CO-MANAGER OF THE MSA TOXIC VAPOR DETECTION UNIT FOR THE TITAN II NUCLEAR MISSILE SILO'S ADMITS SOME FACTS IN 1964

Title: American industrial hygiene Association Journal

Author: American Industrial Hygiene Association

Article Title: Atmospheric Monitoring of Toxic Levels of Missile Propellants

Article Author: John Nakamura, Kenneth Ball

Description: VOl. 19, no. 1 (Feb. 1958)-v. 60, no. 6 (Nov/Dec. 1999).; 42 volumes. Vol. 25, Issue 1, 77-80 1964

The MSA was only plus or minus 25 percent accurate as pointed out on page two of the article. The example the authors give is that if you put 1 ppm hydrazine into the MSA unit the reading could be 0.8ppm to 1.2 ppm. In other words it did not meet OSHA requirements nor the USAF Permissible Exposure Limit (PEL) of .5 ppm before 1995's reduction to 10 ppb. In the article they call it the Maximum Acceptable Concentration. (MAC) standard at that time but they are really the same.

Quoting from the Article as to whether USAF cared about meeting this standard from the authors perspective:

“Some Air force personnel feel the published MAC values are unrealistically conservative and these investigators (meaning the authors) are making time verses concentration studies as a guide for emergency personnel performance in a contaminated area.”

However, there is no mention as to whether the authors were able to convince the USAF to adhere to the USAF MAC regulation at that time.

The authors state the accuracy might seem poor to a non cognizant person. This is the poorest excuse from an engineer I have ever seen. The system was not capable of meeting OSHA or at that time NIOSH PEL or MAC limits!

Ken Ball got an award from the Army Corps of Engineers for the Titan II fuel vapor detection system. However, it is in question that his contract from the USAF was to protect the workers according to standard engineering practices which at least require a factor of safety for the MAC standard.

Here is page 1 and 2 of 4 which has the accuracy statement of plus or minus 25%.