti-gay, anti-abortion activist nutball.)
It is news to me that Steve faked his doctorate. So he fooled SAIC, Ft Detrick, and LSU Baton Rouge, huh? I am not a virologist so it is hard for me
to say but he did have the reputation of being competent, but a misfit.
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Ozone
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Whoa! I never accused him of that (the mailings)! Nor did I question is competence. I believe it was an MD that got him the job. The PhD and various
Masters were added to the resume'.
I suppose it could also be a technical legal lack of equivalence for the degree (they did not specify), but, I know several PhD's from SA, and they
are all *quite* bona-fide.
Then he was a victim of the system. Not knowing him personally, I am subject to the influence of multiple news outlets (I never trust a single
source). Funny how it has died quite quietly since then...
see page 4.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/03/09/60minutes/main2552...
Accordingly (from another article, IIRC), one of the five matching strains was (purportedly) in the possession of LSU *and* was also traced via Porton
Down to USAMRIID. The subtypes matched. Of course, Dugway also had this strain. I think U. Az. also had it (also traced through USAMRIID).
This could also be a coverup for a more covert operation of his. Living in Zaire and working on BW and treatment for certain filaroviruses? I think
that, maybe, his level of classification might be high enough to warrant some mud and misinformation.
Honestly, I would prefer if this was the case since I'm fighting like hell for a PhD. I don't think he fooled them. I think they hired an MD with
field and ahem, operational experience. I don't think that they looked too hard at the rest.
Just a reference to how, unwittingly close we can be to the sort of things that lead to controlled admission to college campuses (this was underway
long before the nutball shot-up VT, but plays right into it).
Cheers,
O3
[Edited on 23-8-2007 by Ozone]
-Anyone who never made a mistake never tried anything new.
--Albert Einstein
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vulture
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ACS and other science foundations have already expressed their concern and utter dismay about this. I'm sure the chemical industry will come down on
the DHS (or whoever is politically responsible) like a brick house if they take it too far.
The problem is that fundamental research is going to take hits. Serious hits. But I'm sure the DHS types and their goons will still happily use
whatever potential weapons technology comes out of that...
One shouldn't accept or resort to the mutilation of science to appease the mentally impaired.
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