Introduction to Biological Agents and Toxins

ISOLATE — EVACUATE — DENY ENTRY. AIRWAY — BREATHING — CIRCULATION 

Supply and logistics have changed drastically in the United States over past years. For whatever reasons, hospital, clinics, and drugstores have moved to an order-only-when-you-need-it, do-not-store -much-of-anything way of doing business for all types of drugs 

In addition, there has been failure to do a complete and total statement of the medical and triage procedure in the medical record, and mistakes made to first secure the incident scene and identify the exact nature of the existing threat. 

Right now, we have to deal with incubation time and wait for victims to develop symptoms. The incubation time for anthrax is one to six days. In this example, anthrax victims would have one to six days between exposure and the onset of symptoms. Anthrax is not transmissible from person to person. Compare this to the incubation time with that of the virus, smallpox, which is ten to seventeen days. Smallpox is highly transmissible from person to person. After exposure to smallpox, a person could travel by air around the world a number of times and contaminate many people before developing any symptoms. However, naturally occurring smallpox has been eradicated worldwide since 1977. Terrorism could rapidly change that eradication to an attack since samples of the smallpox virus have been stored in both the United States and Russia. 

If you are a first responder, HMRT member, firefighter, police officer, or emergency medical service person called to an incident, any incident, remember the following information about biological incidents. Except in unusual circumstances, you can t see a biological agent they are odorless, colorless, and tasteless. There is a delay in incubation even the much feared ebola fever which has a moderate transmissibility from person to person 

---