CBRN / HazMat Training Blog

Argon Electronics will be exhibiting alongside our Indian partner, Strongfield Technologies Pvt., at the Aero India Show taking place at the Yelehanka Airforce Station in Bengaluru, Karnataka, 20th to 24th February 2019. 

The Aero India Exhibition has been held every two years since 1996, and regularly attracts in excess of 60,000 business visitors and 100, 000 general visitors over the duration of the show. 

Argon has been at the forefront of CBRNe and hazardous material simulation design for in excess of twenty-five years, while Strongfield has more than thirty years of experience providing specialist technology-based products to the aerospace, aviation, automotive and engineering sectors.

While accidental or deliberate CBRNe incidents are still widely considered to be fairly low probability events, their impact on citizens, society and infrastructure can be immense.

If and when they do occur, the speed of response has been shown to be absolutely critical when it comes to taking charge of the scene, avoiding further contamination and saving lives.

Intelligent simulator detector tools are used by military organisations around the world to enhance the provision of realistic Hazardous Material (HazMat) and Chemical, Biological, Radiation, Nuclear and Explosive (CBRNe) training exercises.

CBRNe specialists are highly-trained soldiers. They have the skills and experience to work in any environment and they have the capacity to handle a diverse variety of threats, from chemical warfare agents (CWAs) to hazardous material spills. 

There is increasing recognition of the importance of conducting HazMat and CBRNe training for first responders in the most realistic conditions possible.

But that need for an authentic training environment isn't always best served through the use of actual detector equipment - whether due to health and safety risk, environmental considerations or the increased administrative burden of working with potentially hazardous simulants.

In the UK, it is not unusual for first responders to be in possession of very little (or, in some cases, nothing) in the way of detection, identification or monitoring (DIM) equipment in the course of carrying out their daily duties.

In the event of a major incident however (such as a terrorist attack, major fire, flood or a collapsed building) they may be called upon to support the activities of a specialist Hazardous Area Response Team (HART).

In an ideal world, an emergency response team would know exactly what kind of radiological hazard they were attending before they arrived on the scene of an incident. This might be via a resource such as a central database that lists the addresses of properties that are known to contain specific sources of ionising radiation.

In other cases, such as a road traffic accident for example, that risk might not become apparent until responders reach the incident and are confronted with a clear visual warning in the form of a trefoil.

Exhibitions, trade-shows and conferences can provide an invaluable opportunity for HazMat and CBRNe practitioners to view, try and compare the very latest developments in chemical warfare, equipment, machinery, tools and technologies.

In this blog post we highlight seven internationally recognized HazMat and CBRNe events that will be taking place around the world in 2019.

As HazMat incidents become ever more challenging, complex and unpredictable, there is a growing reliance on the knowledge and expertise of highly-skilled teams across a variety of agencies.

A more recent case in point was the operational response to the Novichok nerve agent poisonings in Salisbury in the UK in 2018. This event, which garnered enormous international attention, brought together the skills of police, fire crews, paramedics, the military and specialist HazMat teams over the course of the incident - from initial response to containment, decontamination and the ensuing investigation. 

Large-scale releases of ionizing radiation are thankfully a rare occurrence. But with just over sixty commercially run nuclear power plants currently in service in the US, and fifteen operational nuclear reactors located across seven plants in the UK, the risk of an accidental release, however minor, is one that must be meticulously trained for.

While regulations exist to guide HazMat training requirements for first responders, the reality is that many personnel still don't consider themselves to be adequately skilled in the use of their equipment.

Sometimes it's because there simply isn't enough time to carry out regular and structured training programmes. Sometimes this lack of preparedness comes as the result of budget cuts where training is one of the first things to go.