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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."
Really? Chemoterrorist?
In the 50's was it Chemocommunist?
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?
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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.
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
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.
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.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
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,
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"A four-foot prune."
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.....
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
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.