Chemical found in air outside 15 schools – Oregon Protects Communities From Deadly Chemical Weapons With Massive Wi-Fi Network

How do you protect more than 80,000 people from an odorless, colorless threat that could kill them within minutes? That was the challenge facing the Oregon communities neighboring the U.S. Army’s Umatilla Chemical Depot, one of eight national chemical weapons depots stockpiling mustard gas and other deadly munitions.

Their response to this threat may be one of the most comprehensive and technically innovative evacuation control systems in the nation. By 2004, local officials had created a massive wireless network, a series of "overpressurized" shelters, a software modeling program that tracks airborne chemicals and a tone-alert radio system that sounds voice messages during a hazard.

By Jim McKay, Justice and Public Safety Editor

Full Story: http://www.govtech.com/gt/articles/728860

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Chemical found in air outside 15 schools

By Blake Morrison and Brad Heath, USA TODAY

Outside 15 schools in eight states, government regulators have found elevated levels of a substance that — in a more potent form — was also used as a chemical weapon during World War I.

Those findings, based on samples collected for the Environmental Protection Agency, mark the first time the agency has expressed concern about the chemicals it detected as part of an ongoing effort to check for toxic chemicals in the air outside 63 schools nationwide.

Full Story: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/environment/2009-09-30-toxic-chemicals-school-air_N.htm