New method for chemoterrorism developed
three members of the Japanese Red Army, on behalf of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, (PFLP), killed 24 people and injured 80 others at Israel’s national airport. “I am trying to walk in his footsteps by doing applied research that can be a practical tool in an important battle,” says Katzir.
The modified optical fiber can detect “colors” in the IR spectrum that distinguish between pure and contaminated water. The spectrum is invisible to the naked human eye and perceived only by certain animals that use it to track down prey. “With our naked eyes we can’t distinguish between pure water and water that contains a small amount of alcohol or acetone. They’re all clear. We can’t do it even with a spectrophotometer, which measures visible colors,” explains Katzir. “But we can clearly distinguish between liquids using an infrared spectrometer which can distinguish between ‘colors’ in the invisible infrared spectrum.”
Connected to a commercial IR spectrometer, the fibers serve as sensors that can detect and notify authorities immediately if a contaminant has entered a water reservoir, system, building or pipeline. Such an instrument could be used to detect hazardous chemicals, pollutants and threats in the water.
The special fiber sensors enable real-time monitoring of water quality in remote locations, such as a lake, a river, or a pipeline. Currently, there is no system in place to detect chemical threats, whether intentional or accidental, instantaneously. Katzir says that the system he proposes can be ready for use in less than a year.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), “drinking water can be tested around the clock, including hourly, monthly, quarterly, and annually, depending on the location and size of the public water system”. Note that CDC uses the word “can,” not “is.” In practice, water authorities in the United States test water reservoirs usually once every day or two. Katzir notes that his automatic notification system “can cut millions of dollars from the cost of testing water manually.”
In lab tests, the fiber-optic system detected poisons such as pesticides in amounts well below the World Health Organization safety threshold. Preliminary field experiments have already been done at several European sites, and the results were reported recently in the Journal of Applied Spectroscopy. Katzir says that water management executives in Florida’s Everglades and officials in Germany are among those who have expressed an interest in the technology.
The sensors are biocompatible, non-soluble and non-toxic, he adds. “You can eat them and nothing will happen to you.”
How real is the threat of chemo-terrorism? “Toxic materials are readily available as pesticides or herbicides in the agriculture industry, and can be harmful if consumed even in concentrations as low as few parts per million,” says Katzir, who feels that skyscrapers in cities such as New York are a likely point of attack. “It’s unlikely that someone will poison the water supply in Afghanistan, but America is in grave danger and needs to arm itself against chemical threats to its drinking water,” he concludes.
