An HSDW conversation on hazmat detection with Frank Thibodeau, vice president, Bruker Daltonics NBC Detection Corp.

Dangerous chemicals are moved about the United States every day. Each year, 1.7 to 1.8 million carloads of hazardous material (hazmat) are transported by rail in the United States, with two-thirds moving in tank cars. Toxic inhalation hazards (TIH) — gasses or liquids such as chlorine and anhydrous ammonia, which are especially hazardous if released — are a subset of hazardous materials. Railroads typically transport around 100,000 carloads of TIH each year, virtually all in tank cars. The safety record of rail transport is favorable, with rail carrier reducing hazmat accident rate by 86 percent between 1980 and 2005. The rail industry boasts that in 2005, for example, 99.997 percent of rail hazmat shipments reached their destination without a release caused by an accident. This is an impressive figure, but that still leaves fifty to sixty hazmat rail cars releasing their toxic chemicals each year as a result of an accident — with three or four of these being railcars carrying the especially deadly TIH (the figures are offered by the Association of American Railroads [AAR]).

In the post-9/11 climate, the risks inherent in such traffic have been attracting attention. More and more cities have passed legislation prohibiting railroad companies from ferrying hazardous materials through or near the city unless the materials are destined for the city’s own water purification or other facilities (these legal efforts, especially one by Washington, D.C., are making their way through the court system; see HSDW story). For its part, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has issued new and more demanding rules for hazmat rail tanker construction (see this HSDW story and this one).

The challenge of monitoring chemicals during shipment is as complex as the number and variety of dangerous (some, deadly dangerous) chemicals that can be contained for short- or long-haul delivery. The solution is not complex at all, at least not in theory. It requires only an instrument able to detect hazardous materials in minute concentrations, and identify them immediately and infallibly. Bruker Daltonics, of Billerica, Massachusetts, believes that its RAID-M handheld chemical-agent detector is that instrument.

The RAID-M is an ion mobility spectrometer that can detect, identify, classify, quantify, and monitor concentrations of both chemical warfare agents and toxic industrial chemical vapors in ambient air. It alerts the first responder to the presence of these agents by means of an audible alarm, visual alarm, and LED display readings. According to the