The Jerusalem Post reports today on NATO-funded research to detect chemical and biological agents in municipal water supplies.
Last year, a San Diego company announced it had developed a system that relies on bluegill fish to monitor water supplies. The Intelligent Automation Corporation's system is being used in San Francisco, Washington, D.C. and New York City.
An excerpt from the Post's explanation of the NATO effort:
The researchers at the Technion's Grand Water Research Institute are integrating mathematical models for the placement of monitoring stations with technology able to identify and neutralize chemical and biological contaminants.
The idea for the project came following the 9/11 attacks and the use of anthrax as a biological terror agent.
Prof. Israel Schechter of the Faculty of Chemistry said: "In the wake of the discovery of al-Qaida documents and plans in Afghanistan, the FBI was alerted that the organization was planning a terror attack on water sources. It became apparent that water distribution systems in the US, Israel and the rest of the world's developed nations are totally exposed."
Israel's Water Commission cofinancing the research, together with NATO, the Grand Water Research Institute and the Institute for Future Security Research at the Technion.
Previously, chemical attacks on water supplies were considered very difficult to carry out because the contaminants would be quickly diluted. However Schechter identified a way in which a handful of a certain type of poison could be put into water sources and cause mass fatalities despite the dilution factor.
He then began to develop a device to detect the chemical poisoning of water and neutralize it.
Prof. Yechezkel Kashi of the Technion's Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Engineering, is working with Prof. David Walt of Tufts University in Boston to creating a sensitive scanner that can rapidly identify specific bacteria.
--Catherine MacRae Hockmuth
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