Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
BIOTERRORISM
Bioterrorism is a disruptive and health-threating event directed at an individual,
group of individuals, a community, or at-large population within a nation and is
facilitated by the intentional release of a highly virulent biological agent. In this
context, the term
biological agent
includes a microorganism or a biologically
synthesized toxin that causes disease in man, plants, or animals or causes deteo-
riation of materials.
100
The use of pathogenic elements to subvert and disrupt
the normal life style of innocent people has a long history.
101
As far back as
the fourth century, Scythian warriors coated the tips of their arrows with human
feces as a means of infecting their enemies. This is testimony to the very early
suspicions about the noxious properties of excreta. In 1346, the Mongols used
catapults to hurl the corpses of their dead soldiers, riddled with plague, over the
walls in Kaffa, currently Theodosia. The practice of spreading infectious disease
by exposure to the dead continued in the siege of the Bohemian castle at Karlstein
in 1422 and the attack of the Swedes by Russians in 1710, whereupon corpses
were catapulted over the city walls of Reval (Tallinn).
The selection of an agent to be used in an act of terrorism should satisfy the fol-
lowing properties: (1) be readily available, (2) be easy to produce on large scale,
(3) be highly virulent for lethal or incapacitation purposes, (4) be of appropriate
size for distribution by aerosolization and uptake by victims (penetrate defense
mechanisms of the upper respiratory tract), (5) be easy to disseminate by available
means, (6) be environmentally stable, and (7) be dispersible in a way that targeted
individuals, but not the terrorists, suffer intended effects.
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A list of candidate
biological agents and biologically produced toxins for application in bioterror-
istic attacks is given in Table 1.7. The categories mainly reflect high level of
priority for prepardness (category A), need for improved awareness, surveillance
measures, and laboratory diagnosis (category B), and need for continued review
of potential threat to the public (category C). Many of the typical vehicles and
vectors of infectious disease transmission may be deployed in acts of terrorism.
Several of the prominent bacterial agents high on the list of potential bioweapons
are the cause of zoonotic infections.
An interesting approach has been made to quantitatively evaluate the useful-
ness of a biological agent as a weapon of bioterror by calculation of the agent's
weapon potential (
WP
):
WP
=
[
V
BW
SC/T
]
×
XD
where:
V
BW
=
virulence of a bioweapons derived from
F
SI
/
I
where
F
SI
is the
fraction of symptomatic infections for a given inoculum,
I
.
S
=
stability of biological agent when released
C
=
communicability by host to host transfer
T
=
time
X
=
terror modifier based on judgment that the agent could cause
panic and social disruption
