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Executive Summary
Pages 1-16

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From page 1... ... Recently, the National Academies was also asked to conduct an independent, external, unbiased evaluation of DoD's efforts to protect deployed forces and to provide advice on a long-term strategy for protecting the health of deployed U.S. military personnel. Read the entire page →
From page 2... ... � Review and evaluate tools and methods for tracking and characterizing inventories of CB agents in the deployed theater; for tracking and characterizing the locations and time-activity patterns of deployed military personnel; for detecting and monitoring concentrations of potentially harmful agents; for estimating exposure concentrations and patterns of exposure for individuals or groups; and for implementation (e.g., documenting exposures) .2 Conduct of the Study The principal investigator, an expert in exposure assessment, conducted the study with the help of National Research Council (NRC) Read the entire page →
From page 3... ... Although the military offers substantial guidance for protecting personnel against chemical attacks, it also acknowledges that its detection capabilities (especially for biological agents) are limited and is working to improve its equipment. Read the entire page →
From page 4... ... Characterizing exposures requires detecting the presence of agents, assessing and monitoring agent concentrations, tracking time-specific locations of troops relative to these concentrations, and determining exposure pathways. A1though all of these information sets are treated in this report, no single information set can provide sufficient information for characterizing exposures in real time or for completely characterizing potential or past exposures. Read the entire page →
From page 5... ... The Department of Defense should explore and evaluate the use of personal monitors for detecting chemical and biological agents, toxic industrial chemicals, and other harmful agents at low levels. If all personnel were equipped with monitors, probabilistic sampling could be used to select a subset of data for short-term, immediate use (e.g., to define the contaminated parts of the deployment area) Read the entire page →
From page 6... ... Although an acute threshold concentration for chemical agents can be characterized and a safety factor establishing a low-level exposure can be applied, this information is rarely available for biological agents. Read the entire page →
From page 7... ... Exposures could have long-term health effects that cannot be easily distinguished from the long-term health effects of low-level exposures to chemical warfare agents. Detecting and monitoring exposures continually to the full set of toxic chemicals, would be extremely difficult, if not impossible. Read the entire page →
From page 8... ... The Department of Defense should increase its efforts to collect and evaluate low-level dose-response data for a broad set of biological agents. The data should include information on the infectivity of a range of both warfare and endemic biological agents. Read the entire page →
From page 9... ... Finding. Combined exposures to drugs, vaccines, chemical substances, and biological substances have been suggested as causal factors for the symptoms among Gulf War veterans. Read the entire page →
From page 10... ... should begin scientific studies to measure interactions among chemical and/or biological agents and industrial chemicals. DoD's analysis of the effects of mixedagent exposures should include toxicological studies on mixtures and epidemiological evidence of mixed-agent effects. Read the entire page →
From page 11... ... Recommendation. The Department of Defense should establish criteria for detecting and monitoring low-level exposures to chemical and biological warfare agents and toxic industrial chemicals. Read the entire page →
From page 12... ... TRACKING DEPLOYED MILITARY PERSONNEL A full characterization of an individual's exposure requires knowing where that person is and what She is doing. General-population, timeactivity data cannot be used for estimating exposures of deployed troops; only data specific to deployed personnel can yield accurate estimates of exposures. Read the entire page →
From page 13... ... Predeployment information could be used to identify individuals whose prior exposures put them at higher risk from additional exposures during deployment, as well as to identify possible prior exposures to harmful agents that otherwise might be believed to have occurred during deployment. The postdeployment information would provide a concise record of major duties performed and the use of, or proximity to, possible or confirmed sources of pollutants. Read the entire page →
From page 14... ... by addressing the detection and monitoring of a broader range of CB and TIC concentrations and tracking low-level exposures to them in an integrated, systematic way. These two changes will require that DoD take the following steps: � Develop and procure the technical means of assessing potential and actual exposures (e.g., real-time, field-usable devices for detecting biological agents and improved devices for detecting chemical agents) Read the entire page →
From page 15... ... The Department of Defense should develop and field improved meteorological measuring and archiving systems to provide finer data grids of wind, temperature, and atmospheric stability in the theater of operations. These data will be necessary for improved transport modeling and for after-action analyses of data on the movements of chemical and biological "clouds." Recommendation. Read the entire page →
From page 16... ... during future deployments and compare them to the locations of actual or potential agent concentrations at the same point in time. The data-storage capacity should be increased simultaneously so that these locations can be recalled and analyzed after each deployment (e.g., data could be recalled from a high-capacity personal information carrier) Read the entire page →

From page 1...

... Recently, the National Academies was also asked to conduct an independent, external, unbiased evaluation of DoD's efforts to protect deployed forces and to provide advice on a long-term strategy for protecting the health of deployed U.S. military personnel.

Executive Summary Pages 1-16

Executive Summary
Pages 1-16