Thermo Scientific 1064Defender Raman Analyzer

The Italian Red Cross Committee of Benevento recently organized a training course for the use and operation of the Isovac bio-containment unit, which will soon be delivered to the charity. This is the only class 1 device, approved by EASA and ENAC, for transport also on helicopters, supplied throughout the region and one of the few in the country. After the training course, the official delivery of the stretcher to the Italian Red Cross Committee of Benevento was held by the President of the Banca del Credito Cooperativo di San Marco dei Cavoti. 

NB video is in Italian https://youtu.be/1y-vrB0Ay54

In response to the Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability, the European Organic Peroxide Safety Group (EOPSG) sees a growing need to highlight the importance of organic peroxides and their safe use. The group sees that Cefic can provide EOPSG with the tools needed to achieve this and has decided to join Cefic as a Sector Group.

Commenting on the decision, the newly elected Chair, Peter Schuurman from Nouryon said: “Having the European Organic Peroxide Safety Group as a part of CEFIC, will give the group more exposure to the outside world and will further increase the awareness of safe use of organic peroxides.”

The main purpose of EOPSG within the CEFIC umbrella will be to review relevant upcoming legislation, suggest improvements, generate data, suggest new test methods and establish safe working practices for organic peroxides.

Organic peroxides are essential ingredients in a variety of polymer and construction materials, helping to produce them, improve their properties, and make them easier to process or recycle. Because of their chemical characteristics, safety is of utmost importance.

EOPSG was founded by Arkema, Nouryon, PERGAN and United Initiators. Since the late sixties, EOPSG actively generates product safety data and promotes safe handling, transport and storage of organic peroxides. After being a stand-alone group for so many years, EOPSG will now be incorporated in Cefic as a sector group to further highlight its importance.

For more information about EOPSG, we invite you to visit our webpage.

BARDA is partnering with Invirsa to develop the company’s investigational product INV-102 to treat ocular conditions associated with DNA damage to include sulfur mustard injury. By funding this advanced research and development effort, the product will progress toward potential Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval.

Sulfur mustard is a type of chemical warfare agent that causes blistering of the skin and mucous membranes on contact. Sulfur mustard is a powerful irritant that damages the skin, eyes and respiratory tract. Toxicity is thought to be caused primarily by DNA damage. In the eye, initial signs and symptoms of sulfur mustard exposure include irritation, pain, swelling and tearing that occur within three to twelve hours after exposure. However, delayed effects can include corneal opacification and permanent blinding.

Acute infectious conjunctivitis, a common eye condition, also causes DNA damage. Treatment for this condition is a large unmet need, and an effective treatment for DNA damage could have a significant, positive impact in this field of medicine.

There are currently no FDA-approved drugs to treat sulfur mustard ocular injury. Advanced research and development to include nonclinical IND-enabling studies and clinical trials to demonstrate safety and efficacy of candidate therapeutics are needed to fill this unmet need.

INV-102 is derived from a naturally occurring small molecule that modulates the activity of p53, the central protein that regulates the DNA damage response. As an eye drop, INV-102 has the potential to treat the delayed, long-term eye injury and blindness observed after sulfur mustard exposure. If approved, INV-102 would be the first clinically effective treatment for sulfur mustard ocular injury. Additionally, the broad indication would open the market potential for the drug, thereby increasing community availability and sustainability, two key requirements in rapid response to a chemical incident.

Recent reports have been raising concerns as to, not just the use of gas againzt protesters, but also the type. 

The Intercept recently reported that the Mayor of Portland, Ted Wheeler acknowledged that the city has used “CS” tear gas during protests for the Black Lives Matter movement. The commonly used formulation contains 2-chlorobenzalmalononitrile, a compound that was designed to induce immediate pain but can also have long-term effects, including chronic bronchitis. In early September, Wheeler ordered the police to stop using it. Tear gas is banned in war but can be used to disperse crowds of civilians.

In July it is reported that during “Operation Diligent Valor,” an operation to get the protests under control, the use of chemical irritants intensified. Among the products that federal agents appear to have used during the crackdown is a hexachloroethane “smoke grenade” manufactured by a company called Defense Technology and sold as “Maximum HC Smoke.” 

The Intercept goes on to say

"The HC smoke bomb, which was developed in the 1930s to disperse people and conceal actions on the battlefield, is particularly dangerous to health and the environment. The Military-Style Maximum Smoke HC grenade from Defense Technology is “very toxic to aquatic life with long-lasting effects” and is “suspected of causing cancer,” according to the grenade’s safety data sheet. Environmental effects of the smoke bombs include defoliation of trees and a long-term reduction in their growth.

The health effects of hexachloroethane include nausea, vomiting, central nervous system depression, and kidney and liver damage, according to the compound’s material safety data sheet. Zinc chloride, a compound released by the grenades in even greater amounts than hexachloroethane, has “long-lasting effects” on aquatic life, according to its manufacturer’s safety data sheet. The toxic compound also causes fever, chest pain, and liver damage and is associated with anorexia, fatigue, and weight loss.

Although the grenade’s manufacturer, Defense Technology, markets it as “military style,” the Department of Defense appears to have begun phasing out the smoke bomb years ago because it was incredibly dangerous. A 1994 report of the U.S. Army Biomedical Research and Development Laboratory notes, “Exposure of unprotected soldiers to high concentrations of HC smoke for even a few minutes has resulted in injuries and fatalities.”"

Yet it appears it forces continue to use these products against civillians. Both the DHS and manufacturer of the HC canisters did not respond to The Intercept's request for comments. 

Smiths Detection announces its newest X-ray inspection system, HI-SCAN 5030C, that addresses a critical gap in commercial security screening solutions with its optimal size, durability and mobility. 

Combined with a market-leading HiTraX 3 electronic platform for superior image quality, the HI-SCAN 5030C is specifically designed to enhance security screening operations from courthouses to corporate campuses. Its compact size and lightweight construction enable it to fit seamlessly into checkpoints and mailrooms. Vibration absorbers make it possible to transport HI-SCAN 5030C between various locations without requiring re-calibration, providing maximum flexibility.

The HI-SCAN 5030C is Smiths Detection’s smallest X-ray inspection system and offers a wide variety of options including stainless steel castors, storage compartment, 24” monitor, newly designed keyboard with image manipulation keys, and foldable input/output conveyors. It can be upgraded with add-on software packages for training and detection support.

Stand off detection of CBR agents has been a long held desire of CBRN responders in the military and civilian realm for decades. Each of the three types of agent, chemical, biological and radiological, pose their own challenges to the scientists and industrialists tasked with ways of detecting agents early and safely.

There are some problems that are common to all of them. The first is cost, weight and power. It is not just the cost of the individual sensor that needs to be factored in, but also the team that needs to go out into the release, take samples and return them to a lab that has to verify them within a useful timeframe. The majority of systems have a clear relationship with distance and power. If you want to have something that can detect to single digit meters, then it can be handheld or in a backpack (Pendar’s X10 or Alakai’s Pried), once you start getting out to tens, hundreds or thousands of meters then it needs a significant amount of power and needs to be vehicle mounted (Bruker’s Sigis2 or Chemring’s I-SCAD) or mounted on a building (Lockheed Martin’s Windtracer)

Another is the need to make the device safe for users and individuals that might be in the area. This is not in case the device falls on them, even though in some cases this would be a hazard, but eye safe. Many chemical and biological stand off systems use active lasers or optics, that need to be within the eye safe range. Once you start ramping up the power to allow it to reach out to a chemical tanker, for example, several kilometres away the intensity of the beam can be enough in some older systems to cause eye damage. Now sensible people might say that if you are close to a significant biological or chemical release that eye damage is the least of your problems… but it is not just CBRN forces that use lasers. The proliferation of lasers on the battlefield, from signifying targets to laser dazzlers forcing drivers to stop, has caused a number of injuries and as such there is an effort to ensure that permanent eye damage is not done. It is not just the range that is a driver for powerful lasers, but also the type of agent. Passive systems, such as Bertin’s Second Sight, require a vapour cloud, that can be distinguished from the background, but not all chemical warfare agents are volatile, the Novichok, V and H agents are thick, and unlikely to give off enough to provide a cloud. If you want to detect these you need to be able to have an active laser that can properly interrogate the puddles or deposition. Improvements are being made, but active stand off is often the culprit for eye safe transgression.

Chemical

Chemical stand off is the most likely of all stand off detectors to be found in the experts’ toolkit. Admittedly it is more common in the military than civilian fields, but work done by Federal research organisations like IARPA means that it is also increasingly likely to be seen in clandestine lab busts. Improvements in technology and libraries mean that it is not just chemical warfare agents that are being detected but also narcotics and explosives. This capability is changing the way that organisations think about stand-off.

Previously the military wanted to know that significant amount of hazardous substances were coming their way, so they could gain vital seconds to don personal protective equipment. Even within the military sphere this shifted into small team concepts, such as wanting to know whether chemical breakdown products could be detected around air conditioning/filter outlets, gaining vital intelligence on whether that building houses a clandestine lab. Now we are in the situation where law enforcement can use stand off to do quick categorisation of a crime scene: to know that ‘this’ is baby powder while ‘that’ is fentanyl. These missions sets are seeing new technology join infrared spectrometers, like hyperspectral and quantum cascade lasers.

The traditional mission of sensing at extended distances has shifted from a fixed sensor to a mobile one. Minerva in the UK or Deep Purple/Integrated Early Warning (CBRNe World 2016-5 & 2019-3) in the US, shows that the trend is now towards putting tried and tested detectors on robotic platforms and handing the data back to the network, rather than experimental systems reaching out thousands of meters.

Anyone that is interested in learning more about stand off chemical detection can have a gander at what NIST thinks.

Radiological

This is one of the few areas in the history of the magazine (15 years and counting) where we have seen genuine improvements. In Winter 2006 we published an article by Tom Cousins from DRDC on something called a Simultaneous Multispectral Imager (SMSI), which employed a telescope to collect light which it then split so it could image a scene in six different wavelength bands. Now gamma cameras, while not ubiquitous are at least familiar to people. These are different to the ones used in public health, however, and are instead used to quickly locate areas of high radioactivity. While they were a thing of science fiction now you can use one from H3D, Mirion or a number of other companies.

It is not just gamma radiation that can now be detected at a stand off range. As part of the European Funded GIFT project we were able to see first hand the work that Johan Sand and first STUK and now the Tampere University of Technology (TUT) have done on an alpha camera. Detecting alpha radiation, as shown in the Litvinenko murder is a nightmare for responders, involving the detector being held millimetres above the potential contamination. While previous Alpha cameras in the past required the area to have all light sources removed, so the minute amount of radioluminescence could be detected, Johan managed to get similar results in normal daylight, and hopefully once demand increases a commercial product can be launched.

Biological

Biological stand-off has been worked over at least as long as chemical, but the maturity is a long way behind. Fundamentally the reason for this is the sheer amount of ‘noise’ out there. A lot of chemical stand off detectors work by knowing what the background is, and then analysing areas that suddenly change. It is rare that this background will change significantly without something going wrong – which is why many stand off chemical detectors are used at petrochemical plants. With biological stand-off, we frequently have enormous natural changes, one of them is called ‘Spring’ and another is called ‘Summer.’ Pollen poses a massive challenge to some biological stand off detectors if it luminesces in the same range that the sensors are looking for.

The US National Academy found huge problems with the whole biological stand-off infrastructure, including a shortage of staff, standards and test facilities. This is largely down to a shortage of customers. Radiation and chemical stand off have non-government customers (nuclear power plants and chemical facilities), but there isn’t a comparable profitable base for biological stand-off. If it isn’t for a government customer it is not going to happen. If the government is unsure about the threat then it is going to be unsure about the return on investment, and this is not a system that can be re-purposed for naturally occurring pathogens.

There are some products out there, like Lockheed Martin’s Prowlr and SESI’s JBSDS, but these have had limited application. Even point biological detection is difficult, as evidenced by the Biowatch programme, and there has not been a queue of customers hoping to solve this even harder problem. Bio stand-off tend to be Lidar, and even though government research projects keep having a go at it there hasn’t been a breakthrough. Block with their quantum cascade lasers are hoping that they have it, but in the past there has been a huge difference between lab and field capability.

Conclusion

Well-funded research projects in the chemical space, and the need to deal safely with nuclear power plants will drive innovation in these sectors and responders, both military and first responder, will benefit. Handheld devices in both these sectors exist, and doctrine is being developed for them. Biological stand-off lags a long way behind due to the challenges of the environment and a lack of investment in the sector. It’s unlikely that any technology will be mature enough in the next five years to see one placed in any CBRN responders hands.  

PathogenDx, Inc., an Arizona based technology company which has developed an ultra-rapid DNA-based customized pathogen testing platform for the food, agricultural and health sectors, announced today it is teaming up with Bertin Instruments to create an innovative solution to detect SARS-CoV-2 and other airborne viruses. This new solution pairs Bertin's Coriolis Air Sampler with PathogenDx's EnviroX-Rv testing technology  to provide public facilities and buildings with a fast and accurate way to monitor the air for contaminants that pose a risk to public health.

SARS-CoV-2 and other viruses can be aerosolized through droplet transmission from a sneeze or even just people talking.  These particles can remain suspended in the air for up to three hours, or fall on surfaces for up to 2-3 days. In office buildings or other facilities with no natural ventilation, early detection and identification of air contamination is crucial to protect public health and prevent disease spread.

The Coriolis is a portable, light bio-air sampler that can circulate vast volumes of liquid air inside its cyclonic-like filter, allowing it to efficiently trap biological particles. PathogenDx's EnviroX-Rv test kit is then used to analyze the air sample to determine viral presence through highly sensitive and specific DNA microarray analysis. Results are produced rapidly, so that the presence of the virus can be detected, as well as to assess confirmation of sanitation or disinfection procedures within buildings have been done effectively. 

"Too many tests on the market are providing false negatives that undermine the confidence people need to return to their normal routines," said Sophie Dubacq, Product Manager of Bertin Instruments. "We chose to co-market the Coriolis with EnviroX-Rv because it is simply the most accurate test available. The two products together can ensure the safety and health of a building and its occupants."

The detection minimum for many viral tests is 20-50 copies of the virus. In contrast, EnviroX-Rv is 10 times more sensitive and can accurately detect a virus with a smaller viral load, as little as one copy. Where other COVID-19 detection tests are accurate only 50-85% of the time, EnviroX-Rv delivers 98% accuracy.

"COVID-19 has had a pervasive impact on both our economy and our psyche. People won't return to their place of work or the restaurants and other places they gather until they have peace of mind that those buildings are safe," said Milan Patel, Co-founder & CEO of PathogenDx. "As we work towards a vaccine, this innovative solution can help facility managers monitor buildings, confirm that the sanitation and remediation solutions they are using are effective and so we can safely restart our economy."

For more information about the EnviroX-Rv and Coriolis solution, download the presentation document.

FLIR Systems, Inc. has announced that the United States (U.S.) Army and Navy have ordered in total more than 160 of the company’s Centaur™ unmanned ground vehicles (UGV), plus related spares and accessories. The two contracts, totaling $23.5 million, are being sourced through the Army’s Man Transportable Robotic System Increment II (MTRS Inc II) program.

Since March, FLIR has announced orders totaling more than $65 million for nearly 500 Centaur UGVs from the United States Air Force, Marine Corps, and now Navy. Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) teams will use the FLIR Centaur to assist in disarming improvised explosive devices, unexploded ordnance, and similar hazardous tasks. Operators can quickly attach different sensors and payloads to the robot to support other functions, including chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) missions.

“With the Navy joining the MTRS Inc II program, it means that all U.S. military forces will now use a common, medium-sized robotic platform for EOD and CBRN operations,” said Roger Wells, VP and general manager of the Unmanned Systems & Integrated Solutions business at FLIR. “In an era of increased joint service operations in combat zones worldwide, having common equipment across EOD units can support more standardized tactics and techniques, plus add new efficiencies in sustainment and training for years to come.

“Our team is incredibly proud to know all four branches of America’s armed services have chosen Centaur as their mid-sized EOD robot. And, more importantly, that our technology is helping so many warfighters keep out of harm’s way,” Wells added.

In 2017, the U.S. Army selected Endeavor Robotics, acquired last year by FLIR, as its medium-sized robot provider for MTRS Inc II. The company designed Centaur as its MTRS solution. FLIR is delivering robots to the Army under that multi-year program of record, which upon award was valued at more than $150 million, including options. These latest orders fall under the current ceiling.

Centaur is a medium-sized UGV that provides a standoff capability to detect, confirm, identify, and dispose of hazards. Weighing roughly 160 pounds, the open-architecture robot features an advanced EO/IR camera suite, a manipulator arm that reaches over six feet, and the ability to climb stairs. Modular payloads can be used for CBRNE detection and other missions.

Deliveries are expected to begin in the third quarter of 2020. For more on FLIR Systems’ Unmanned Ground Systems platforms, visit www.flir.com/UIS/UGS