Analy tical Chemistry at the
Forefront of Homeland Defense
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America’s war against terrorism and weapons of mass destruction has a new frontline: its own backyard. The future of homeland defense begins with science and analytical chemistry.
n 1995, members of the Japanese religious cult Aum Shinrikyo released the deadly chemical nerve agent and weapon of mass destruction known as sarin as they quietly exited five of Tokyo’s crowded subway cars. The odorless poison quickly engulfed its unsuspecting victims until, minutes later, passengers began spilling out of the subway cars gasping and complaining of dizziness, shortness of breath, and burning eyes. The result: 12 people dead and more than 5000 injured.
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In October 2001, a month after the infamous September 11th (9-11) attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., anthrax-laced letters began littering mailboxes and mailrooms across the United States. The result: six civilians dead, millions frightened, and a country now faced with the realization that
American civilians are the new targets for bioterrorists. Sarin gas, mustard gas, and anthrax are all effective and deadly weapons of mass destruction; there may be no way to completely protect American citizens from an attack from any of them. However, President Bush and his Homeland
Wilder D. Smith S E P T E M B E R 1 , 2 0 0 2 / A N A LY T I C A L C H E M I S T R Y
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Security Advisory Council agree that protecting civilians on the home front has to be a team effort, beginning with science and technology. In this article, Analytical Chemistry looks at how scientists, industrial companies, and government officials are developing analytical instruments in the hopes of contributing to that team effort to secure homeland defense.
Choosing your weapon “To use anthrax as a weapon was so predictable,” says Myron Sasser of the Delaware-based company MIDI, Inc. Anthrax is relatively easy to grow outside the laboratory, and making it weapons-grade material is as easy as applying an antistatic spray found at a local convenience store. The diagnosis of anthrax is not immediate because it takes a couple of days for its symptoms— black skin lesions, fever, neck swelling, severe throat pain, or ulcers at the base of the tongue—to appear. With chemical agents, the signs of contamination are more immediate. “If it is [a chemical agent], you will have people dying
right there in the street,” says Charles Churchill, a sergeant in the hazardous materials (hazmat) unit of the New York Police Department’s (NYPD) emergency response unit. Therefore, fast detection is vital in attacks with chemical weapons of mass destruction. “If you are going to protect people from chemical or nerve agents, you have to be able to detect them very, very fast,” says Wayne Bryden of Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory (APL). “The analytical tools you need are IR spectroscopy, ion-mobility spectrometers, mass spectrometers . . . things that give you answers in seconds,” he says.
Protecting first responders Perhaps no group values fast detection as much as fire, rescue, and hazmat personnel. They are typically the first responders to any chemical or biological threat. Because they are usually only armed with bulky protective suits, having an instrument that quickly alerts them to which chemical or biological agents may be present allows them to take the necessary safety precautions. First responders are not necessarily concerned with determining the exact type of agent being used, just its nature—chemical or biological, says Churchill. “Our main objective is to save lives,” he says “However, in doing so, you don’t want to become a victim or statistic yourself.” The market for analytical instruments in homeland defense seems to be growing tremendously. “A lot of the equipment that is immediately applicable for homeland defense involves [GC], but
COURTESY OF AGILENT TECHNOLOGIES
(Above) Mobile lab donated by Agilent Technologies to NYPD. (Right) Interior of mobile lab showing Agilent 6890 GC with mass-selective detector.
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there are tremendous opportunities for [LC], lab on a chip, bioanalyzers, and DNA scanners and arrays,” says Bill Finch of Agilent Technologies. Other analytical techniques, such as X-ray diffraction, microwave/millimeter-wave scanning, nuclear quadrupole resonance, portable ion-mobility spectrometry, and optical methods, also are likely to play a part. Many private companies and research laboratories are working independently on new analytical instruments to assist first responders. One such company is Agilent Technologies, which recently donated to the NYPD a mobile laboratory that is specifically designed to assist with on-the-spot collection and analysis of suspected chemical and biological agents. The laboratory combines two labs into one, is the size of a standard recreational camper, and has an onboard GC/MS system that uses an anthrax-specific identification software program from MIDI. Contaminated samples are received in the rear of the van, prepared under an in-house fume hood, and then transferred to a clean room in the front of the van. “Historically, [such] labs are used by the military and environmental companies,” says Dom Testa of Agilent. However, the events of 9-11 and afterward inspired Agilent’s employees to find a technology that would better protect civilians and first responders. “In thinking of what could happen down the road, we thought it was more prudent to bring the equipment to the scene,” says Finch. Other groups are partnering with government agencies. Bryden and colleagues at APL have partnered with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency—the central research and development organization for the Department of Defense—to create an air-particle detection system that uses MALDI MS to generate signatures of potential agents. The system is designed to perform around-the-clock analyses of the air in buildings. Scientists at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) are using Raman spectroscopy to identify suspected hazardous materials housed inside sealed containers. “Raman is nondestructive, so you don’t alter evidence by analyzing it,” says Scott Harvey of PNNL. “Most importantly, you don’t risk exposing your personnel.” Bill Wright, also of PNNL, agrees. “Instruments speak to the homeland defense initiative by being able to be transported to the site to conduct rapid on-site analysis without the need to disturb the sample,” he says.
sensors before advancing. “The civilian population isn’t like that,” says Catherine Fenselau at the University of Maryland– College Park. “People are used to coming and going and aren’t likely to carry bulky gas masks [everywhere] or wait for an airquality readout before going into a subway,” she says. Instead, Fenselau and other scientists believe civilians would be more receptive to smaller, lapel-size flashing sensors or smoke-alarmsize air-quality detectors that could give more immediate results, but such products are not available yet.
If you are going to protect people from chemical or nerve agents, you have to be able to detect them very, very fast.
Sensors One portable analytical tool that is already making an impact in the war against weapons of mass destruction is the chemical sensor. Chemical sensors range from gas chromatographs to surface acoustic-wave sensors to optical instruments, and they are usually small in size. Sensors have been a part of the military’s arsenal against weapons of mass destruction for years. When threatened by chemical or biological attack, troops are trained to collect air or water samples and wait for the “green light” to be given by the
—Wayne Bryden, APL
Mass spectrometry A major issue with sensors is that they are too one-dimensional—that is, they can only confirm what is already believed to be there—and, therefore, are unable to inform the first responders of other possible harmful agents. “What you want is something that covers the entire [spectrum] of the threat,” says Bryden. “One way of doing that is mass spectrometry.” A recent report by the National Academies’ National Research Council, Making the Nation Safer: The Role of Science and Technology in Countering Terrorism, cites instruments that use MS for explosives detection because of its sensitivity and wide-ranging particle recognition. Another benefit of MS instruments is that their software can be upgraded to handle new harmful agents that come along. “For chemical attacks, I couldn’t imagine anything better than MS,” says Fenselau. MS makes it possible to obtain the spectra of all potential weapons of mass destruction, “but then you have to separate what you want from all that information,” says Bryden. This high clutter-to-signal ratio is often a problem for MS researchers.
Vulnerability Since 9-11, America has scrambled to implement new measures to ensure homeland security. Full-body GC/MS scanners and sensors that can detect the tacks in one’s shoe are now commonplace in America’s airports. The U.S. Capitol recently ordered 20,000 gas masks for lawmakers and their aides in the event of another biological attack. However, there are no detection systems for weapons of mass destruction in place for America’s water supply systems. This makes them the country’s most vulnerable sites. “We are talking about tens of thousands of [water] systems,” says Jared Cohon, president of Carnegie Mellon University and a member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council. The consensus among water supply officials is that the amount of chemical or biological agents needed to pollute America’s water systems would be extremely high, if not impossible, to reach because of the dilution factor. “On the other hand, claiming to have done it or S E P T E M B E R 1 , 2 0 0 2 / A N A LY T I C A L C H E M I S T R Y
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geting the public market, many companies know they are not going to sell 10,000 instruments, he says. And that factor alone represents too great a potential loss to those companies. “They aren’t going to make a big investment to only sell 5 or 10 of them,” says Bryden. For manufacturers, obtaining federal funding to make the technology inexpensive enough for the new civilian market is also an issue. “Currently, there is ~$37 billion designated for the homeland defense budget, with a portion being targeted to government agencies who operate analytical laboratories and do research,” says Testa. How the funding gets divided up between those agencies and private companies is unknown, he adds. Affordability to the civilian population is also an issue. “Currently, instrumentation is simply out of the price range that an individual could reasonably afford,” says Wright. And for the products that are available to the civilian market, there is another cause for concern. “We have a lot of witch doctors coming out of the woodworks trying to sell everything, especially in the biological field,” says Churchill. “If it has a ‘[weapons-of-mass-destruction]-approved’ or an ‘anti-terrorism’ sticker on it, it costs an extra $500,” he says. The quality of the products being offered to civilians is another issue among researchers and scientists. Fenselau stresses that a reduced price tag should not mean less quality. “Anything that is good enough for the military should be good enough for civilians,” she says. Even with today’s technology and the promise of future analytical instruments, can first responders and civilians ever truly feel prepared or safe? “You are never going to get 100% protection of everybody,” says Bryden. “Anytime we are under an attack, there are going to be casualties.” When the participants in this article were asked what they thought was needed to better prepare civilians and combat terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, the responses varied. Fenselau believes public alertness and a more hands-on approach is needed. “We all know that on an airplane, passengers have to enforce their own safety measures, and I think that is equally true at a rock concert or football game,” she says. Bryden advocates the development of instruments for faster recognition of potentially dangerous agents coupled with earlier warnings to the public. Churchill believes the tools most needed to assist first responders are education and public awareness. “The biggest problem for New York in last year’s anthrax attacks was people’s [mis]perception of what anthrax was, what it’s not, and what it can do,” he says.
creating a perception that the water supply is tainted might [have a] bigger impact than the agent itself,” says Cohon.
Affordability There is an ongoing debate over who has the greater responsibility for making technology to combat weapons of mass destruction available and affordable for civilians: private industry or government agencies. Cohon believes private industry has the most important role because the devices or methods that we adopt over time will be conceived and manufactured by the private sector. However, for many private or contractor companies, moving into the civilian market is both a business and a financial risk. Bryden acknowledges that the military has been the biggest market for private industry and defense contractors. But in tar466 A
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Wilder D. Smith is an assistant editor of Analytical Chemistry.
