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Evaluating the impact of decontamination interventions performed in sequence for mass casualty chemical incidents
The Initial Operational Response (IOR) to chemical incidents is a suite of rapid strategies including evacuation, disrobe and improvised and interim decontamination. IOR and Specialist Operational Response (SOR) decontamination protocols involving mass decontamination units would be conducted in seq...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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Nature Publishing Group UK
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8298482/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34294861 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-94644-0 |
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author | Collins, Samuel Williams, Natalie Southworth, Felicity James, Thomas Davidson, Louise Orchard, Emily Marczylo, Tim Amlôt, Richard |
author_facet | Collins, Samuel Williams, Natalie Southworth, Felicity James, Thomas Davidson, Louise Orchard, Emily Marczylo, Tim Amlôt, Richard |
author_sort | Collins, Samuel |
collection | PubMed |
description | The Initial Operational Response (IOR) to chemical incidents is a suite of rapid strategies including evacuation, disrobe and improvised and interim decontamination. IOR and Specialist Operational Response (SOR) decontamination protocols involving mass decontamination units would be conducted in sequence by UK emergency services following a chemical incident, to allow for safe onward transfer of casualties. As part of a series of human volunteer studies, we examined for the first time, the effectiveness of UK IOR and SOR decontamination procedures alone and in sequence. Specifically, we evaluated the additional contribution of SOR, when following improvised and interim decontamination. Two simulants, methyl salicylate (MeS) with vegetable oil and benzyl salicylate (BeS), were applied to participants’ skin. Participants underwent improvised dry, improvised wet, interim wet, specialist decontamination and a no decontamination control. Skin analysis and UV photography indicated significantly lower levels of both simulants remaining following decontamination compared to controls. There were no significant differences in MeS levels recovered between decontamination conditions. Analysis of BeS, a more persistent simulant than MeS, showed that recovery from skin was significantly reduced following combined IOR with SOR than IOR alone. These results show modest additional benefits of decontamination interventions conducted in sequence, particularly for persistent chemicals, supporting current UK operational procedures. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8298482 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-82984822021-07-23 Evaluating the impact of decontamination interventions performed in sequence for mass casualty chemical incidents Collins, Samuel Williams, Natalie Southworth, Felicity James, Thomas Davidson, Louise Orchard, Emily Marczylo, Tim Amlôt, Richard Sci Rep Article The Initial Operational Response (IOR) to chemical incidents is a suite of rapid strategies including evacuation, disrobe and improvised and interim decontamination. IOR and Specialist Operational Response (SOR) decontamination protocols involving mass decontamination units would be conducted in sequence by UK emergency services following a chemical incident, to allow for safe onward transfer of casualties. As part of a series of human volunteer studies, we examined for the first time, the effectiveness of UK IOR and SOR decontamination procedures alone and in sequence. Specifically, we evaluated the additional contribution of SOR, when following improvised and interim decontamination. Two simulants, methyl salicylate (MeS) with vegetable oil and benzyl salicylate (BeS), were applied to participants’ skin. Participants underwent improvised dry, improvised wet, interim wet, specialist decontamination and a no decontamination control. Skin analysis and UV photography indicated significantly lower levels of both simulants remaining following decontamination compared to controls. There were no significant differences in MeS levels recovered between decontamination conditions. Analysis of BeS, a more persistent simulant than MeS, showed that recovery from skin was significantly reduced following combined IOR with SOR than IOR alone. These results show modest additional benefits of decontamination interventions conducted in sequence, particularly for persistent chemicals, supporting current UK operational procedures. Nature Publishing Group UK 2021-07-22 /pmc/articles/PMC8298482/ /pubmed/34294861 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-94644-0 Text en © Crown 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . |
spellingShingle | Article Collins, Samuel Williams, Natalie Southworth, Felicity James, Thomas Davidson, Louise Orchard, Emily Marczylo, Tim Amlôt, Richard Evaluating the impact of decontamination interventions performed in sequence for mass casualty chemical incidents |
title | Evaluating the impact of decontamination interventions performed in sequence for mass casualty chemical incidents |
title_full | Evaluating the impact of decontamination interventions performed in sequence for mass casualty chemical incidents |
title_fullStr | Evaluating the impact of decontamination interventions performed in sequence for mass casualty chemical incidents |
title_full_unstemmed | Evaluating the impact of decontamination interventions performed in sequence for mass casualty chemical incidents |
title_short | Evaluating the impact of decontamination interventions performed in sequence for mass casualty chemical incidents |
title_sort | evaluating the impact of decontamination interventions performed in sequence for mass casualty chemical incidents |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8298482/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34294861 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-94644-0 |
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