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The EPA is enhancing the nation’s ability to respond to and recover from a chemical warfare agent (CWA) incident through research to develop environmental countermeasures and response exercises/training. Recently, researchers and responders were brought together to conduct ...

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Homeland Security Research Program has been conducting research to evaluate the efficacy of air cleaning and treatment technologies against infectious bioaerosols. The COVID-19 pandemic has increased interest in these technol...

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Sandia National Laboratories have developed the Water Network Tool for Resilience (WNTR) to quantify resilience of drinking water distribution systems. WNTR is a Python package designed to simulate disaster scenarios and analyze impact...

Legionella pneumophila (Lp) is an opportunistic pathogen that causes respiratory infections primarily through inhalation of contaminated aerosols. Lp can colonize premise plumbing systems due to favorable growth conditions found within those environments (e.g. lower disinfectant ...

Ricin is a highly toxic protein, capable of inhibiting protein synthesis within cells, and is produced from the beans of the Ricinus communis (castor bean) plant. Numerous recent incidents involving ricin have occurred, many in the form of mailed letters resulting in both buildin...

Legionella pneumophila (Lp) is an opportunistic pathogen that causes respiratory infections primarily through inhalation of contaminated aerosols. Lp can colonize premise plumbing systems due to favorable growth conditions found within those environments (e.g. lower disinfectant ...

Drinking water utilities are vulnerable to both human-caused and natural disasters that can impact the system infrastructure and the delivery of potable water to consumers. Resilience analysis can help utilities identify high-risk areas in their system and understand how to bette...

Many aqueous film forming foam (AFFF) delivery systems in aircraft hangars and firefighting vehicles may require thorough cleaning to avoid ongoing environmental impacts from residual per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) within those systems. Though replacement AFFF formula...

Many aqueous film forming foam (AFFF) delivery systems in aircraft hangars and firefighting vehicles may require thorough cleaning to avoid ongoing environmental impacts from residual per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) within those systems. Though replacement AFFF formula...

This review summarizes the literature on efficacy of techniques to sterilize soil. Soil may need to be sterilized if contaminated with pathogens such as Bacillus anthracis. Sterilizing soil in-situ minimizes spread of the bio-contaminant. Soil is difficult to sterilize, with effi...

Large-scale disasters have the potential to generate a significant amount of waste. For example, Hurricane Katrina and the Joplin Missouri tornado resulted in 100 million and 1.5 million cubic yards of waste, respectively. Man-made chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear (...

Argonne is building an intelligent computer application, the Radiological Recovery Logistics Tool (RRLT), to assist the understanding and allocation of resources for a mitigation and recovery effort. RRLT output will be a list of recommended methods and tools to accomplish the sp...

Summary of the research investigating the fate of pesticides on porous surfaces, including the transport into permeable paint or sealant and porous sublayers. The mis- or overuse of pesticides continues to occur across the USA in relation to the bed bug epidemic. The fate and tra...

This study characterized Bacillus globigii (BG) as a Bacillus anthracis Sterne (BAS) surrogate for wastewater treatment-related studies of UV inactivation, adsorption onto powdered activated carbon (PAC), and bioaerosol emission. The inactivation of BG was faster than that of BAS...

A precipitation event’s drop size distribution (DSD) is a key characteristic and plays a critical role in quantitative precipitation estimation. In this study, DSD measurements were collected by a Parsivel2 disdrometer in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, U.S. from October 20...

The Equitable Resilience Builder (ERB) is a newly released tool to support community resilience planning. ERB is a downloadable application that supports communities in strengthening resilience to disasters and climate change. It walks a core team of users through a guided proces...

Microplastics are ubiquitous in the environment and present potential adverse effects on human and environmental health. EPA's Office of Research and Development is interested in developing sampling and analytical methods for microplastic detection, investigating their effects on...

Ricin is a highly toxic protein, capable of inhibiting protein synthesis within cells, and is produced from the beans of the Ricinus communis (castor bean) plant. Numerous recent incidents involving ricin have occurred, many in the form of mailed letters resulting in both buildin...

Industrial and waste management facilities can emit air pollutants and odorous compounds from fugitive leaks, process malfunctions, and area sources that are difficult to predict, quantify, and manage. These sources can produce a range of environmental and life quality impacts an...

Extensive research in recent years has reported higher per- and polyfluoroalkyl substance (PFAS) concentrations in municipal solid waste (MSW) landfill leachate than other municipal wastewaters, including multiple studies of leachate from MSW landfills in the United States. Becau...

This presentation will examine how serious games are being used to enhance the US Environmental Protection Agency’s (US EPA’s) emergency response mission, by improving the ability of the emergency response community to quickly and effectively respond to a range of env...

Should biosolids be contaminated with an intentional malicious release or natural outbreak of Bacillus anthracis spores, a water resource recovery facility (WRRF) may need to consider if their treatment processes can sufficiently inactivate this pathogen. Three methods commonly e...

Disaster debris removal is essential for community recovery and resilience. However, it is a lengthy, costly, and logistically challenging part of response and recovery operations. Managing waste in a disaster situation requires the coordination of multiple entities at ...

The Sample Collection Plan (SCP) Template Tool for Addressing Radiochemical Analytes in Environmental Matrices is intended to provide a “ready-to-go” outline for creating a SCP in EPA-report format. The Tool provides a general description of the types of information and sections ...

Bacillus anthracis, the causative agent of inhalation anthrax, is one of the most highly studied biological threat agents. Significant gaps remain related to the remediation of a wide area following such biological release. This extends to the remediation of critical assets owned...