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In addition to physical inviolability, another important factor in the development of
personal protective equipment for rapid response teams will be the possibility of
automatically triggering medical treatments. As well as the development of woundclosing
nanofibre systems, promising nanotechnology developments in drug delivery
systems could provide means for automatic administration of medicine in response to
injury or exposure to biological or chemical agents.
A new medical technology to clean the blood of victims of radiological, chemical and
biological terrorist attacks is being developed jointly by Argonne National Laboratory and
The University of Chicago Hospitals. In addition to cleaning biological and radiological
toxins from blood, the technology shows promise for delivering therapeutic drugs to
targeted cells and organs. This technology uses a novel approach to magnetic filtration.
The key is biodegradable poly(D,L-lactide) nanospheres 100 to 5,000 nm in diameter,
which are injected into the patient’s bloodstream and are small enough to pass through
the smallest blood vessels, yet too large to be filtered from the bloodstream into the
kidneys (see Figure 3.10). The nanoparticles contain a magnetic iron compound (40
weight percent magnetite) and are coated with a derivative of polyethylene glycol that
prevents white blood cells from attacking them. Attached to the particles’ surfaces are
proteins that bind to specific toxic agents. The system offers a number of advantages
over existing methods to clean human blood of radioactive and other hazardous
materials. Current medical procedures to detoxify human blood are restricted to a few
types of toxins and can take several hours to complete. They require the turnover and
filtration of large volumes of blood, are rather inefficient at removing toxins and can be
risky for the patient.
Figure 3.10 Intravenously injected into victims of radiological, chemical or biological attack,
biodegradable nanospheres circulate through the bloodstream, where surface proteins bind to the
targeted toxins. They are removed from the bloodstream by a small dual-channel shunt, inserted
into an arm or leg artery, that circulates the blood through an external magnetic separator. Strong
magnets in the shunt immobilize the iron-based particles, and clean blood flows back into the
bloodstream. (Image courtesy of the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute)
3.4 Electromagnetic Shielding
The future protection of wireless information and communication networks against data
manipulation or transmission will depend on the implementation of improved
electromagnetic shielding measures (against electromagnetic fields or pulses). More than
anything, the possibility of deliberately generated electromagnetic pulses (EMPs) as a
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