Why are safety concerns being raised inside Porton Down, Britain’s nerve centre of chemical and biological research?
When the UK’s offensive chemical and biological weapons programmes were terminated in the 1950s, work at the high-security military research centre in Porton Down, Wiltshire switched to defensive strategies. These included developing chemicals for use in riot control and countermeasures to the evolving threat of chemical and biological weapons.
Before being tested on military personnel, potential riot control compounds had to go through an informal preliminary screening. According to a 2006 history of Porton Down published by the Ministry of Defence (MoD), this would sometimes involve laboratory staff “cautiously sniffing” new compounds in order to “eliminate the less promising ones”.
Today’s scientists working inside the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL), which is headquartered at Porton Down, won’t be doing any sniff tests. But according to an anonymous whistleblower, Porton’s CEO, Paul Hollinshead, has warned that the laboratory needs to improve its health and safety record, or risk losing its operating licence.
The Guardian reported that an internal survey had raised widespread concerns about staff lacking the “resources to work safely”. The facility is now undergoing a major reorganisation, but a Porton spokesperson stressed to me that “any changes will protect and enhance its critical functions” – including working with government departments beyond the MoD.
A history of staff self-testing
My research with colleagues inside Porton Down found that between 1941 and 1989, staff took part in more than 1,300 tests of 78 different chemical and biological substances.
These included highly toxic nerve agents such as Tabun, vomiting agents including diphenylchlorarsine, and the blister-forming agent sulphur mustard. In the later decades, staff self-testing focused on pre-emptive therapies for nerve agent attacks, using drugs such as Pralidoxime.
Other historical accounts suggest Porton scientists were given great latitude to develop experiments – and join in with them too. One long-term staff member, Mark Ainsworth, described testing a new piece of equipment in the wound ballistics laboratory. Working in it was “heroic”, he wrote in 1976, as the machine would “charge itself up to 300,000 volts, then discharge itself randomly, turning [the testers] into nervous wrecks”.
In an echo of the recent whistleblower complaints, Ainsworth also revealed that he “swore at the management for not being more generous with staff deployment”.
During the cold war era, Porton scientists developed troop protection including nuclear, biological and chemical (NBC) suits, respirators, and the triple-therapy “combo pen” for treating exposure to potentially deadly nerve agents.
These scientists would have been shocked to find products stemming from their research being used decades later, in March 2018, on civilian shoppers just a few miles down the road. Porton Down was a key part of the emergency response to a chemical weapons attack on UK soil when Novichok was used to try to kill former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter at their home in Salisbury.
Despite the aggressive toxicity of this nerve agent, neither died – partly thanks to Porton Down expertise that was shared with the emergency and health services involved in their care.
Three months later, however, another Salisbury resident, Dawn Sturgess, died after spraying herself with Novichok hidden in a discarded perfume bottle. Her partner Charlie Rowley was also exposed to the nerve agent, but survived.
Biosecurity risks
Insights into the secretive work carried out at Porton Down also come when its scientists’ work is published in academic literature. DSTL senior fellow Tim Atkins, for example, is among researchers leading the global response to Q fever and melioidosis – two potentially deadly bacterial diseases.
Porton also conducts research into the continuing response to COVID and other highly infectious pathogens such as Yersinia pestis (the bacterium that causes plague) and Ebola virus. The highest levels of biosecurity are therefore required to prevent outbreaks of disease against which the public would not be protected.
My experience of working inside Porton’s secure area between 2002 and 2008 was that entry to, and passage around, the site was strictly controlled. Machine gun-armed MoD police were stationed at the facility’s outer entry points and also guarded the secure inner area.
We were investigating risk of cancer and mortality in the approximately 20,000 service personnel who took part in tests at Porton Down between 1945 and 1989. While we found a small increased risk of mortality, it could not be attributed directly to Porton attendance. The last documented case of staff self-testing, in June 29 1984, involved 7-methoxy cycloheptatriene, a non-corrosive “irritant compound”.
One former senior staff member I spoke to recalled working at Porton as “stimulating” and “fun”, partly because of the freedom scientists were afforded to innovate. Such freedom may be a thing of the past – but the work inside this top-secret British laboratory remains as important to national security as ever.
According to the Porton Down spokesperson: “Our people remain the bedrock of DSTL, and their dedication has ensured that our performance this year is better than last … Through the largest reforms to defence in more than 50 years, we are strengthening our ability to anticipate and respond to evolving threats, including increasing our safety standard.”
Thomas Keegan has in the past worked on research into Porton Down with funding from the UK Medical Research Council..