ChemBioWar: Chemicals, warfare and biobased protective systems

A solution arrives via agbiotech

Keeping in mind that nerve agents are organophosphorus compounds that are closely related to insecticides — about 10 years ago, out of ag biotech, a biobased enzyme was discovered, that breaks down organophosphorus compounds, including nerve agents, and renders them harmless. It’s process of self-decontamination.

Over the intervening years, a company called Reactive Surfaces has developed a means of embedding those enzyme agents into ordinary coatings, and has just now released its WMDtox self-decontaminating enzymatic additives.

Coatings functionalized with WMDtox have been tested with actual chemical agents and found to add a significant capability to standard military vehicle coatings.

“This eliminates significant amounts of time and labor from the battlefield decontamination process,” said said University of Southern Mississippi professor James Rawlins. “OPDTox allows vehicles coated with these systems to rapidly re-enter military operations, and to maximize safety for the war fighter. The overcoats will provide a stable, long-term decontamination capability without any impact on the performance of the underlying vehicle coating.“

(In recent years, USM has been a hotbed in materials science — Rawlins himself focuses on responsive thin films and competitive degradation mechanisms, embedded raw material storage for self-repair or self-synthesis, and the combination of enzymes and proteins with organic polymers).