Contamination

The U.S. EPA created the Water Quality Surveillance and Response System (SRS) Capabilities Assessment Tool to help drinking water utilities identify existing SRS capabilities, assess these capabilities relative to target capabilities, and develop potential enhancements to meet their unique SRS goals and objectives. The tool provides an easy starting point for utilities interested in implementing an SRS. The SRS is a framework designed to enhance a drinking water utility’s capability to quickly detect and respond to water quality issues.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has published the 2019-2022 National Health Security Strategy, its quadrennial plan for strengthening the nation’s ability to prevent, detect, assess, prepare for, mitigate, respond to, and recover from disasters and emergencies.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has published a series of resources discussing the characteristics and challenges of “fourth generation agents” and providing guidance to segments of the emergency response community. Also known as “Novichoks” or “A-series nerve agents,” fourth generation agents are chemical warfare agents that pose several unique challenges in terms of toxicity, detection, persistence, and potential for delayed onset of symptoms. A fourth generation agent was used in an incident in the U.K. in 2018, prompting the U.S.

An interview with an Iraqi scientist who was pressed into service by the Islamic State sheds light on how the group developed a program for developing chemical weapons, including chlorine and mustard gas, that were employed on battlefields in Iraq and Syria, where they inflicted hundreds of casualties on soldiers and civilians. The scientist’s commentary corroborates what was feared by the Islamic State’s adversaries following the attacks, that the group had developed its own chemical weapons rather than acquiring them from captured stockpiles.