The Institute of Environmental and Human Health (TIEHH) at Lubbock, Texas-based Texas Tech University (TTU) has received a $1.1 million research award from the U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command to continue funding the Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr. National Program for Countermeasures to Biological and Chemical Threats. The funding enables researchers at TIEHH, TTU and the TTU Health Sciences Center to further enhance and leverage technologies that Zumwalt researchers have developed, including the Fibertect® nonwoven decontamination wipe, which has received $90,000 for one year.

Fibertect was developed in 2005 by Dr. Seshadri Ramkumar, manager of the Nonwoven and Advanced Materials Laboratory at TIEHH, and a team of research scientists to meet the Department of Defense's need for a wipe that would absorb and neutralize gases and liquids that might be used in chemical warfare. The process to make Fibertect has since received a U.S. patent and is now used by the U.S. military to manufacture a low-cost decontamination wipe. Last year, the TIEHH team re-engineered the wipe — which is made from raw cotton and carbon — to soak up oil in the Gulf of Mexico following the explosion and sinking of BP's Deepwater Horizon oil rig off the coast of Louisiana in April 2010.

The continued support will help researchers develop more applications for Fibertect. "One of the objectives that the Army's Research, Development and Engineering Command encourages is for us to take these technologies we develop for military applications and make them commercially viable where they can transfer to the civilian population for responders on the domestic side," said Steve Presley, research coordinator for the Zumwalt program. "The post-9/11 world has kind of matured, and there are always newer threats. It's always evolving. One role that the Zumwalt program plays is to help the military adapt to the changing threat landscape."

July 19, 2011