Cleanup workers have taken quantities of the formulation with them into Congressional office buildings as one of the decontamination products selected to help remediate the Hart Senate Office Complex and the Dirksen and Ford Congressional Offices in Washington, D.C.

They also are preparing to use the foam to decontaminate mailrooms on Capitol Hill contaminated with anthrax.

Two Sandia researchers are on site in Washington as technical advisors. The formulation also was used to decontaminate portions of ABC's facilities in New York last week.

Sandia licensed rights to commercialize the chem-bio formulation (often referred to as a decon foam) to two companies last year -- Modec, Inc. (Denver, Colo.) and EnviroFoam Technologies (Huntsville, Ala.) -- following a five-year research and development project at Sandia funded by the NNSA's Chemical and Biological National Security Program. (For more about the formulation's development, see this URL.)

The formulation, a cocktail that includes ordinary household substances such as those found in hair conditioner and toothpaste, neutralizes both chemical and biological agents in minutes. It can be applied to a contaminated surface as a liquid spray, mist, fog, or foam.

Traditional decontaminating products typically are based on bleach, chlorinated solvents, or other hazardous or corrosive materials. Many are designed to work against only a limited number of either chemical or biological agents.

The Sandia formulation works against a wide variety of both chemical and biological agents and is non-toxic, non-corrosive and environmentally friendly.

In multiple independent lab tests and military field trials, the formulation was effective against viable anthrax spores and chemical warfare agents. In lab tests at Sandia, it also destroyed simulants of anthrax, simulants of chemical agents, vegetative cells, toxins, and viruses.

"It has performed well against biological agents as well as the most worrisome chemical warfare agents," says co-developer Mark Tucker of Sandia.

Modec announced this week that its version of the formulation, Modec Decontamination Formulation (MDF), was supplied to disaster recovery consultant Bio-Recovery (Woodside, N.Y.) to decontaminate portions of ABC's facilities in New York. (For more about the MDF product, see Modec's website at this URL.)

EnviroFoam Technologies (EFT) was contracted early this week to supply its version of the formulation to support the Environmental Protection Agency-led remediation effort on Capitol Hill. Over the weekend the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory tested EFT's EasyDECONTM AB (anthrax blend). The test regimen, funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), confirmed the effectiveness of EasyDECON against anthrax. (For more about the EasyDECON product, see EFT's website at this URL.)

Sandia is a multiprogram laboratory operated by Sandia Corporation, a Lockheed Martin company, for the U.S. Department of Energy. With main facilities in Albuquerque, N.M., and Livermore, Calif., Sandia has major R&D responsibilities in national security, energy and environmental technologies, and economic competitiveness. - By John German

Related website:

Sandia National Laboratories


[Contact: John German, Brian Kalamanka, Peter Beucher]

29-Oct-2001