INDUSTRIAL HAZARDS TO MILITARY PERSONNEL

The industrial chemical health threat to the US military is growing. The increasing threat is due both to the more frequent use of industrial chemicals and infrastructure as weapons of war and opportunity, and to recent military operations in urban and industrial environments where accidents or terrorism may cause large-scale chemical releases. Using traditional single-scenario modeling techniques, it is difficult to prospectively portray the complex array of potential chemical hazards associated with specific release scenarios, but some characterization of the potential chemical concentrations and areas affected is clearly an important consideration for all phases of military operational and medical planning. This paper discusses a technique for evaluating the risks associated with chemical hazards from large-scale chemical releases, and describes a process of statistical interpretation of iterative dispersion analyses that was created to permit improved quantification of the hazards. The technique allows thousands of hypothetical releases of toxic material to be statistically combined and assessed to allow graphical representation of the statistics for the potential hazard areas where pre-determined exposure guidelines for the chemical may be exceeded.