ABSTRACT
I. Introduction............................................................................................................................ 51 II. Background............................................................................................................................ 52 III. Approach and Methodology .................................................................................................. 56 IV. Results and Discussion .......................................................................................................... 63
A. Blood Agents (Hydrogen Cyanide) ............................................................................... 64 B. Blister Agents (Vesicants) ............................................................................................. 65 C. Incapacitating Agents..................................................................................................... 65 D. Toxins ............................................................................................................................ 65 E. Botulinum Toxins .......................................................................................................... 66 F. Ricin ............................................................................................................................... 66 G. Staphylococcal Enterotoxin B (SEB) ............................................................................ 66 H. Trichothecene Mycotoxin T-2 ....................................................................................... 67
V. Conclusions............................................................................................................................ 67 References ....................................................................................................................................... 67
The use of chemical warfare agents (CWAs) and other weapons of mass destruction (WMD) by terrorists to contaminate military drinking-water supplies and our domestic water systems is a reality. In addition to the WMD (which include Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, and Explosive-CBRNE), toxic industrial chemicals (TICs) and toxic industrial materials (TIMs) are also of concern. TIMs, unlike TICs, which have a defined chemical structure, do not consist of an exact or constant composition of a particular chemical, but a variety or mixture of many chemicals. Examples of TIMs include asbestos (variety of fibers and minerals) and gasoline (composition varies with octane level, manufacturer, and season of manufacture) (Salem, 2006). On February 13, 2001, President George W. Bush, in an address at the Norfolk Naval Air Station in Norfolk, Virginia, stated ‘‘ . . . the grave threat from nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons has not gone away with the Cold War. It has evolved into many separate threats, some of them harder to see, and harder to answer. And the adversaries seeking these tools of terror are less predictable and more diverse’’ (Bush, 2001). Water infrastructure systems are highly linked with other infrastructures, especially electrical power, transportation, and the chemical industry, making security of all of them an issue of concern (Copeland and Cody, 2006). The spectrum of Chemical and Biological warfare agents that need to be considered as threats to both military and civilian populations is
presented in Table 3.1 (Salem, 2003). This spectrum is from the clearly chemical to the clearly biological, with midspectrum agents such as emerging chemicals, including those that are protection defeating, physical incapacitants, and nontraditional agents, as well as bioregulators producing pain, sleep, mood enhancers, and blood pressure effects, to toxins from plants, bacteria, or animals (Salem et al., 2004).
