Did you know......Chemical

• that Chemical Agent Identification Sets formerly used by the U.S. military included bottles of sulfur mustard (pictured) used to purposely contaminate terrain and equipment for training?
  
• that of over 1,000 stone Buddha statues that once existed at the Korean Buddhist temple Unjusa, only 91 remain intact?
  
• that stick candy, a form of hard candy with a colorful, barber pole-like spiral design, has a long history in the United States, dating to at least as early as 1837?
  
• that English businessman David Ross was named one of the 100 richest people in the United Kingdom by The Sunday Times?
  
• that the 14"/50 caliber gun was slated to be the main armament for the Lexington-class battlecruiser, but that class was redesigned in 1917?
  
• that Keizō Tsukamoto set a Guinness World Record by creating the cover art for more than 1,900 issues of Weekly Manga Times starting in 1970?
  
• that Birket Israel, once the largest reservoir in Jerusalem, is now a parking lot?
  
• that while filming 1991's Barton Fink, the Coen brothers were contacted by an animal-rights group concerned about their treatment of mosquitoes?
  

History

Nomenclature

Throughout the military's use of CAIS they were known by several different common names aside from Chemical Agent Identification Sets. The other names were: Toxic Gas Sets, Chemical Agent Identification Training Sets, Instructional War Gas Identification Sets, Detonation War Gas Identification Sets, and Instructional Gas Identification Replacement Sets.

General history

CAIS were used by all branches of the United States military for training in detection, handling and familiarization with chemical warfare agents between the 1930s and 1960s.The U.S. Army used CAIS to train its soldiers from 1928 until 1969. During this time period more than 100,000 CAIS units were produced by all branches of the military.CAIS were declared obsolete in 1971 and systematically recalled from military installations during two operations. The first recall operation, Operation Set Consolidation I (SETCON I), was in 1978; SETCON II followed on in 1980.

Chemical agents

Each of the CAIS held between one and five different chemical agents. The agents used in CAIS were phosgene, adamsite, lewisite, cyanogen chloride, chloroacetophenone, sarin, nitrogen mustard, sulfur mustard and chloropicrin. In addition, triphosgene, a phosgene simulant, and ethyl malonate, a tabun simulant were also used. Sarin was the only nerve agent used in CAIS.

Disposal programs

Following the recall operations of the late 1970s and early 1980s, 21,400 CAIS were sent to Rocky Mountain Arsenal where they were destroyed by incineration. The destroyed CAIS represented the entire stockpile then in storage. This initial disposal took place from May-October 1979 and again from May 1981-December 1982.

Though the stockpile of CAIS were destroyed decades ago, there remained the problem of what to do with CAIS found buried underground. Most of the other 80,000 or so CAIS were used during training but some were disposed of, the primary method of disposal was burial. The U.S. Army Chemical Materials Agency was assigned the task of destroying CAIS as they were found, usually through ongoing construction projects. When CAIS items are found the Chemical Materials Agency's Non-Stockpile Chemical Materiel Project (NSCMP) is tasked to destroy them via one of two mobile treatment systems.

U.S. Army Chemical Materials Agency, Non-Stockpile Chemical Materiel Project (NSCMP)