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Page Updated:
25-Sep-2006
SPS Homepage > News 2005
Workshop
on medical treatment and decontamination
of chemical agents following
terrorist attack
A NATO-sponsored workshop was held in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine, from
25-28 January, to examine medical and decontamination responses to terrorist
attack by chemical agent. The aim of the workshop was to recommend scientific
approaches and practical means for dealing with chemical agent casualties
following a terrorist attack, with emphasis on improving the medical
treatment and decontamination methods. The arsenal of chemical agents that can be used by terrorists is almost
unlimited. In addition to chemical weapons, terrorists could exploit
various toxic chemicals from agriculture, the chemical industry, or other
industrial facilities. In coordinating counter-terrorist actions, states
call upon different agencies, including army units, civil defence and
medical services. Military and civil defence planners face very different
situations when planning for a potential chemical attack. The undoubted
expertise of the military is usually geared towards chemical warfare,
while civilian agencies, potentially dealing with a wide range of chemical
agents, face such problems as lack of training at all levels of society,
including physicians, or lack of a stockpile of antidotes and other life-saving
aids. The basis of the workshop’s discussions was counter-terrorism
coordination among these different state agencies and units, looking
to improve planning and preparation by army units, civil defence and
their medical services, taking into account the following problem areas:
- risk assessment of the use of chemical agents as terrorist
agents, with particular attention to toxic industrial chemicals;
- update assessment of effective toxic levels, covering both
known chemical weapons and chemicals of industrial origin;
- assessment of available capability and technological devices
for the detection and identification or a broad range of chemical compounds;
- modernisation and optimisation of individual protection,
with particular emphasis on respiratory protection and protective clothing;
- inventory and assessment of the available means for medical
treatment of chemical intoxication;
- assessment of the required amounts and types of antidotes,
in view of the broad range of potentially toxic agents, and how to
keep updated
with the development and introduction of new compounds;
- assessment of the available means for indication and control
of chemical contamination and the effectiveness of decontamination,
considering the
broader range of potentially toxic agents and the available state-of-the-art
technologies.
Workshop co-directors were Prof. Christophor Dishovsky, Military Medical
Academy, Sofia, Bulgaria (chdishov@iph.bio.bas.bg) and Prof. Alexander
Pivovarov, Ukrainian State Chemical-Technology University, Dnepropetrovsk,
Ukraine (apivo@ua.fm). Some thirty specialists from ten countries attended.
A report on the workshop will be published in the NATO Security Through
Science Series.
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