AAAR 37th Annual Conference October 14 - October 18, 2019 Oregon Convention Center Portland, Oregon, USA
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Evaluation of Boron-Metal Fluoride Reactive Materials for Inactivating Viable Aerosolized Spores Simulating Bacillus Anthracis
SERGEY A. GRINSHPUN, Worrawit Nakpan, Michael Yermakov, Reshmi Indugula, Tiina Reponen, Siva Kumar Valluri, Mirko Schoenitz, Edward Dreizin, University of Cincinnati
Abstract Number: 160 Working Group: Bioaerosols
Abstract An explosion or fire outbreak in a bio-weapon facility targeted militarily may release highly pathogenic bio-agents. While most of the released microorganisms will likely lose their viability due to heat stress and other factors, a small fraction may survive and – as bioaerosol – be subjected to atmospheric transport, which represents a major regional and global health risk. Some agents such as Bacillus anthracis spores are particularly stress-resistant. Therefore, novel materials, which can serve as reactive additives to an explosive and release combustion products capable of neutralizing the threat are being developed in the frameworks of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) research program. In the past, our team evaluated spore-inactivating materials containing iodine (e.g., Al·I2, Al·B·I2, Mg·B·I2). This effort has recently been expanded to materials containing another halogen, fluorine. In this study, two powdered materials, B·BiF3 and B·CoF2, were prepared by arrested reactive milling and combusted in the presence of viable aerosolized spores of Bacillus thuringiensis var kurstaki (Btk), a widely-recognized surrogate of B. anthracis. The inactivation factor was quantified by comparing culture-based counts from the combustion-exposed and non-exposed samples. The tests were conducted under two heat conditions (low weighted average temperature T≈170°C, and moderate T≈260°C) and at different spore exposure time intervals, t (from 100 ms to 1 s). The inactivation factor increased exponentially with t. Both materials were found extremely potent for inactivating the aerosolized Btk spores with B·BiF3 being of significantly greater efficiency (99.998% of viable spores were inactivated under the moderate heat condition at t = 660 ms). It was concluded that fluorine-containing materials have a great bio-agent defeat potential.