It’s 7:45 a.m. Just your average Tuesday morning. You’re waiting in line for the coffee machine at work when the sudden shriek of a fire alarm splits the air. A puff of white powder from an envelope in the mail room across the hall has coworkers streaming out the exits as a call goes out to the local emergency response team. It will be up to these first responders, with their handheld bioagent detection devices, to determine if this scare is a hoax or the real deal.
 Biowarfare Agent Detector
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Biowarfare agent detection kits have become one of local government’s most coveted weapons in the war on terrorism. They are carried by emergency units likely to be first on the scene—from fire departments, police and sheriff’s personnel, emergency medical teams and HAZMAT units, to Federal emergency management teams and privately hired corporate security professionals. They are designed to address the second step in a biowarfare incident response: identifying whether there is a credible threat posed by the incident while field samples are sent to a lab for next-day confirmation.
A credible threat is defined as the presence of a biowarfare agent in sufficient quantity to represent a threat to people who come into contact with the substance. A single infectious dose (I.D.) of anthrax is approximately 10,000 spores, or 10 nanograms, which is about 1/100th the size of a single speck of dust. Clearly, locating this amount in an average size room is virtually impossible. However, in the case of actual bioterrorism activity to date, as well as the many thousands of hoax incidents that occur much more frequently, the amounts used have been much larger. For example, the letter sent to Senator Daschle’s office in October 2001 contained approximately 2 grams of material, the equivalent of about 200,000 infectious doses.
To ensure accuracy of results, detectors such as the new BioWarfare Agent Detection Device (BADD™) carried by Cole-Parmer, are rated to detect at least 1/4 of a speck of dust (250 micrograms) and have been found capable of identifying anthrax spores in amounts as small as 1 nanogram, or 1/1000 of a speck of dust without generating false positive results from “close cousin” bacteria such as Bacillus globigil.
These self-contained, first response kits operate much like a home pregnancy test. They rely on a simple swabbing of the suspicious powder or liquid, which is then diluted with a special diluent and placed, in droplets, into a self-contained cassette-type test strip. The results, positive or negative, are available and visible to the human eye in three to 30 minutes, depending upon the concentration of the sample tested.
In the case of the BADD detector, which is capable of testing for ricin and botulinum toxins, and three strains of anthrax (Ames, Vollum, and Sterne), two test lines containing antibodies specific to the biowarfare agent being tested for “light up” when the agent is present in the sample—thus signaling a “positive” reading. If only one “control” line appears in the detection device window, it signifies a “negative” reading.
Although not as sophisticated as the $10,000- to $100,000-per-unit electronic reader systems used by the military and others, these sensitive test kits are easily transported, and provide all necessary materials to collect and test multiple samples in the field. Moreover, at roughly $50 per test, they are reliable and cost-effective, allowing wide deployment and use at minimal cost.
[As for the Federal government's recommendations, recent guidelines from the General Services Administration targeted specifically for mail handling at Federal agency mail rooms stated that handheld assay tests may produce unreliable results in certain circumstances and recommended that all samples be sent to certified laboratories for processing. However, as of August 2, 2002, the International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC) withdrew its support of the ban, and directed fire departments and other first responders to follow the Centers for Disease Control guidelines for handling potential exposure to anthrax, and strongly advised fire departments to not rely solely upon handheld devices. These guidelines are consistent with the recommendations of all the major field detection device manufacturers.]
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Good points all around. Truly apcprieated.