Washington

The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is running a $1.5-million programme to evaluate hand-held kits used by emergency workers to test for biological hazards in possible terrorism situations.

The programme is the latest of several major federal efforts to evaluate the kits over the past two years. The kits are used by first responders — workers who are first on the scene in any emergency — who need to determine quickly whether a suspicious substance contains a pathogen such as anthrax. The programme will set operating standards and test which devices meet them.

Such kits are controversial, and battles over their use illustrate the technical challenges and difficulties in coordinating federal agencies that the US government faces as it tightens homeland security.

The government first focused on the kits in late 2001, after a terrorist mailed anthrax spores around the country. These high-profile attacks were followed by tens of thousands of ‘powder calls’ — most of which were false alarms. To distinguish fake calls from real ones quickly, emergency workers began using hand-held detectors. But federal officials were unsure about the accuracy of the devices, so the FBI and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, both ran tests on them.

The results alarmed the US government's science advisers. On 19 July 2002, John Marburger, head of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), announced in a memorandum that commercial hand-held detectors were plagued by technical problems and advised first responders and government officials not to use them. Marburger said the kits were prone to delivering false positive results, which could result in costly and frightening quarantines and city shut-downs.

This announcement angered some emergency workers, who say they know the limitations of the kits and combine them with other techniques to rule out false positives. They also say that the government's advice — that first responders rely only on laboratory tests — is not practical.

“The hand-helds can rule out a lot of things so, potentially, we do not have to quarantine people on a train for 72 hours while we wait for an answer,” says John Eversole, chair of the International Association of Fire Chiefs' Committee on Hazardous Materials.

The manufacturers of the devices were also upset, because they say the first evaluation of hand-held kits took place behind closed doors, without their input.

Last year, the DHS and the OSTP began new evaluations. They set up a committee to oversee the tests under the auspices of the Association of Analytical Communities, based in Gaithersburg, Maryland. The committee comprises academics, government officials and industry representatives.

But controversy remains as manufacturers are worried that the tests will be biased by the OSTP's earlier conclusions and say the government is out of touch with everyday situations faced by first responders. “There is significant tension between the guy in the field and the bureaucracy,” notes William Nelson, chief executive of Tetracore, a biotech company in Gaithersburg.

And scientists testing the devices remain concerned. “This product is too limited,” says Vincent Vilker, head of the biotechnology division at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which is one of the agencies evaluating the results of the tests.

But with first responders clamouring for help, DHS and OSTP officials say they must provide guidance soon — at least until better kits come along. The new evaluations are expected to be available later this year.