NCJ Number
192256
Date Published
2001
Length
29 pages
Annotation
This study evaluated the ability of the available technologies to reduce spore contamination on panels of different materials, which represented different office environments.
Abstract
The U.S. Army Soldier and Biological Chemical Command of the Department of Defense in partnership with the Department of Health and Human Services, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and the Department of Energy developed the Biological Weapons (BW) Improved Response Program (IRP). This partnership was created to help all agencies with responsibilities in responding to a biological agent. Through the use of multi-agency workshops on bioterrorism response the BW-IRP developed a response template that could be used as a model for cities to make use of when developing their own bioterrorism response plan. Along with the medical template, 28 gaps in biological warfare response were identified. One response gap identified was how to go about decontaminating a public building after a bioterrorist attack. This paper addressed this gap by examining the ability of various technologies to reduce spore contamination. The testing platform consisted of six vertical surfaces, each made of different material that could be found in a typical office environment. The test surfaces were uniformly contaminated with the bacterial agent stimulant, bacillus globigi (BG), and then sampled to determine the concentration level of the contamination time zero (t=0). Test participants decontaminated the panels using their particular technology and procedure. The next day, the test panels were sampled again by swabbing to check for surviving GB spores. The following facilities participated in the study, the University of Michigan, Center for Biological Nanotechnology, Sandia National Laboratories (SNL), and the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory (LLNL) performed the best in the overall ranking. Consistently at the bottom of the ranking tables were Diligen and Nantek methods of decontamination. The data suggested that the material surfaces most receptive to decontamination of the agent stimuli BG were Painted Metal, Painted Wallboard and Fabric. The decontamination technologies showed less effectiveness on porous surfaces. In addition, no technology was able to fully decontaminate all surfaces in the testing performed during this analysis. References