Bio-Detector Assessment
Abstract
The Federal Response Plan charges the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) with the mission to respond either to spills or releases of hazardous materials and handle health, safety, and clean-up actions. EPA Environmental Response Teams (ERT), serving as technical advisors to On-Scene Coordinators, would like to improve their capability to respond to incidents involving agents of biological origin. To accomplish this, they would need the ability to handle samples in all forms (air, liquid, solid, vegetation) and to quickly perform presumptive analysis with an on-site, portable system. The ERT tasked the U.S. Army Edgewood Chemical Biological Center (ECBC) to provide guidance on how the ERT could implement a biological detection capability to support their decontamination mission under the Federal Response Plan and to also provide a limited analysis capability to support a wider mission. The objective of this report was to evaluate available biological detection and identification devices for their potential to meet EPA program needs, and to recommend the best candidate(s) for further testing. A structured decision analysis approach was followed to perform the assessment. A complementary layered approach, combining different devices and technologies, was ultimately recommended.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Mar 01, 2002
- Accession Number
- ADA404950
Entities
People
- Jerold R. Bottiger
- John D. Walther
- Michael T. Goode
- Peter A. Emanuel
- Peter A. Snyder
Organizations
- Edgewood Chemical Biological Center