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| Decontamination wipe applied for toxic chemical removal (Image source: First Line Tech LLC) |
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With the recent calamities such as those in Japan and the tornado that stormed South Eastern States in the US, there is a heightened interest within the textile community on the textile and fibrous structures which can protect and help in catastrophic situations. These textile materials are commonly referred to as protective textiles, military clothing and personnel protective clothing. These textile structures can be formed using different fabric forming systems such as woven, nonwovens, knits and multiple forms of these individual forms to develop composite fabric forms.
Chemical protective clothing
The joint service lightweight integrated protective technology commonly referred to as JSLIST is the currently fielded technology in the US army to protect soldiers from chemical warfare attacks. This technology is based on beaded charcoal and the principle mechanism is basically adsorption. The US military is interested in developing next generation military clothing which will lessen the burden to the soldiers by reducing the weight of JSLIST garment. In many interactions the author had with military researchers, it has to come to light that, although the militaries around the world want to totally eliminate the use of activated charcoal in chemical protective garments, it is highly unlikely that this can occur. The best scenario is to reduce the weight of charcoal in chemical protective garment and enhance the overall protective capabilities of the suit by incorporating catalytic disruptive-adsorption chemistries.
Alkoxides or metaloxides are known to have catalytic reactions on chemical warfare agents such as organophosphorous or G-agents. Textile fabrics can be functionalized with a number of chemistries such as metal oxides and even catalytic enzymes to degrade chemical toxins. Textile fabrics can serve as a launch medium for disruptive chemistries and at the same time can serve as an adsorbent/filter medium to hold the degraded toxins.
Decontamination
The chemical and biological defense program of US military categorizes the protection strategies into: 1. shaping, 2. sensing, 3. shielding and 4. sustaining. Among these four categories, textile materials play important roles in shielding, sustaining and even sensing capabilities. For example, textile materials such as highly efficient wipes which are referred to as decontamination wipes can be used to sustain a soldier or a military equipment that has been contaminated with toxins. This is known as decontamination.
Lubbock-based Texas Tech University developed a dry pad that can be used as an integral component of next generation decontaminant system. Needlepunching nonwoven technology has been used in the development of a multilayered absorptive-adsorptive nonwoven pad that can be used to not only clean military personnel but also contaminated military equipment. This technology, which is currently in market place, has been evaluated for its chemical adsorptive capability involving real mustard, a chemical warfare agent by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). The evaluation by LLNL showed that the dry pad has good toxic chemical retention and chemical compatibility with strong acids and bases. The dray pad known as Fibertect has been recommended to be a part of next generation Low-cost Personal Decontamination System (LPDS). This LPDS consists of dry Fibertect pad and a chemical reactive compound known as Reactive Skin Decontamination Lotion (RSDL). RSDL is a Canadian military invention and is currently marketed by Bracco, which is an international company active in health care products based in Italy. The dry nonwoven pad, Fibertect is manufactured by US-based Hobbs Bonded Fibers Inc. US-based First Line Technology, LLC, a solution provider for first responders and military has successfully taken Fibertect to the market place. The decontamination wipe is marketed either as a standalone wipe or as a part of LPDS.
Textile materials such as personnel protective clothing and facemasks serve as the first line defense tools in manmade and natural disaster situations around the world. In high-level threat situations, textiles can definitely be a part of the combinatorial solution to save lives. As these textiles counter disastrous situations they are definitely disaster mitigating textiles and can be commonly referred to as counter threat textiles.
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