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SAS Institute Helps Lead The Way In Chemical Research SAS software an integral part of safe chemical weapon destruction Johnston Atoll, about 800 miles southwest of Hawaii, is part of the US Fish and Wildlife system and a protected habitat for birds and sealife. US company Southwest Research Institute is using SAS� software to provide air monitoring and general laboratory support for the Johnston Atoll Chemical Agent Disposal System (JACADS). This has the dual goal of destroying US chemical warfare munitions and certifying the technology used so that similar facilities may be built to safely dispose of other chemical agent stockpiles. A tremendous amount of air monitoring data is generated daily. The 75 automatic air monitors used in the project are closely supervised, with operational signals sent to a computer every few seconds to ensure they are working correctly. The information received is stored in a database. The machines are then �challenged� between one to six times daily, depending on how crucial their accurate operation is, with this information stored in a separate database - growing by 150 and 200 records every day. In this way, engineers are able to evaluate the condition of the machines instantly, and take appropriate and prompt action to correct any faults if necessary. In addition, air samples are regularly collected, garnering about 1200 records per day on the quality of the air sampled as it pertains to chemical agent, and also data regarding location of the sampling station, the technicians and scientists who set the tube out in the field, gathered it, and analysed it, and the status of the Laboratory instrument used for the actual analysis. Again, this data is vital to guarantee the safe operation of the chemical disposal process. "SAS software is an integral part of this whole procedure," said Laurence Adair, JACADS laboratory statistician. "It is used to assess the quality of air monitoring through the use of control charts, histograms, and other graphical and statistical means." "SAS software is ideal for data management, and provides us with statistical analysis, graphs, reports, quality assurance plus much more." said Adair. "Whenever the Lab wants to put an air monitoring station in a new location, or whenever they want to start using a new analysis method, SAS software is used in the statistical analysis of the capabilities of the system before any real air monitoring is allowed. I use SAS software to generate reports that summarise various aspects of both the quality data and the automatic monitoring machine data that gets centrally updated every few seconds." SAS software is also used for statistical analyses of the quality assurance data. "Every two weeks we study the previous thirty day's worth of quality data (i.e., challenges and quality tube samples) and assess performance at each of the stations," said Adair. "The information of most interest is the probability of a station detecting chemical agents. We have programmed SAS software to use robust procedures to calculate these probabilities."