The State College-based group American Women Out Loud (AWOL) is calling for a boycott of all Penn State partnerships, charging that a team of the school's researchers is engaged in illegal chemical weapons research and development.

Officials at Penn State's Applied Research Laboratory (ARL) refute the allegations.

"At ARL, we are currently doing no chemical research," Andrew F. Mazzara, director of ARL's Institute for Non-Lethal Defense Technologies (INLDT) said. "But we do do chemical agent detection research."

Penn State spokesman Bill Mahon said weapons of mass destruction have been banned internationally for decades, and Penn State has not breached that ban.

AWOL charges that ARL does not comply with the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993, which bans the development, production and possession of chemical weapons.

AWOL received indications of illegal research from the Sunshine Project, an international nonprofit organization that works against the hostile use of biotechnology.

Controversy stems from INLDT's report on calmatives as non-lethal weapons. The 2000 study examined the advantages and limitations of calmatives -- chemicals that depress or inhibit the functions of the central nervous system, such as pepper spray.

"ARL definitely assessed the potential for weaponization of a number of so-called non-lethal 'calmative' riot control drugs," Jennifer Chesworth, AWOL organizer said. "Their research, if they want to call it legal, is nonetheless diabolical."

ARL, however, performed no laboratory or population research, said Barbara Hale, university science and research spokeswoman.

"They gathered information that was already available in the world's libraries," Hale said. "There is no collaborative research going on at this university."

Edward Hammond, director of the Sunshine Project, said the research is not as innocuous as ARL officials say.

"They're trying to demonstrate their competency in being a core developer of chemical weapons," Hammond said.

Under the Freedom of Information Act, Hammond said he obtained contracts between ARL and the military for chemical weapons research, as well as documents demonstrating that ARL members are training marine corps on classified chemical weapons usage.

Nick Nicholas, an ARL senior research associate, said the Sunshine Project is often incorrectly informed and neglects to check the validity of its sources.

"They believe there's some specific connection between the [calmatives] literature search and some chemical research the military has done," Mazzara said. "They pieced together a theory that there's some secret chemical weapons program going on here. If there is, it's news to me."

While Penn State and ARL maintain the legitimacy of the research, AWOL and the Sunshine Project say Penn State officials are cautious in their statements of legality.

"It's possible for them to come up with very narrowly correct statements," Hammond said. "They might be accurate, but they are deceiving. Penn State and the marine crops have succeeded in confusing some people and making some other people nervous."