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How to Decontaminate
Yourself After
Exposure
Decontamination is the
reduction or the removal of chemical or biological weapons
agents that you've come into contact
with.
If you've been contaminated with hazardous materials, you'll greatly
improve your chances of survival by conducting personal decontamination.
In most cases, taking off your clothes will remove 80-90% of the potential
contamination. Then wash yourself with water (or soap and water if possible).
Here are the three primary skin decontamination methods.
Physical Removal : Scraping (with a piece of wood, for example)
can remove bulk agent by physical means. Washing the skin with water or a water/soap
solution will physically remove or sufficiently dilute most contamination. Be sure to
scrub well (using a stiff brush, if possible).
Absorbent Materials: These can be used to reduce the quantity of
chemical agent available for uptake through the skin. In emergency situations, dry powder
such as flour, detergents or even soil may be useful. Flour followed by wiping with wet
tissue paper is reported to be effective against the nerve agents soman, VX,
and mustard gas.
Hypochlorite solutions: These are effective in the decontamination of skin or other materials. Disinfectants such as bleach or Lysol spray or Clorox (which contain chlorine)
will destroy most biological agents and are effective against the
blistering agents. For biological agent exposure, you'll
need to scrub yourself well with a chlorine solution for about 15 minutes. In the case of
blistering agents, about 5 minutes should be enough.
NOTES ON
DECONTAMINATION
Be sure to dilute the solution in water before you
use it on your skin and rinse the solution thoroughly off your skin after use. You should
use a 5% solution to decontaminate equipment and objects and a 0.5% solution to
decontaminate your skin. A 5% solution is, for example, Clorox straight out of the bottle.
A 0.5% solution is one part Clorox with 9/10 parts water.
NEVER decontaminate your face using hypochlorite
solutions. Wash instead with soap and water. If possible, use an absorbent powder with wet
tissue (as described above).
Chlorine is also available in tablet form.
The tablets have the advantage of being easy to transport and store, and they have a
longer shelf-life than liquid chlorine.
Ordinary laundry detergent with real
chlorine bleach (as opposed to the non-chlorine type) is very effective against most
agents.
Decontamination is an initial reaction to exposure.
Once decontaminated, you should seek immediate medical attention.
There are some products available that can help you
in the event of contamination or exposure. You can find details on the page
Some products that may save your life.
Prepare a decontamination kit to include in your
safe room with your emergency
survival kit. The decontamination kit should
include Clorox (or equivalent chlorine-based bleach), scrubbing brush(es), soap, damp
swipes, plastic bin liners (to isolate contaminated clothing or materials), a change of
clothing, detergent, tissues or cloths (to wipe surfaces) and an aerosol to spray surfaces
(a used spray container like those used for window cleaners would be enough).
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More information on decontamination:
PDF document detailing various decontamination methods
To be able to read this document, you need to have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your
PC which you can download for free from here.
An
introduction to methods and chemicals for decontamination
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