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Remediation Options for Porous Materials Contaminated with Persistent Chemical Warfare Agents VX and HD
Citation:
Oudejans, L. AND S. Chattopadhyay. Remediation Options for Porous Materials Contaminated with Persistent Chemical Warfare Agents VX and HD. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, EPA/600/R-17/348, 2017.
Impact/Purpose:
Under the National Response Framework, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is designated as the coordinating agency to prepare for, respond to, and recover from a threat to public health, welfare, or the environment caused by hazardous materials incidents to include chemical, biological, and radiological substances. The imminent threat of a chemical warfare agent release in infrastructural material, a building or a transportation hub is driving U.S. EPA’s Homeland Security Research Program (HSRP) to develop a research program that systematically evaluates potential decontamination technologies for chemical agents. EPA is tasked to remediate infrastructure or equipment contaminated with these agents after they are released. It is unknown how effective many of the available technologies are, especially for decontamination of porous or permeable materials. In this work, the efficacies of several remediation options were evaluated and the effect of the decontaminant on the building material was qualitatively measured. EPA addressed a high priority gap as identified by the HSRP’s EPA Program Office partners by evaluating the effectiveness of several decontaminant solutions on porous or permeable materials. In addition, the effect of the decontaminant on the building material was also assessed (qualitatively). Four commercially available decontaminant solutions were quantitatively evaluated for their ability to decontaminate two persistent chemical warfare agents (VX and HD) on permeable surfaces associated with subway-related materials of construction. Decontamination efficacies, defined as the percentage of agent removed from the material surface by decontamination efforts, were determined through testing to evaluate performance of each decontaminant for each surface type.
Description:
Report