{"id":32348,"date":"2018-10-07T23:00:37","date_gmt":"2018-10-07T23:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/c4isrnet\/uncategorized\/2018\/10\/07\/tk-poison\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T18:33:01","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T18:33:01","slug":"tk-poison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/c4isrnet\/intel-geoint\/sensors\/2018\/10\/07\/tk-poison\/","title":{"rendered":"Even a little bit of poison is still \u2026 poison"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When soldiers are exposed to small doses of toxins<\/a>, their symptoms may be mistaken for common illness. Doctors can miss a key window for delivering early treatment, and military planners may never know that chemical or other hazards were present on the battlefield.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With this in mind, scientists at the U.S. Army Edgewood Chemical Biological Center at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, are developing a more accurate detector.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRight now we have samplers, not detectors,\u201d said Bruce King, a research chemist at the center. \u201cOur real-time tools are not very specific. They maybe look at just a class of chemicals, so a pesticide would look just like [nerve agent] VX on current wearable sensor technology.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To get a more precise reading on environmental contaminants, the scientists are looking to combine wearable chemical samplers with multidimensional chromatography, a sophisticated analytic technique that can distinguish the specific chemical signature of a wide range of substances.<\/p>\n\n\n\t