CBRNe News January 2009
Gwyn Winfield examines the latest news in the world of CBRNE
Product Watch
I think we’re in Kansas...
The US DHS recommended the site in Manhattan, Kansas, for the site for the new $450 million bio lab. Beating out competition from Georgia, North Carolina, Mississippi and Texas the site will now study everything from swine fever to nipah. It will generate 1,500 construction jobs and will need 500 lab workers when it is operational in 2015. With the Graham report lobbying for tougher regulation of labs it will be interesting to see what impact this has.
Finders weepers
Interserve the private sector service provider announced a £500 million contract to maintain 186 of the UK’s DEFRA (Dept. For Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) sites. Of those 186 sites are three of Defras’ ‘top secret,’ labs that deal with research into animal-borne diseases - such as foot and mouth - and also zoonotic diseases – such as anthrax and ‘mad cow’ disease (CJD). These three labs are maintained at an ultra-high degree of security and their whereabouts is classified.
No more tears
Texas Tech University and Lawrence Livermore have come up with a new decon ‘wipe.’ The new ‘Fibertec’ wipe has been used in studies against mustard and other CWA.
European healthcare project
Bruhn Newtech, along with Enigma Diagnostics and other members of the Ranger consortium, are involed in a three million euro European Commission Healthcare project for the rapid diagnosis of diseases. Bruhn Newtech’s part in the project will be to offer their Crisis Management Solution to allow them to track and monitor the spread of pandemics.
When I’m calling you...
Lowe Electronics, a UK company, are fighting off the recession blues with a three year contract from the UK Home Office for the supply of personal communication equipment for use by responders under their PPE. The system is interoperable with the Airwave system and has been designed over a two year period in conjunction with a variety of emergency services.
Open wide
Nukepills, supplier of ThyroShield potassium iodide, sold 5.4 million doses to the Kuwait Ministry of Health. Nukepills was pleased with the order, which is their first from a foreign government, and is hoping for further orders from the US and rest of the world.
Rad Border contract for Dynasil
DHS awarded a $5.6 million contract to Dynasil subsidiary, Radiation Monitoring Device (RMD) and their partners Raytheon and the University of Michigan, for a three year period of R&D to develop new, high performance rad detectors. These are, correctly, isotope identifiers and RMD admit that the challenge will be to produce the high purity single crystals with electronic properties that can do the job.
Lucky for some!
Thermo Fisher Scientific announced that they held their 13th annual dosimetry training course in Ohio. It was open to a range of dosimetry users, everyone from pharmaceutical to the military. As well as a variety of lectures there were hands-on courses to learn how to get the best out of your dosimeter. For more information on the 2009 course go to - www.thermo.com/dosimetry - go learning!
Environics opens new office
Environics USA, the US branch of the Finnish company, have moved offices from sunny Florida to cloudy (but more business focussed) Abingdon, Baltimore.
Threat Watch
Sure it was...
Zimbabwe’s octogenarian President, Robert Mugabe, sought to prop up his governments failure to handle the cholera epidemic (as well as the financial, economic, agrarian and other disasters) by blaming it on the old colonial bogey of Great Britain. Apparently the 800+ deaths have been caused by the UK releasing cholera as a BW to topple him. Disappointingly he didn’t seek to link the cholera epidemic that Iraq suffered to the same protoagonist, as clearly it can only be ex-colonial powers that are responsible for this disease that usually occurs when the clean water system breaks down - and it clearly couldn’t be that in this well run utopia.
An old friend returns
As the recession plods on its seems like the disaffected are choosing to use the old faithful - white powder envelopes to get their grievance across. Following on from Octobers Chase Manhattan bank letters came the 18 letters to governors offices in the US, another malcontent sent one to a state office in Carson city, yet more were sent to US embassies throughout Europe, another in Jackson County etc etc. The number of these incidents is rising and soon it will be too expensive to get them analysed, and that might just be the chance that a serious terrorist needs...
Ebola in DRC
More than eleven people have died in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the latest outbreak of ebola. Medecins Sans Frontiere, that is dealing with the outbreak, confirmed that eleven people had died and that they were monitoring another 102. Local citizens are reporting more deaths, but these have yet to be confirmed – it is the latest in a long line of ebola outbreaks in DRC, the fourth since 1976.
Finally!
It was bound to happen sometime soon – after all it was what ‘we’ went to war over - Iraq has ratified the CWC. Iraq deposited its ratification of the treaty and is demonstrating its commitment to disarmament and non-proliferation. While there might not be any government controlled stockpiles there is no doubt that CW rounds will be turning up in the oddest places for years to come.
Indian army prepared for ‘dirty bomb’
With growing regional, factional, violence the Indian Army has decided that it needs to try and protect itself from the logical conclusion of the hot terrorist war that is afflicting the country. In what was clearly a political swipe at Pakistan, the Indian Army Chief commented that they needed to embrace counter terrorism and fourth generation conflict in case of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons falling into the wrong hands.
Buboe-tastic
In an excellent example of why the creation of BWA is not a straightforward task, The Sun newspaper in the UK claimed that an Al Qaeda cell in Algeria had been killed by ‘the BLACK DEATH’ while trying to create a biological weapon. 40 terrorists are reported to have been killed by the virus (and there was much rejoicing!) due to the virus spreading from the ‘lab.’ Clearly needing to be taken with a large pinch of salt, what it will hopefully do is convince radicals that their time is better blowing themselves up by experimenting with homemade explosives rather than icky pathogens. Even if the story is an intelligence plant, hopefully it will spread the right message.
You heard it here first!
As presented by Danny Ng at the CBRNe World Workshop in November, the new Immigration and Customs Authority lab was officially opened by MHA Minister Wong Kan Seng on January the 20th. The $4 million facility was announced as critical to Singapore’s security and will allow them to identify both chemical and biological agents.
Cornerstone of UK MoD biodetection downsized
The UK’s Integrated Bio Detection System (IBDS) and the NBC Bisa (battlefield information system application) made the bumper book of MoD accounts - in the loss column. The downsizing of IBDS caused a 25 million loss, while Bisa only cost them 14 million - a snip!
Bisa will be replaced, at further cost, however, IBDS has little on the horizon to replace it (a small bit of bio identification in LRT and ISMS) and is a significant loss of capability - the reduction was down to “the operational planning assumptions underpinning the biological detection Operational Analysis were reviewed [which] led to the reduction of the total number of systems required. “ Which would seem to run contrary to what central government likes to make us think...
Please forward any items for consideration in this section to the editor, Gwyn Winfield This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it