Efficacy of liquid and foam decontamination technologies for chemical warfare agents on indoor surfaces

Decontamination of personal protective equipment and related materials contaminated with toxic industrial chemicals and chemical warfare agent surrogates

“…This is not too surprising for both technologies as bleach has been used successfully for many types of (building) decontamination [2][3][4][5] while RSDL® is designed for decontamination of skin where effectiveness in a short period of time would be a highly critical parameter. Nevertheless, none of the decontamination solutions were able to neutralize more than 90%, which was observed for longer (30-60 min) contact times between, e.g., full strength bleach and…”

“…Decontamination products were COTS products and were selected based on: (1) their traditional use in decontamination line procedures (e.g., detergent and water [11]); (2) their known chemistry against (some of) the chemicals (e.g., sodium hypochlorite-containing bleach products [2][3][4][5]); (3) products that were developed specifically for chemical (building or skin) decontamination (e.g., EasyDecon® DF200 [2,4] and Reactive Skin Decontamination Lotion (RSDL®) [12]; or (4) decontaminants that may be brought in during a response when the contaminant is unknown or a mixture of biologicals and chemicals (e.g., Steriplex® Ultra, a sporicidal product). Except for detergent and water, diluted bleach, and pH-amended bleach, these products do not require water during preparation, making them more Table 3.…”

“…The Department of Defense (DoD) decontamination manual [1] calls attention to the fact that decontamination of chemical and biological agents is fundamentally different from hazardous material (HAZMAT) decontamination. Researchers examining decontamination practices for highly toxic CWAs have noticed that decontamination practices should be tailored to the chemical encountered to maximize efficacy and minimize the risk of transferring contamination from the scene [2,3]. Further, as an attack with chemical or biological agent is a low probability-high consequence event, finding decontamination procedures to be inadequate through 'lessons learned' resulting from late-manifesting health effects may have significant consequences.…”

“…Previous studies have examined technologies for decontamination of biological and chemical agents on both military [4] and civilian surfaces [2,5], but very few studies have examined the effectiveness of these technologies against chemical or biological agents on PPE-related surfaces. Methods for a realistic evaluation of hazard reduction due to responder PPE decontamination are not well established.…”

Recent Advances in Decontamination of Chemical Warfare Agents

“…Love 52 , et al evaluated the efficacy of different decontamination formulations (solutions and foams) on indoor surfaces using bench-scale testing after exposure to the liquid chemical warfare agents sarin (GB), soman (GD), sulfur mustard (HD), and VX. Their results suggested that the different characteristics needed for an ideal and universal decontamination technology may be incompatible in a single formulation and a strategy for decontaminating a complex facility will require a range of technologies.…”