|
|
|
|
|
|
Reconnissance Sampling and Decontamination Module
|
Index to Reconn/Decon Webpages Weapons of Mass Destruction |
Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Five incidents in recent years illustrate the vulnerability of civilian populations to the sudden release of hazardous chemical, nuclear, or biological materials: the release of 40 tonnes of methyl isocyanate and other lethal gases including hydrogen cyanide at the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India which resulted in the immediate deaths of 8,000 and the injury of 500,000; the sarin gas attack in the Tokyo subway, the Chernobyl nuclear accident in Russia, the accidental release of anthrax spores at Sverdlovsk (now Ekaterinburg), Russia, and the anthrax mail attacks in the U.S. in October, 2001. Military use of weapons of mass destruction was one of the distinguishing features of the 20th Century. Poison gas during World War I was responsible for 1 million casualties. Less well-known is the development of biological warfare labs and manufacturing plants in Manchuria during the 1930's and 1940's by the Japanese and their use of biological weapons against the Chinese. During the Cold War the Soviet program, known as Biopreparat, employed more than 60,000 workers to manufacture tons of anthrax and other diseases for biological warfare weapons. Finding ways to defend against bio-chemical terrorism has currently a high priority in the U.S. Great advances have been made in remote sensing of chemical agents. However, there is no substitute for a ground survey which collects samples of biological agents and samples of chemicals in concentrations too low to be detected remotely. Tracking an Aerosol Release Tracking the path of a deadly aerosol a week after the event is a challenge! On April 2, 1979 anthrax spores escaped accidentally from a biological warfare manufacturing facility at Sverdlovsk, Russia on the east side of the Ural Mountains. A cold wind (-10º to -3º C.) from the north was blowing about 10 miles per hour; and the aerosol cloud formed a narrow plume that extended downwind. Within the first 4 kilometers, there 66 fatalities caused by anthrax and 11 more who had the infection, but survived. Cattle and sheep died from anthrax exposure out to a distance of 50 km.
Consider the situation 8 days after the aerosol release. Eight persons had died and 14 more were very sick with the disease. The official explanation for the anthrax epidemic was contaminated meat trucked in and sold in the "black market" in the city. Suggestions that the cause was an aerosol release from the nearby Miliary Compound were dismissed out-of-hand. Several farmers from a village to the south of the city were arrested for selling bad meat. But the bad-meat explanation was not consistent with the pathological observations during autopsies. Lymph nodes next to the lungs had the largest lesions, had dead tissue caused by the toxin (the toxin factor generated by anthrax), were greatly swollen by pus (the edema factor), and obviously were the earliest sites of the disease. The observations indicated inhalational anthrax contracted from breathing spores in an aerosol, not gastro-intestinal anthrax contracted from eating contaminated food.
There was, in fact, some basis for the Soviet authorities claiming that anthrax deaths were caused by people eating contaminated meat. Sick sheep were slaughtered in the Village of Rudniy on the south side of Sverdlovsk and the meat sold in the city. On April 6 the remains of 3 sheep from this village tested positive for anthrax. The next day 2 members of the family that raised the sheep were arrested and charged with the illegal sale of contaminated meat. Between April 5 and 10 seven sheep and one cow died from anthrax in the Village of Abramova. On April 22 meat being sold by an individual in the Central Market tested positive for anthrax. Ten samples of meat taken from refrigerators in homes tested positive.
Useful Links to Other Sites Major Chemical/Nuclear/Biological Incidents The chemical disaster at the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India caused an estimated 8,000 immediate deaths, injured 120,000 persons, and exposed 500,000 to toxic gas. The nuclear disaster at Chernobyl, Ukraine, caused 30 immediate deaths and an estimated 2,500 radiation-related deaths subsequently. 64% of all Ukrainian thyroid cancer patients, age 15 and younger, lived in the most contaminated regions. Terrorists belonging to the the Aum Shinrikyo cult released sarin gas in the Tokyo subway system in 1995, immediately killing 11 and causing more than 5,500 persons to seek medical treatment. The same terrorist group had previously used sarin to kill 7 and injured 200. In 1994 this cult attempted an aerosolized release of anthrax from the tops of buildings in Tokyo. In 1979 at least 66 people died following an accidental release of inhalational anthrax from a weapons facility in Sverdlovsk, Russia (now Ekaterinburg). In September and October of 1984, 751 persons were infected with Salmonella typhimurium after an intentional contamination of restaurant salad bars in Oregon by followers of the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. Remote Sensing of a Disaster Site Using Low-Flying Unmanned Aircraft Why unnecessarily sacrifice quick response personnel at an extremely hazardous site? As was demonstrated by the exposure of Russian pilots flying over Chernobyl to radioactive particulates after the nuclear accident and their mortality in subsequent years, there is a need for unmanned low-flying aircraft to do initial surveillance. PLI's Reconn/Decon Module is designed for sites where protective clothing and self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA) provide adequate protection for the 2-man reconnaissance team. It is not designed for a highly radioactive nuclear zone. There is improved remote detection of chemical agents using infrared spectrometers. A line scanner, mounted on the wing of a fixed-wing aircraft, has an oscillating mirror that sends the spectra beneath the aircraft and along a line extending to the right and left of the aircraft into the spectrometer. As the aircraft moves forward, the scanned line sweeps across a wide zone along the flight path. The time series of spectral data is converted from the time domain to the frequency domain using a fast Fourier transform. The infrared absorption spectra of various organic chemicals can be used for identification. However, atmospheric interference is a major problem, since high resolution spectral data are needed. Hence, the need for low-flying aircraft. Aerial surveys of radioactivity are widely used in mineral exploration. Off-the-shelf instrumentation is available. The RQ1 Predator Drone was used extensively in the recent war in Afghanistan.
|
Role of the CST Reconn/Decon Module Module Specs Chemical Terrorism Chemical Response Kit Bio-Terrorism Bio-Sampling Kit Anthrax Plague Tularemia DNA Studies Decon Shower Decon Solutions & Foams
Red dots on the map to the left show the residences of the victims. (Urban areas are grey; forest, dark green; and farmland or other disturbed land shown in light green.) The epidemic unfolded slowly at first with some victims developing symptoms 2 to 3 days after the release. The time for incubation peaked at 10 days (the same time that the first deaths were occurring), but some victims did not become ill until 6 weeks later. The initial symptoms of inhalational anthrax are vague and non-specific, making it difficult to diagnose unless there is a very high degree of suspicion and special tests are done. When the first series of autopsies were done at Hospital No. 40 in Sverdlovsk, the pathologist noticed that several corpses showed a "cardinal cap" caused by brain hemorrhage. This suggested anthrax to the pathologist. Samples of the spleen, liver, and lungs were sent to the microbiology lab where under the microscope strings of purple-colored, rod-shaped bacteria could be seen that reacted positively with the Gram stain. This presumptive determination of anthrax was confirmed when bacteria from these samples grew colonies on the appropriate culture medium.
Would an environmental survey have contributed useful information? The thick magenta curved line in the map above shows a hypothetical traverse through farm land around the south side of Sverdlovsk to collect samples of soil, snow, and places where runoff could concentrate anthrax spores. The red portion of the curve indicates the "hot zone" along the traverse. Locating a "hot zone" using soil samples would have supported the aerosol rather than the tainted meat explanation. For confirmation, more traverses were needed.
Long after the anthrax epidemic was over and 66 persons had died from anthrax, the whereabouts of the victims during working hours on April 2, 1979 were plotted on a map. As shown in the map to the left, all of the victims were in the southern part of the city. The red dots form an elongate cluster extending to the SSE from Military Compound 19, which is outlined in yellow. The victims in the first 8 days, shown by the bright red dots, were in Compound 19 or Compound 32 or in a large ceramics factory, indicated by the small magenta-colored rectangle. Some of those in the military compounds lived in the northern part of the city but were attending a week-long military training course during working hours. Also shown are the calculated contours for the concentration of anthrax spores deposited by the wind from a source in Compound 19.
However, when the location of the 6 villages with livestock mortality due to anthrax were plotted on a map (as shown to the left), the pattern was consistent with an aerosol plume coming from Compound 19. Contour lines indicate the calculated pattern for wind dispersal of spores in the plume. As suggested by the magenta-colored curves and bright red "hot zones", timely traverses to collect soil samples would have confirmed the cause of the epidemic and shown the extent of the contaminated zone. Methods now available to analyze the genetic structure of anthrax spores in soil samples would have shown that multiple strains of Bacillus anthracis were present. A natural occurrence would have only one strain of the bacteria. In fact, tissue samples collected during the autopsy of human victims showed multiple strains. There were 4 out of the 5 strains present in one victim. The aerosol was a mixture of anthrax from many different sources, stockpiled in the military compound.