Safeguarding Military Lives and Health via Superior Monitoring of Environmental and Personal Chemical Exposures
Abstract
Incidents such as exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam, burn pit exposure in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Gulf War Syndrome illustrate the vital need for improving the monitoring of chemical exposures to military personnel. Advancements have been made in developing systems and processes that enable correlation of epidemiological research with environmental monitoring information to identify links between deployment-related exposures and post deployment health outcomes. Unfortunately, progress is hampered by a lack of complete exposure data for affected individuals. Linking health outcomes to environmental exposures requires small, light, and low-cost personal samplers that can sample the air that a person breathes and measure their exposure to volatile, semi-volatile, or reactive chemicals. Current vapor sampling technologies and products based on charcoal, molecular sieves, modified polymers, and other proprietary media are limited in their ability to capture volatile and highly-volatile chemical vapors; and have special storage and handling requirements. As a result, customers and end-users require multiple types of samplers to conduct environmental monitoring and breathing zone assessments increasing complexity and costs for analyses. XploSafe has developed Vapor Nanoconfinement Technology, which demonstrates high absorption capacity and a proven capability to sample (capture, stabilize, and release) a wide range of chemical analytes. This technology has been evaluated through the determination of the sampling rates of 70+ target analytes with different volatilities, and representing various chemical classes, using XploSafe’s proprietary OSU-6 (nanoporous silica) that adsorbs analytes through nanoconfinement within its nanopores. This mechanism is unlike that of industry standard sorbents, which depend on planar Van der Waals forces or interactions with specific functional groups. XCel+ passive diffusive samplers developed using this technology have low limits of detection (in low nanograms) and provide a comprehensive sampling range: short term (15 mins, 8 hours) and longer term (days, week, potentially months) across operational environments (warm, cold, humid, dry, etc.). XploSafe proposes the expansion of its vapor nonconfinement technology for the sampling of pesticides, nerve agent surrogates, herbicides, fuels and other petroleum products, and insect repellents including, but not limited to, organophosphates and carbamates that are prioritized in the TERP program goals. XploSafe will target to develop sampling rates for 20 analytes that are prioritized in the TERP Program Goals. These represent at least 8 classes of chemicals including pesticides, herbicides, fuels and petroleum products, insect repellants, organophosphates, toxic industrial chemicals, burn pit chemicals and chemical weapon surrogates. Operational test studies are planned to establish the utility of the sampler in real-world conditions. Sampling rates and maximum sampling capacity, limits of detection and quantification will be established for the target analytes. Finally, the developed sampling rates will be incorporated into XploSafe’s data repository platform (DRP) software to enable data sorting and exporting of required sampling and analytical data to leadership for Individual Longitudinal Exposure Record (ILER) reporting. With this project, XploSafe will address one TERP Program Goal and two Topic and Focus Areas: TERP Program Goal. Predict and prevent toxic exposures by identifying strategies that can anticipate, identify, monitor and protect Service Members and the American public from adverse effects of exposures to toxic substances. Topic and Focus Areas: Topic Area 1. Airborne Hazards and Burn Pits. Focus Area 6. Other research focused on airborne hazards and burn pits that addresses a TERP Program Goal. Topic Area 2. Other Military Service-Related Toxic Exposures in General, Including Prophylactic M
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Jan 04, 2024
- Source ID
- HT94252311012
Entities
People
- Evgueni Kadossov
Organizations
- United States Army