Fumigation breakthrough by Steris and US Army

Steris Corporation and the United States Army's Edgewood Chemical Biological Center (ECBC) have announced the first demonstration of a fumigation technology effective at inactivating both chemical and biological agents. This research, utilising the company's modified vapour-phased VHP/Vaprox technology, represents a significant breakthrough in decontamination technology and methods. The research and development effort was conducted jointly by the US Army ECBC and the Steris subsidiary Strategic Technology Enterprises. The equipment used provides a low-temperature, dry decontamination process that has been proven highly effective against a range of pathogenic organisms and bacterial spores. Under the co-operative research agreement, ECBC modified the VHP/Vaprox technology to make it effective against chemical agents as well as biological substances. The technology has no environmentally harmful residue and is compatible with many materials, equipment and environments that require decontamination. It may also reduce the risk of personnel exposure to contaminated environments and items. Commenting on the research, Les C. Vinney, president and chief executive officer of Steris, said: "We believe this work will result in the commercialisation of decontamination systems that will be used for broad military and homeland defence applications; in fact, a variation of the system was recently used safely and successfully to decontaminate two government buildings in excess of 1.4 million cubic feet each that were contaminated in the October 2001 anthrax attacks. "We can also foresee potential additional markets in other industrial and consumer applications. We look forward to continuing the breakthrough research with ECBC while developing additional applications for our technologies."

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