Texas Tech Decontamination Wipe finds new use

Anyone with a dog
knows what happens when the animal gets wet: the big shake that throws water
all over everyone and everything nearby. But what happens if the dog is covered
in something more hazardous than water?

It also gets thrown
all over everyone and everything nearby.

Two years ago, Brett
Huff, an animal decontamination specialist, was looking for a better solution
than the diluted-dish-soap-and-water method he was using to clean animals. It
was messy, distressing to the animals – even in warm weather, let alone the freezing
temperatures of winter – and, when it was all over, he had a huge amount of
contaminated water to dispose of, which had to be done safely.

That’s when a member
of the US Army’s Special Forces asked if he’d heard of FiberTectâ„¢. 

Invented by Texas
Tech University professor Seshadri Ramkumar, FiberTectâ„¢ was conceived in 2005
as a low-cost decontamination wipe for the US military that could absorb and
neutralise the gases and liquids used in chemical warfare. Then, after the
Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, the material was re-engineered to safely
clean up the oil. 

That was an
eye-opener for Huff, because oil is one of the products he often sees in his
work. An Army veteran as well as a 30-year veteran of the security, environmental,
training and rescue fields, Huff is a technical rescue specialist and
instructor for Code 3, a leader in emergency response product design, and
Animal Search and Rescue, a technical rescue team that specialises in animals.
He’s also the owner of Animal Decon, a training, planning and disaster response
resource for working and service animals as well as household pets, zoo or
exotic animals, wildlife and livestock.

“Anytime there’s a
flood, or any major rain event, anything in a household can be put into the
storm drains,” Huff explained. “Animals are constantly getting themselves in a
situation in flooded waters and industrial agricultural chemicals, sewage ponds
– there’s a lot of things they can get into. So, a FiberTect™ wipe would be
really good to keep with you to wipe them down.

“The problem is,
especially in a mass casualty event, we’re looking at the possibility of
secondary contamination, because they can spread that hazardous material. So,
anything we can do to reduce that contaminant on the animal as the owner brings
it in, or before we get to the decontamination station – where there are other
people and animals – would be huge and a great benefit to anybody doing a
decontamination operation.”

Of course, a
sufficiently quick response to reduce secondary contamination requires having
FiberTectâ„¢ on hand before you need it. 

“As with all
decontamination, speed is key,” said Corey
Collings, a training, research and development specialist with First Line
Technology, which markets the product. “FiberTect™ can be immediately
deployed to animal owners to easily decontaminate their own service animals,
working dogs or companion pets. Because FiberTectTM is intrinsically safe and
intuitive to use, it requires no prior training to effectively perform bulk
decontamination. Most critically, this frees up valuable trained personnel to set
up and operate follow-on technical decontamination lines.”

Since his
introduction to FiberTectâ„¢ two years ago, Huff has become one of its most
ardent advocates. He gives training presentations across the country to various
disaster response groups and, by his estimates, he taught about 5,000 people in
the last two years. Not only does he include FiberTectâ„¢ in his presentations,
he carries it in his decontamination bag at all times.

That’s because the
options for its uses abound. Huff has personally used FiberTectâ„¢ on horses,
goats and even a 100-pound tortoise. 

He has been working
with Louisiana and Mississippi’s state governments to develop response and
training plans for decontaminating people after a mass casualty event, be it
the fallout from a power plant, a dirty bomb or a full nuclear strike. Animals,
he emphasised, must be part of those plans. 

Huff is even looking
at applications to decontaminate police dogs after Fentanyl raids. 

“The use of FiberTect™
has expanded from just being a wipe designed for the decontamination of
chemical warfare agents,” said Amit
Kapoor, president and CEO of First Line Technology. “With its flexible
design, FiberTectTM is made in large format pads, perforated rolls and sewn
into mitts allowing for a growing list of uses. We continue to find new uses
with additional testing and research conducted by First Line Technology as well
as end users in the first responder and military community.”

While there are other
products available for decontamination, Huff said FiberTectâ„¢  has clear advantages. 

“There are a lot of
products out there – cotton towels, fiber towels, other industrial, absorbent
wipes – but not with the ability this product has,” he said. “They do not catch
the off gasses and do not have the ability to hold chemicals into the product.
So that’s why I went to FiberTect™ – for the containment, because it’s easier
to dispose of, it was more compact and it was a known, proven product.”

Its longevity adds to
that proven quality, its inventor said. After being commercialized through Texas
Tech, FiberTectâ„¢ has been manufactured since 2005 by Hobbs Bonded Fibers, a
Waco-based company founded by Carey Hobbs, a university alumnus and regent for
the Texas Tech University System. 

“FiberTect™ is an
innovation story, showing that this platform technology can lend itself to
multiple applications, be it saving the lives of warfighters and first
responders, protecting the environment from toxic chemical and vapours, and now
protecting and taking care of pets and animals,” Ramkumar said. “With COVID-19, there is renewed importance in
manufacturing, and fields like nonwovens and technical textiles that have lent
themselves to products like FiberTectâ„¢ will play a key role in next phase of
research and manufacturing.”