Written by Simon Shepherdson Tuesday, 25 August 2009 14:25
WESTERN Australia’s ChemCentre will have a team on the ground when a simulated chemical and biological attack is launched in the Boston subway later this year.
However, the project aims to improve emergency response management planning and will pose no threat to commuters.
Organised by the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the exercise requires international cooperation to monitor the release and dispersal of safe, non-toxic tracer gases through subway systems.
ChemCentre’s Science Business Manager for Emergency Response, Steve Wilkinson, says the tests would allow scientists to measure movement of tracer gases through stations, along individual rail lines and through rail cars.
“This is an important project for ChemCentre and is on a much larger scale than previous experiments.
“The knowledge we gain through these exercises can be brought back and applied to Australian scenarios, assisting agencies involved in emergency management and increasing the safety of the community.”
The tracer gases being released and tracked are safe, inert and non-toxic, and have been used in similar airflow studies previously. The scale of the exercise – 30 stations monitored over 8 days – requires cooperation from a number of agencies to maintain minimum impact on commuters.
The Australian contingent for the study includes staff from ChemCentre and the Scientific Unit of the Victorian Metropolitan Fire Brigade. They will be joined by the UK Defence Science and Technology Laboratory and three US scientific laboratories.
ChemCentre established its relationship with the DHS through its previous experience in tracer gas studies and expertise in the management of chemical, biological and radiological response situations.
ChemCentre Emergency Response Chemist Erin James, who will join Dr Wilkinson and Research Chemist John Genovese for the December trip to the US, says that while ChemCentre has run similar exercises on a small scale in the Perth CBD, the Boston testing is on a much larger scale.
“We have done some testing at the Fremantle Passenger Terminal and at the underground train station in Perth so we have done something in a similar environment.
“We’ll be taking four infrared gas analysers over with us which intake the air from the surrounds and log the concentration of the tracer gas. Our analysers will be situated on the trains, looking at the concentration of gas that’s dispersed on train carriages.”
While funding for this style of testing has been based around prevention of terrorist threats, Ms James says the results could be used to improve management techniques in other applications, such as chemical spills, managing fire in confined environments or pollution control.
