Real-time warning of biological-agent attacks with the Canadian Integrated Biochemical Agent Detection System II (CIBADS II)
✍ Scribed by Greg A. Luoma; Pierre P. Cherrier; Laszlo A. Retfalvi
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1999
- Weight
- 251 KB
- Volume
- 3
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 1086-900X
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
The Gulf War highlighted the growing threat of military use of chemical and biological (CB) weapons. Since that time revelations about the size and scope of the offensive CB agent programs in the former Soviet Union, Iraq, and other nations have confirmed this assessment. Further, terrorist threats and incidents throughout the world in recent years have shown that there is a growing potential for the civilian use of CB weapons. Many countries have undertaken programs to develop improved defenses against CB agent use, focusing on more effective detection systems as the key to providing advanced warning of an attack or mitigating the effectiveness of an attack. Requirements for detection systems include real-time detection to provide warning in time to avoid exposure, near-real-time identification to identify agents in time to treat casualties, and collection of samples for independent verification of use to validate any response. The Canadian Integrated Biochemical Agent Detection System (CIBADS II) is the first system to combine reliable real-time detection with low support requirements and automated operation to enhance ease of deployment. A key element of the CIBADS II is the fluorescence aerodynamic particle sizer (FLAPS), which can distinguish particles that contain live organisms from most other respirable particles in air. The follow-on version of CIBADS II, called 4WARN, enhances the advantages of CIBADS II through the development of more effective alarm algorithms while reducing the size, weight, and power requirements of the system. The present article will summarize the results of over 100 releases of simulants at four sets of field trials (Dugway Proving Ground, Utah, and the Defence Research Establishment Suffield, Canada) where CIBADS II has reliably detected concentrations of simulants below 10 agentcontaining particles per liter of air (ACPLA), with low false-alarm rates. It is able to discriminate releases of biological aerosols from normal background aerosols