Super Wipe:  Tech Researchers Create Innovative Product Used In Chemical Attacks.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Story last updated at 3/10/2009 - 1:41 am

A decontamination wipe created at a Texas Tech institute on the Reese Technology Center campus now seems destined for the pockets of thousands of U.S. soldiers and emergency workers, its makers say.

The wipe - a thin layer of carbon encased in absorbent fibers - is part of a new, model portable kit that a national lab designed for people to use after a chemical attack to clean equipment, skin and even sensitive eyes and wounds.

Geoffrey Mcallister/Lubbock Avalanche- Journal

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory introduced the low-cost kit - developed with money from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security - on Monday in its periodical, Science & Technology Review.

The pocket-sized packet contains the wipe, a yellow sponge saturated with skin decontamination lotion and a step-by-step instruction card. It would cost about $30 and could be stored inside a freezer bag.

Within minutes, a victim of a chemical attack or a first responder could rip open the packet, wipe the decontaminated area with the dry wipe to remove the bulk of the chemical and scrub the affected surface with the lotion-saturated sponge, neutralizing the chemical agent and decontaminating hard-to-reach areas, such as cracks in the surface of the skin, according the S&TR article. The used wipe and sponge could be resealed inside their original bag, halting the spread of toxins.

"I think it's a done deal. This is the product of the future, and I'm going to have it for my family," said Ron Kendall, the director of the Tech Institute for Environmental and Human Health, where the wipe was invented.

The Lawrence Livermore lab is associated with the University of California and is located in Livermore, Calif., about 48 miles east of San Francisco.

A limited system

Currently, the U.S. military relies on a skin decontamination lotion invented by the Canadian defense department to protect personnel in the event of a chemical attack.

The lotion is phasing out an older decontamination method, a packet that contains a stiff pad filled with carbon powder, said the Tech wipe's primary inventor, Seshadri Ramkumar, an associate professor of environmental toxicology and the head of the Non-woven and Advanced Materials Laboratory at the Institute for Environmental and Human Health.

Geoffrey Mcallister/Lubbock Avalanche-Journal

But the lotion and the pad have drawbacks.

The pad is a logistical nightmare, Ramkumar said. Once unfolded, clouds of fine, black carbon float from it. The dust can settle in nooks and crannies and cause breathing problems if inhaled, Ramkumar said. A second wipe is needed to clean up the mess. But the fly-away carbon is not just a housekeeping problem: There's a chance it could contain traces of the chemical it was used to clean, thereby spreading the area of contamination, he said.

The lotion, on the other hand, could harm sensitive equipment such as computers, cell phones and military vehicles, the associate professor said.

The Department of Defense called for a solution in 2003 and the Lawrence Livermore lab - one of the few labs in the nation authorized to handle lethal chemicals - committed to finding it, said William Smith, a chemical engineer at the lab and the leader of the team that developed the kit.

Several years earlier, Ramkumar had obtained Department of Defense funding to explore military applications for nonwoven materials.

Geoffrey Mcallister/Lubbock Avalanche-Journal

Nonwovens are made chemically, mechanically or thermally and can be up to 20 times cheaper to produce than wovens. A slew of products on the market are made this way, including diapers, disposable cleaning wipes, dryer sheets and envelopes.

Ramkumar, nicknamed Ram, made a name for himself in the textiles field at the age of 26. At the University of Leeds in England, he invented an artificial finger capable of measuring the quality of a fabric. The Indian native, the only-child of a retired teacher and accountant, came to Tech 10 years ago.

Around 2001, he and a small team, which varied in size from six to eight graduate students, set to work on creating a non-woven, dry decontamination wipe at the Reese Technology Center, the home of the Institute for Environmental and Human Health.

"I just felt Ram was going to successful and I was willing to put my money on it," Kendall remembered. "I knew this was a (Pentagon) priority and I knew if we could hit it, it would be tremendous for us."

Birth of a "multi-million-dollar industry"

Reese is a shuttered military base on the outskirts of Lubbock, where old barracks and brick buildings have been converted into offices, classrooms and labs. Ramkumar's lab is a squat building set amid fields of yellowed grass on the edge of the base. Mounds of paper and overflowing cardboard boxes mask swaths of floor and desk in his office, but the busy associate professor doesn't do the bulk of his work there.

"Ram works 24-7," Kendall said with a knowing laugh from his office in a nearby building.

The inventor spends most of his time in his lab, which is much neater. Spools of fabric fill a shelf. A row of computers lines one wall. Lab equipment lines another.

The wipe born here first set Tech abuzz near the turn of 2008 when the Lawrence Livermore lab announced it was more effective at soaking up dangerous chemicals than 30 similar products. The news won headlines across the country and outside it, too.

The super-durable wipe is manufactured using needle-punch technology, a process that uses thousands of tiny needles to create tightly woven fabrics. Its carbon layer traps chemical vapors and the two fiber layers, which sandwich the carbon and can be made of cotton or other absorbent materials, can soak up even highly corrosive chemicals without falling apart.

The Lawrence Livermore lab tested the effectiveness of its wipe-plus-lotion kit against sulfur mustard - one of the four most dangerous chemical warfare agents in existence and one of the most difficult to remove, Ramkumar said. The German army used sulfur mustard against British soldiers during World War I.

The oily liquid sometimes smells like mustard, onions or garlic, but can also have no odor; it can quickly morph into a vapor, hence the name "mustard gas." In its liquid form, sulfur mustard can cause second- and third-degree burns.

The two-part kit proposed by Lawrence Livermore was more effective than existing decontaminations systems in treating it, the lab found.

Smith envisions it being used not just by the military. It could be stored in stadiums, ambulances, fire trucks and police cars, he said.

Before that happens, though, it must undergo further testing for safety, he said. To be approved by the Food and Drug Administration for medical use, it must be tested against more chemicals agents and toxic industrial compounds, he said.

Ramkumar believes it's only a matter of time, perhaps a few years, before the wipe is in the hands of the military.

"Saving somebody's life is the greatest thing which you can do as a human," he said.

The FDA process could be accelerated depending on the demand for the kit, Smith said.

Even alone, the wipe represents "a multi-million dollar industry," Kendall said.

A Waco-based company already manufactures it under the name Fibertect. The state of Oregon recently ordered a sample batch for its emergency workers, said Carey Hobbs, the president and owner of the company, Hobbs Bonded Fibers, Inc.

Meanwhile, Ramkumar and his team are trying to find additional applications for the wipe. If they can reduce its weight, it could be inserted into air filters in U.S. embassies, uniforms, military jets and tanks, Ramkumar and Kendall said.

Tech will receive about 10 percent of all proceeds from its sale, which university officials will invest in other research, they said.

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First appeared 4:10 p.m. Monday.

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