Homeland Security and
Environmental Issues
Robert Pitt
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
University of Alabama
Tuscaloosa, AL 35487
Katrina oil refinery damage; EPA photo
Why Do Disasters Happen?
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Widespread use of hazardous materials.
Highly complex and interconnected systems.
Increased movement of hazardous materials.
Rapid industrialization.
Inadequate training.
Inadequate regulation.
Inadequate preventative measures.
Complacency with infrequent incidents.
By analyzing the tracks of tropical storms for the past 100 years,
Sperling’s BestPlaces ranked which areas are most likely to be
hit next by a major hurricane:
1) Southeast Florida (Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach)
2) Key West and the Florida keys
3) Southwest Florida (Fort Myers-Naples)
4) West Florida (Tampa-St. Petersburg-Sarasota-Clearwater)
5) Outer Banks islands, NC (Cape Hatteras)
6) Central Texas Gulf coast (Galveston)
7) Central Florida Atlantic coast (Melbourne-Cocoa Beach)
8) Florida Panhandle (Pensacola-Panama City)
9) Central Gulf coast (New Orleans, LA-Biloxi, MS-Mobile, AL)
10) South Texas Gulf coast (Corpus Christi-Brownsville)
Recent high numbers of hurricanes have certainly
changed our attitude concerning these devastating
natural storms and associated disasters.
Flooded New Orleans and Hurricane
Katrina (NOAA and SPOT images)
Fuel and other material leakage from damaged boats. Hurricane Katrina
(NOAA photo)
• Transportation of Hazardous
Materials
– In the U.S., 1.5 to 4 billion tons of hazardous
chemicals are transported each year.
– There are more than 800,000 shipments of
hazardous materials daily in the United States
according to the DOT
Alabama has about 200 transportation accidents
a year involving hazardous materials. This is
typical for most states.
Birmingham News (Alabama)
Fire from 200,000 gallons of spilled gasoline in
residential area from pipeline rupture (June 1999)
Bellingham Herald (Washington)
Inappropriate discharges,
including accidental
hazardous material
releases and failing
sewerage infrastructure,
can cause acute receiving
water effects.
Natural vs. Technological Disaster
• Natural disasters seen as part of the order of things,
i.e., “acts of God or caprices of nature.”
– Such calamities are to be expected because we do not have
and do not expect to have control of nature.
• Manmade/technological disasters seen as preventable.
– Expectation to be able to control technology.
– It may be more of a blow to suffer a technological
catastrophe since it could have been prevented.
– Issues of blame and responsibility show up more in manmade disasters. These disasters can produce much higher
levels of anger and distrust than natural disasters. However,
Katrina emergency response certainly caused a great deal of
blame and anger.
Steve Becker, School of Public Health, UAB
Characteristics of Toxic Disasters
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May “announce” themselves or may be insidious.
Have the potential to affect large numbers of people.
Can have long-lasting effects.
Can cross political borders.
May occur anywhere, and socio-economic status
may not be protective.
In the United States, 17 incidents have released
sufficient volumes of chemicals with such toxicity
that potential consequences could have been worse
than Bhopal (had location/situation been different).
Steve Becker, School of Public Health, UAB
Psychosocial Impacts of Toxic
Disasters
• Community Effects
– After natural disaster may have therapeutic
community develop.
– Technological disasters often have a conflict
community develop.
• Social Stigma
• Widespread and Chronic Effects
– Natural disasters typically have identifiable low
point after which “things tend to get better.”
– Difficult to identify start of recovery in
technological disasters.
Steve Becker, School of Public Health, UAB
Need for Rapid and Accurate Water
Quality Analyses
• Environmental disasters can cause accidental
releases of hazardous materials.
• Natural disasters also may cause releases of
hazardous sewage, and industrial wastes
throughout an area.
• The public health of the community is at risk
when residents and rescue/cleanup crews
contact contaminated water and sediment
• Rapid responses to determine the magnitude of
the potential problems are necessary.
New NSF Joint Project with the Environmental
Institute/CEE at UA and the Center for Optical
Sensors and Spectroscopies at UAB
• The objective of this project is to utilize optical sensor
technology used for detecting environmental contaminants
and to improve these techniques using recently developed
revolutionary laser and spectroscopic technologies.
• A primary application of these new optical sensor
technologies will be Counter-Terrorism related applications
such as the detection of chemical warfare agents and their
precursors, nuclear processing products and precursors, and
biological warfare agents, and to assist in emergency
response to protect human health after natural disasters
through the rapid detection of organic and inorganic
toxicants.
New Analytical Tools
• Rapid and highly sensitive methods to detect hazardous
organic and metallic contaminants in the water are
needed
• It’s not just “sensor” development, but a whole
analytical approach that is needed to be effective in
these situations
• We have evaluated test equipment and analytical
procedures for many situations. The following are the
key factors in these evaluations:
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Equipment cost
Staff training
Analytical time
Sample preparation
Volume of sample needed
Safety and disposal of wastes
Sensitivity and accuracy of method
Advantages of Laser Fluorescence
Spectrophotometry for
Environmental Monitoring
 Extremely low detection limits (<ng/L) with
very small sample sizes
 Analysis confirmation with multi-line
excitation
 Evaluation of several metals simultaneously
 Extremely stable instrument with repeatable
results
Elliptical
Reflector
Nd:YAG Laser
PC
HV Pulse
Generator
Mixture Jet
& Spark
ICCD & Controller
Spectrograph
Fiber
Guide
x
y
Argon - In
Sample - In
z
Nebulizer
Laser induced breakdown spectroscopy system with argonwater aerosol sample delivery
Laser Atomic
Fluorescence with
atomizer for liquid
samples
Laboratory set-up for the
laser atomic fluorescence
analysis of copper and iron
with graphite furnace
atomizer.
70000
RO water
Cu - 10 g/l
Distilled water
40000
30000
20000
Cu
3 (2nd order)
3 (2nd order)
50000
3 (2nd order)
Intensity, arb.un
60000
Cu
Cu
10000
0
505
510
515
505
510
515
505
510
515
Wavelength, nm
Fluorescence of Cu atoms under 324.75 nm laser excitation

RO water

Intensity, arb.un.
Intensity, arb.un.
Fe ~ 10 g/liter
342
344
ex
ex
= 249.06 nm
= 249.06 nm
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348
Wavelength, nm
* - all experimental conditions were
the same during both experiments
Fe I response in sample water
350
EPA’s New Science Advisory Board
Homeland Security Committee
• The Federal Register announcement states the EPA’s homeland
security roles include:
– protection of critical infrastructure including water and
wastewater industries;
– aiding other federal agencies in the protection of the chemical,
food, transportation, and energy sectors;
– responding and recovering from any chemical, biological,
radiological, or nuclear terrorist events;
– providing environmental expertise to support federal law
enforcement activities;
– improving compliance monitoring and surveillance of imports in
U.S. ports of entry; and
– synthesizing and communicating complex information related to
human health and the environment.
– Additionally, EPA is committed to protecting its own personnel and
infrastructure and conducting internal evaluations of the Agency's
homeland security activities to determine if objectives are
achieved.
Katrina Effects Environmental Investigations
• Our first tasks were to provide QA/QC assistance to the federal
and state government agency environmental monitoring activities
after Hurricane Katrina.
• Human health and water quality in the major bay systems in
Mississippi and in Mississippi Sound are currently of particular
concern to Mississippi DEQ and US EPA, Region 4. Therefore,
the EPA Office of Research and Development has planned
comprehensive water quality monitoring/sampling of the
Mississippi Sound.
• To complement that effort, the Region 4 Science & Ecosystem
Support Division has proposed conducting water quality
monitoring and sampling at the major bay outlets to the
Mississippi Sound. Additionally, Mississippi Department of
Environmental Quality (MDEQ) has requested that this sampling
include historic SESD/MDEQ sampling stations within each bay
system to provide some relative comparison of current conditions.
Acknowledgments and Disclaimers
• Some of the material in this presentation is based upon work
supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant
No. EPS-0447675. The University Transportation Center of
Alabama (UTCA) also supported some of the work.
Information is also presented from work on the Homeland
Security Committee of the EPA’s Science Advisory Board.
• Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or
recommendations expressed in this material are those of the
author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National
Science Foundation, the UTCA, or the EPA’s Science
Advisory Board, although their support is greatfully
acknowledged.