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CBRNe News

August 2007

Gwyn Winfield examines the latest news in the world of CBRNE

Product Watch

Countermeasures will be taken
Countervail Corporation will become a new competitor for companies such as Meridian Medical and Sedat with their exclusive licence to develop the University of Maryland’s Galantamine antidote for nerve agent and other OP.

Galantamine has been used in the medical profession for over ten years and may well reduce the risk of brain damage from OP as well as providing protection by acting on sites within the CNS.

Also the University of Michigan announced that they had a ‘nanoemulsion’ which would be able to trigger an anthrax immune response without the use of needles. A droplet of only 200-300 nanometres was able to ferry a key anthrax droplet inside the nasal cavity to kick start the protective process allowing it to prepare for the anthrax microbe.

The University of Chicago also received $800,000 from the DoD to set up their Inst. For Advanced Pharmaceutical Sciences. The center is to discover new and effective medicine to combat biological agents and other infectious diseases. They are expecting discoveries in bacterial ribosomes for new antibiotic action, aminocyclodextrins to fight anthrax, enzyme inhibitors and screening of natural products for potential against Y Pestis, F Tularensis, Brucella spp and Burkholderia etc. With the ambitious targets for the TMTI (Transformational Medical Technologies Initiative) DoD has got to be hoping to get a good return on investment.

Finally (quite what makes August such an exciting time for the pharma companies is not clear) Acambis and Bavarian Nordic have settled their acrimonious dispute over rights to the modified Smallpox vaccine – which was to be given to those unable to take the full strength dose. Bavarian Nordic will now allow Acambis to produce under licence some of their patents and in return will receive a cash sum and royalties on further sales.

Getting lighter
The 2nd International Symposium for NBC Defence organised by the Bundeswehr at Bruchsal unveiled the new shape of German lightweight decon. To complement their TEP 90 truck borne solution, they have a smaller Mungo 2 based capability that can do personnel, equipment and area decon.

I am the HazMaster!
Alluviam LLC released their Version 11 of Hazmaster G3, including elements of IED neutralisation to their decision support capabilities. The hand held unit now has increased situational awareness of precursors, CWA and narcotics to allow users to come to a firmer conclusion about what they might be seeing in garage labs. Importantly for those people dealing with TICs and the ‘if you don’t know, don’t go’ dilemma, the Hazmaster also has an enhanced protective clothing database to allow you to suit up to the right level in confidence.

It’s just a (Strato)phase we’re going through
Spectrosens, the new biological detector from Stratophase reached a new degree of maturity recently. The laser waveguide and planar Bragg grating cut down on the amount of false alarms that can plague other antibody reliant biological detectors and also improves sensitivity. The device is getting smaller and currently is available in a handheld version.

Entente cordiale
Chemviron Carbon, also known as Charcoal Cloth, announced that they had won an order worth $800,000 for their Zorflex defence cloth from Paul Boye. This will be used in suits, gloves and socks of future Boye orders.

Busy bee
Karcher, represented by Dirk Waldow, were feted in the first defence exhibition in Brunei. As well as greeting His Majesty Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah Mu’izzaddin Waddaulah Karcher were also busy advising the UK of their range of products that could be used in flood defence and mitigation. Thankfully CBRNe World Towers were unaffected, but we know who we shall next time the deluge threatens!

Threat Watch

Stranger than fiction
Those of our younger readers may be familiar with World of Warcraft – to the rest of us it is a computer game played over the internet – which has, for the first time, crossed over into the world of CBRN. A recent development in the game saw a plague released, which caused an epidemic in the world of 4 million players. Researchers from Rutgers and Tufts University used it as a model to study human behaviour during an epidemic and published their paper in the Lancet. Clearly all we need to do should there be a H5N1 outbreak is turn the computer off and go and have a cup of tea!

Toothless no more!
The Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) has long been criticised for being effective only on paper, this should change from the 20th of August with inauguration of the BWC Implementation Support Unit. This is seen as a step to strengthen the treaty and will provide support to signatories of the convention.

The team of three will be based in Geneva and will facilitate communication between states and third parties - such as scientific and academic institutions - and be involved in confidence building measures. While this might not be a step towards policing the BWC it is, at least, a move in the right direction.

Richard Lennane, Head of the ISU said, “It is a small unit and policing is not involved, which is still not part of the mandate, but some of the members might see it as a step towards it. There is still an undecided debate about whether a large organisation with policing is a good idea. We will provide advice and if we can’t help we will put them in touch with an academic or governmental institution that could.”

Duw, there’s scary, isn’t it
Welsh (a small ‘principality’ to the West of England) healthcare professionals had their consequence management response tested by a smallpox simulation. Students from the University of Glamorgan Masters in Disaster Healthcare were expected to treat a patient infected with an illness that was revealed to be smallpox.

Counting the cost of murder
The murder of Alexander Litvinenko left a £3 million bill to be picked up by the UK Police and Health Protection Agency (HPA). The investigation cost the Metropolitan Police one million pounds and the HPA spent two million checking for contamination in people and sites. There were 27 positive tests, 47 sites were checked and over 1,000 people. Yet this is likely to be the tip of the iceberg when the decon bill comes in, CBRN murder is shaping up to have a major financial impact as well as human one.

Getting bigger
The VBIED in Qahataniya killed over 250 people of Yazidi descent in August. The attack had come out of the blue in an area with a low threat level and was viewed by US General Mixon as an act of ‘ethnic cleansing.’ The death toll was caused by a number of VBIEDs, including a fuel tanker at a crowded bus station. Evidence enough, if it was needed, that a squeeze on terrorists in one area gets them to move into another.

Cracked shield
The Homeland Security Inspector General, General Ricjard Skinner, lambasted the Department of Homeland Security for being years behind schedule on its National biological surveillance integration system. A DHS spokesman declared that General Skinner was being disingenuous and that these issues were being addressed, but programs such as BioShield have also come in for criticism recently.

The problems are apparently procedural, rather than technical, and caused by the system being shifted to different depts within DHS and short staffed. This is not to suggest that there won’t be technical problems though, just that they have not been found yet…

Non-story
Ehud Barak, the Israeli Defense Minister, was recently criticised for not ordering the distribution of respirators to civilians. This is inspired by the threat of Syrian CWA and Barak said that to distribute them might give the Syrians the impression that Israel was preparing for war. Not quite so much as that statement might, more sabre rattling will inevitably follow.

Non-Story II
Professor Peter Zimmerman and colleagues from Kings College London offered the blinding realisation that caesium 137 could kill or harm people if ingested, inhaled or immersed. This I-cubed attack was grabbed by a number of broadsheets after his article in the New York Times appeared. Quite what the Professor was trying to do with this story is unknown – how realistic a threat can immersion into caesium 137 be? Do you need a volcano lair? – apart from raise awareness to terrorists of the ubiquity of the caesium in medical and industrial equipment. Hopefully this has paid for a further round of research into the obvious.

Playing catch-up
Russian General Alexander Belousov promised that Russia would destroy its CWA on time despite a shortage of foreign aid. 45% of all the agents are expected to be destroyed by 2009 and 100% by 2012. This would seem a tall order, the US, without the same fund shortage is still struggling, but might be achievable if safety and standards are compromised. More likely this is an attempt to get some of the Russian CWA destruction supporters to provide more money – lets hope they do!

Congratulations, you made the cut.
The DoD put on their Annual Report to Congress in August, which under Chem/Bio listed the countries that they saw as high vulnerability to CB attack. There were three categories, low, medium and high threat. High threat included, South Korea, Bahrain, countries in the Balkan Peninsula, Diego Garcia, Egypt, Greece, India, Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Pakistan, Qatar, Taiwan, Somalia, Singapore, Sudan, Thailand and United Arab Emirates.

Occam’s razor
Nigeria has declared that they would like to build a nuclear power plant to deal with their chronic power shortages. Nigeria’s current power shortages are, apparently, caused by poor management and maintenance of their conventional power stations – the sort of record you want when operating a nuclear power plant!

Please forward any items for consideration in this section to the editor, Gwyn Winfield gwyn.winfield@cbrneworld.com