Infrared Fibers Can Protect Against Chemoterrorism

Hugh Pickens writes "Although most Americans take the safety of their drinking water for granted, ordinary tap water can become contaminated within minutes, says Prof. Abraham Katzir of Tel Aviv University's School of Physics and Astronomy who has developed a fiber-optic system that can detect poisons such as pesticides in water in amounts well below the World Health Organization safety threshold using 'colors' in the infrared spectrum which distinguish between pure and contaminated water. 'With our naked eyes we can't distinguish between pure water and water that contains a small amount of alcohol or acetone. They're all clear,' says Katzir. 'But we can clearly distinguish between liquids using an infrared spectrometer which can distinguish between "colors" in the invisible infrared spectrum.' Connected to a commercial infrared spectrometer, the fibers serve as sensors that can detect and notify authorities immediately if a contaminant has entered a water reservoir, system, building or pipeline. 'Toxic materials are readily available as pesticides or herbicides in the agriculture industry, and can be harmful if consumed even in concentrations as low as few parts per million,' says Katzir. Cities like New York are especially susceptible to a chemoterrorist threat. With many skyscrapers holding water reserves on the top of the building, a terrorist only needs to introduce poison into a tank to wreak havoc. 'A terrorist wouldn't have to kill tens of thousands of people. Only 50 deaths — as horrible as that would be — would cause nationwide panic,' says Katzir."

Comments

Chemoterrorist?

[Duradin]

Really? Chemoterrorist?

In the 50's was it Chemocommunist?

Re:Chemoterrorist?

[fractoid]

And after that it was Chemoanarchist. In 10 years' time it'll probably be Chemocapitalist.

Interesting possibility...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

While there is almost certainly an argument to be made about the threat of threats being overblown, it'd be hard to argue that mass poisonings are anything but a bad thing.

I would, though, be fascinated to see if anybody ends up trying to shoot systems like this down, as delicately as possible of course. The overwhelming majority of toxins in the water supply are there as a product of industrial, agricultural, or "non-point" pollution, not any sort of terrorist activity(I can't actually think of any instances of such, beyond poison targeted at a few people, in prepared food or beverages).

If I were the maker of, say, a bevy of pesticides with rather dubious reputations, I'd be strongly against any sort of systematic, automated water quality sampling system. Same if I were a user of such. Industrial polluters likewise. How long before the American Chemistry Council, or equivalent, starts a "Waterborne toxins: Not really anything to worry about" campaign, urging citizens to "stand against irresponsible fearmongering" and bankrolls a bevy of innocuous and patriotic sounding "Citizens for Responsible Security" type organizations?

the spice must flow

[j_presper_eckert]

4 out of 5 assassins prefer chaumurky over chaumas! News at 11.

Will be hard to implement practically

[Jamamala]

Sure, with an IR spec read-out, you'll be able to tell that something new has got into the water supply. But what you won't be able to tell is what that contaminant actually is. For that, you'll need some sort of structure determination, as IR will only tell you if it has C=O or N-H bonds for example.

The reason this is important is that without the structure, you won't be able to tell whether a farmer has just switched to a different type of fertiliser, or the city has being trying out a new way to grit the roads, or whether you're actually dealing with a case of attempted terrorism. The only way this would be helpful would be if you could somehow be sure that only malicious activity would alter the chemical composition of your water, which I think would be extremely difficult in practice.

Low-hanging fruit for terrorists

[JWman]

Things like this get me irked that we are spending billions upon billions each year on equipment, employees, and wasted time for all the added airport security since 9/11.
The fact is, is I were a terrorist I'd simply walk onto a bus or subway during rush hour with a bomb, like has been done in England and Spain. Effective, cheap, and little can be done to stop it. Not the same impact as collapsing two skyscrapers, but I seriously doubt any future plane hijackings will be successful since the rules have changed.

The overreaction to airplane hijackings is disturbing to me. The high school in my home town had a similar reaction to the Columbine shootings. They installed metal detectors at every entrance and hired extra security even though there had been little more than small knives confiscated at school, and never any real violence. Of course, there wasn't time to check people's bags properly, so it would have been trivial to smuggle something in anyway.
After two years at a cost of about 1.5 million per year, the metal detectors were taken out and the extra security measures scrapped. By then the public outcry for action had calmed, and no one wanted to be flushing 1.5 million down the drain every year.

I wish they'd do the same with the airport security. Lower it to a roughly pre-9/11 level, and spend the money elsewhere, like to keep nukes and dirty bombs out of the country.

Re:Low-hanging fruit for terrorists

[ScrewMaster]

I wish they'd do the same with the airport security. Lower it to a roughly pre-9/11 level, and spend the money elsewhere, like to keep nukes and dirty bombs out of the country.

I agree, but the problem is that Congress is to used to spending our tax dollars any damn way it wants ... consequently, they'll do both no matter how wasteful.

Re:Low-hanging fruit for terrorists

[JWman]

they'll do both no matter how wasteful.

Sadly I think you're correct. Ideally I'd say to cut the budget from the TSA and put it towards the national debt -- or at this point just towards putting our national budget in the black again. I figured that putting it towards another anti-terror project would be at least a bit politically viable. But, sadly, it is easy for the government to begin funding something and awfully hard to stop funding it.

Re:Low-hanging fruit for terrorists

[JWman]

We can safely conclude:

4. There are no terrorists. 5. The government is lying.

I seriously hope that was an attempt to be funny rather than revealing some "obvious" conspiracy theory.

It is just as easy to conclude (and far more likely to be true) that:

1. There are terrorists, but they either feel they have made their point and achieved their goal of causing terror and its associated overreactions or they are incapable of mounting a significant overseas attack, or unwilling to mount one that would not cause similar damage to 9/11.

2. The government is not outright lying about the terrorist threats, but is doing what it does best: protect itself.

If Bush had done nothing after 9/11 to increase security, he would have been crucified much sooner and in a worse way than he was. Even as it stands, very few people are embittered towards him for domestic defensive security policies, but for foreign offensive security policies. Politicians (and therefore government) have set up a system whereby they can remain blameless in the face of society crumbling around them. They could spend trillions more on homeland security and no one would be held personally responsible for any sort of public outcry except perhaps the president, who would still do his best to sidestep any blame. This is how the game works. Big, fat, bloated, wasteful, and expensive defensive strategies that allow lawmakers to hide behind the guise of being over-cautious will always win over strategies that involve personal risk through bold, decisive action that will likely be criticized by someone, somewhere.

So no, those are not "safe" conclusions, and expose some pretty hefty biases on your part.

Terrorism as marketing bloy

[liamoshan]

It's a shame that a relatively interesting idea, has to be marketed as an ANTI-TERROR product for it to get any attention.
I can imagine this being useful for all sorts of problems related to drinking supply water - accidental contamination due to agricultural products, algal blooms etc

OOhhhh! OOOOH!

[Philip K Dickhead]

Another way to protect us all from the terrible imaginary threats - presented to us by the Chingers!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill,_the_Galactic_Hero

Who'll save us?

Yet another ridiculous idea

[Ancient_Hacker]

I wish somebody with a lick of sense would vet these ideas before they got out there.

All that's going to happen with IR spectrometers checking the water supply is a constant din of false positives, which will at first cause panic, then lethargy. Even a 0.001% false positive rate is way too high when you're trying to find a 0.0000001% signal.

DON'T PANIC!

[ScrewMaster]

Only 50 deaths â" as horrible as that would be â" would cause nationwide panic,' says Katzir

He's right ... but the only reason that's true is because we, as a culture, panic very easily. Granted, we're encouraged to do so by a sensationalist press, and a government that is always on the lookout for any rationalization for expanding its authority over us.

Sad commentary on the state of our society, I suppose, given that we mow ourselves down on the road by the thousands every year. That doesn't get anywhere near the media coverage, of course, even though automobiles cause more deaths per unit time than terrorism does (personally, I think some of the SUV-driving sociopaths I have to contend with every morning on the way to work ought to be up on terrorism charges, but that's another story.) We're all far more likely to die in an automobile accident than any probable act of terrorism.

In the end, dead is dead.

Re:DON'T PANIC!

[mpe]

The problem is not panicking very easily but how irrationale our panic is (well, not that someone would expect otherwise, it's panic after all):

Consider all the fuss over "swine flu"... Which as a cause of death ranks well below "freak accidents". Even as an infectious disease isn't really an issue.

This capability has been around for 20 years

[bughunter]

I worked on developing this capability for Process Analytical Chemistry for the food, petroleum, and pesticide industry twenty years ago when I worked for Perkin-Elmer Corp. It's currently owned by Hamilton Sundstrand and marketed under the name PIONIR. The samples are delivered to the spectral analyzer via NIR optical fibers, and other types of analysis are possible, too, including Fourier Transform spectroscopy and Raman spectroscopy. The analyzer can be as far as 200 meters from the samples. It's not cheap, though.

Re:This capability has been around for 20 years

[deglr6328]

NIR would be inappropriate for this application. If you're looking for contaminant poisons in drinking water you need to have exquisitely sensitive detection thresholds in the part per billion level. A NIR spectrometer using conventional (quartz) fiber optics would be forced to look at the second and third overtones of the fundamental molecular absorption lines in the mid-IR. These overtones have a mere thousandth or hundredth of the relative absorption intensity as the fundamental lines and therefore your signal for extremely low concentrations of contaminants is going to be waaaaay below the noise in your detector. NIRS is best suited for detection of percent level deviations in chemical mixtures, not trace analysis. What this guy from Israel has done is use drawn fibers of silver chloride/bromide, which have spectacular transmittance in the mid-IR, to detect the fundamental absorption bands of trace contaminants using the evanescent waves of IR light that poke slightly outside the surface of a fiber optic. I wish I could find his latest paper that this press release is about though.....

Re:i just got off the toilet

[oldhack]

What the hell do you eat that you shit that out every fucking day?

Terrorism nuthin - what about H2O pollution?

[zooblethorpe]

Frankly, after hearing and reading about the water infrastructures of many major cities, NYC included, I strongly suspect such a system as this would be more readily useful in verifying that tap water is actually safe from pollutants caused by run-of-the-mill industry and poor water treatment / storage / transportation facilities. Good chunks of the NYC aqueduct system are 100+ years old, with some sections of pipe coming in from the Adirondacks still made of wood, fer cryin' out lout.

Sure, pesticides intentionally dumped in a reservoir are definitely a Very Bad Thing (TM), but polychlorinated biphenyl or polycyclic hydrocarbon aromatics are also *not* Part Of This Nutritious Breakfast (TM). There are plenty of nasties we've put into our *own* water supply, either out of cluelessness or laziness or greed, and new and easy ways of detecting these can only be good.

Cheers,

Re:Interesting Movie Plot

[The Grim Reefer2]

In other news, Prof. Obvious has written a report chronicling every confirmed case of malicius airplane crashing against skycrappers in the world from 1950 to 10/10/2001: 0 cases in all, plus 0 additional unconfirmed cases. His conclusion was, well, obvious: just because we have the budget and the products to buy doesn't mean we should spend them to fight such a highly improbable threat.

Yeah, um, Prof. Obtuse seems to have missed three little known cases of this happening just 29 days prior to his cut-off date.

our society? as a culture?

[circletimessquare]

you mean in china they dutifully and calmly walk out of burning buildings?

in india they react to men running around with machine guns in icy calmness?

in europe the sight of exploding buses causes relaxing, calming effect

howabout AS A SPECIES, as a creature, a fucking mammal with adrenal glands and a healthy flight or fight response mechanism, we react the way we do, as a simple consequence of what we are

that renders all your faux regret pointless and useless: people panic. people have always panicked. people always will panic. why? because its a simple unescapable fact of us as living creatures with adrenal glands. we flip out not because of any sociological or cultural convention, ro anything that was ever taught, but as a simple consequence of inescapable biology

1. you know its a shame we can't build cities under water, that we are culturally conditioned to breathe air

2. you know its a shame we can't fly by flapping our arms, such has the media and our society propagandized us to walk around on our legs

those two comments make exactly as much sense as your opinion of the nature of panic

panic is a simple inescapable comppletely natural psychologicla and biological phenomenon. get used to it, don't bemoan it. especially since YOU ARE JUST AS SUBJECT TO IT

oh, you're not? you're a fucking cyborg? pffffft