Columbia scientits prepare for threat of a dirty bomb

 

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Carol Forsloff - No one wants to think about it, but given the recent, clumsy attempt to set off a bomb in New York City, Columbia scientists have been preparing for the threat of a dirty bomb. 

Years ago scientists worked on developing an atomic bomb because the United States had learned Nazi Germany was doing that.  Now, 70 years later,physicists from that center, which is now part of Columbia University Medical Center, are also working hard, this time to prepare for the threat of a dirty bomb. 

 The work of scientists in Columbia's mechanical engineering department centers on containing the damage from a much smaller and less sophisticated weapon, but still one that can do a lot of damage; and that is the diry bomb.  The dirty bomb is a crude explosive device designed to spray radioactive material. 

A robotic apparatus could, following the detonation of a dirty bomb, test tens of thousands of New Yorks each day for radiation exposure using simply a finger prick.  At the present time, these kinds of tests have to be done manually, with blood taken from the arm, and the sample then shipped to a laboratory.  This apparatus does away with those complications.

In a cramped room off Broadway on West 120th Street, in Columbia’s mechanical engineering department, scientists are working diligently on ways of keeping people from the worst case scenario consequences of a dirty bomb. 

“In the best of circumstances, you could do only a few hundred people a day, even with many labs involved,” said David J. Brenner, the center’s director and a professor of radiation biophysics, who has been collaborating on the project with mechanical engineers and biologists from Columbia.


 

The idea is to expand upon this program, because radiation fallout can reach many miles outside the epicenter of a dirty bomb, that scientists say must be anticipated as a possibility, which is the key reason for this research.