Management of Chemical Terrorism and Chemical Disasters

Though the possibility of terrorist groups obtaining chemical weapons and inflicting mass destruction are relatively low, the relevance of chemical agents still remains high since use of such chemical agents in causing potentially dangerous consequences remains very high. Sporadic chemical attacks and chemical disasters happen all over the world and they cause long lasting damages. Easy accessibility to variety of toxic industrial chemicals and the relatively simple know-how needed to synthesize chemical agents pose a serious threat. However, technological developments and the easy availability of information have empowered the security forces and the law enforcement agencies to formulate responsive mechanism to mitigate the ill effects of chemical disasters. Though the international and national agencies strive hard to ward off the debilitating effects of chemical agents and disasters, the capability of such efforts in addressing the potential risks remains doubtful. This review describes the characteristics and classification of chemical agents and toxic industrial chemicals, their physico – chemical properties, detection, decontamination and response by the security agencies and first responders in addressing the threat to mankind in the form of chemical terrorism and chemical disasters.

Perception, Education, and Training of the Chemical Terror Response of Firefighters

This study identifies the characteristics and influencing factors among survey respondents in response to domestic chemical terrorism by targeting firefighters sent to the front line of chemical accidents and chemical terrorism sites. It was carried out to present more efficient improvement measures for chemical terrorism. Regarding “Education and Training on Chemical Terrorism,” there were 3.01 points for “Education’s Information Transferability,” 2.65 points for “Satisfaction with Training Facilities,” 3.11 points for “Training (Theoretical) Effectiveness,” and 3.16 points for “Training (Practice) Effectiveness.” In total, 42.9% of the negative responses were regarding the satisfaction level of training facilities, demonstrating that domestic training facilities were the biggest problem in establishing current countermeasures. Rather than the training curriculum, it was judged that the training facilities were insufficient or absent, and it is necessary to secure and improve these facilities. Based on the survey results, training methods for team-level tactics and joint tactics between departments, hazard and risk assessment training for accident site commanders, and education on effective equipment utilization should be intensively conducted to secure safety and improve the response capabilities of field staff.

Design and development of a prototype for specific naked-eye detection of blister and nerve agents

In view of the strong need to strengthen the national security arising from chemical terrorism, a rapid, specific, and onsite detection of chemical warfare agents (CWA) employing a simple and...

First person – Justin Jacob

ABSTRACTFirst Person is a series of interviews with the first authors of a selection of papers published in Journal of Cell Science, helping early-career researchers promote themselves alongside their papers. Justin Jacob is first author on ‘Keratin 17 regulates nuclear morphology and chromatin organization’, published in JCS. Justin conducted the research described in this article while a PhD candidate in the laboratories of Pierre A. Coulombe (primary) and Michael J. Matunis, PhD (secondary) at Johns Hopkins University, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, Baltimore, MD, USA. He is now a supervisory chemist and chemical terrorism coordinator at the Clinical Toxicology Unit in the Public Health Lab Division at the Washington D.C. Department of Forensic Sciences. This unit involves a (1) drug monitoring program and a (2) laboratory response network for a chemical threats program.

Modeling and Risk Analysis of Chemical Terrorist Attacks: A Bayesian Network Method

The chemical terrorist attack is an unconventional form of terrorism with vast scope of influence, strong concealment, high technical means and severe consequences. Chemical terrorism risk refers to the uncertainty of the effects of terrorist organisations using toxic industrial chemicals/drugs and classic chemical weapons to attack the population. There are multiple risk factors infecting chemical terrorism risk, such as the threat degree of terrorist organisations, attraction of targets, city emergency response capabilities, and police defense capabilities. We have constructed a Bayesian network of chemical terrorist attacks to conduct risk analysis. The scenario analysis and sensitivity analysis are applied to validate the model and analyse the impact of the vital factor on the risk of chemical terrorist attacks. The results show that the model can be used for simulation and risk analysis of chemical terrorist attacks. In terms of controlling the risk of chemical terrorist attack, patrol and surveillance are less critical than security checks and police investigations. Security check is the most effective approach to decrease the probability of successful attacks. Different terrorist organisations have different degrees of threat, but the impacts of which are limited to the success of the attack. Weapon types and doses are sensitive to casualties, but it is the level of emergency response capabilities that dominates the changes in casualties. Due to the limited number of defensive resources, to get the best consequence, the priority of the deployment of defensive sources should be firstly given to governmental buildings, followed by commercial areas. These findings may provide the theoretical basis and method support for the combat of the public security department and the safety prevention decision of the risk management department.

A Study on the Improvement of Methodologies for Establishing a Vulnerability Classification of Chemical Terrorism in Public Facilities

Chemical terrorism using toxic and flammable gases, which could be fatal to the health of the human body, poses a serious threat to the security of most advanced countries, as well as those that are suffering from local disputes, due to the asymmetric information that exists between terrorist actors and victims. The countermeasures against chemical terrorism can be roughly divided into three stages: prevention, response, and probation. The critical factors for each professional response agency, and the personnel that determine the degree and range of chemical terrorism damage, are performing missions successfully in the process of the prevention and the response stage against chemical terrorism. To do this, conducting objective and systematical assessments on facilities that could potentially be the subject of chemical terrorism is more important than anything. In this study, we compared the existing domestic and foreign vulnerable classification systems for chemical terrorism, reviewed the current direction of improvement in domestic classification systems, and suggested more scientific and systematic methodologies through the vulnerability assessment on an actual public facility sample.