Biological hazards from toxic materials

If you are a public safety responder, you should be familiar with the personal protective equipment (PPE) that you may need to wear to perform your duties in a dangerous environment. Your first line of defense is the protective equipment you wear. Do not enter a hazardous materials scene (which includes many terrorist attack scenes) without appropriate protective clothing and respiratory protection. Not only are you in danger from toxic material at the scene, but you also may be cross-contaminated by patients who have toxic material on their clothes or skin. This is particularly true at a terrorist attack scene if chemical, radiological, or conb ous biological scents are involved. Because a bomb may be used to disperse any of tbe above, aU unknown explosion scenes require wearing PPE until contamination is ruled out. 

Chemical and Biochemical Toxicity. Handling any cosolvent or raw material or fluid that presents a danger in terms of chemical or biological hazard must lead to drastic care, as SCF equipment work at a high pressure with possible leaks at any moment. Fluid leakage often leads to aerosol formation that may be easily inhaled. In particularly dangerous cases, it is necessary to isolate the equipment in a closed room or box (Fig. 1) with remote control, and environment must also be protected from effluent treatment. 

Toxicity is the ability to cause biological injuiy. Toxicity is a property of all materials, even salt, sugar, and water. It is related to dose and the degree of hazard associated with a material. The amount of a dose is both time and duration dependent. Dose is a function of exposure (concentration) and duration and is sometimes expressed as dose = (concentration) X duration, where n can vaiy from 1 to 4. 

Plants used to produce PRPs should be amenable to confinement . Isolation distances were increased, and the cultivation of food and feed crops following a PRP crop was discouraged. New hazard and exposure data for human and livestock health assessment may also be required from PRP-containing traditional food or feed crops prior to the approval of field trials. Exposure risk concerns the potential for PRPs to be present in human food or animal feed, and where exposure can occur, what mechanisms are used to limit biological activity. Hazards included direct toxicity and allergenicity in humans or animals as well as hazards presented by the coproduct streams that result from processing. These latter requirements could place a major burden on proponents to prove their materials are safe prior to even confined field trials. 

Movement of the biological material ricin with soil-size fractions are shown in Figures 4.6 and 4.7. Studies on peanut (Arachis hypogaea) seed lectin show similar results (Zartman et al. 2005). These lectin data are similar in distribution to published values (Ravi et al. 2004). The inhalation of dust generated from ricin-contami-nated soils could pose a serious hazard to war fighters. Work of A. H. Corwin cited in Lamanna (1961) stated that ricin particles with a median diameter of 2 /(ui are 2.75 times as toxic as particles with a maximal particle size of 4.2 pm. 

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