NEW YORK, 24 September 2003 — Forget the duct tape, the gas masks, home radiation detectors, potassium iodide pills and parachutes as protection from a “dirty bomb” or chemical or biological attack.
That is the message of a public health guide published this month by a group of hundreds of doctors and scientists to counter the surge in so-called terrorism protection products that grew out of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on America.
Dr. Elizabeth Whelan, founder of the American Council on Science and Health, said people taking incorrect measures “may well be the result of misinformation from vendors of various terrorism protection gear, the media and government.
“Terrorism facts and myths have become blurred,” Whelan told a news briefing to introduce the “New Yorker’s Guide to Terrorism Preparedness and Response: Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear.”
Bioterrorism oversight expert Dr. Henry Miller of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University said unsophisticated means of attack still presented the greatest threat.
“Many dreaded scenarios are technologically very difficult to achieve,” Miller said. “I think the likeliest mode of attack is likely to be a relatively simple one.”
For example, the guide recommends that New York residents ask apartment building owners to restrict or prohibit public use of their underground parking garages for vehicles. Before and since the hijacked plane attacks two years ago which killed about 3,000 people, car and truck bombs have been favored by Al-Qaeda, the radical network blamed for the strikes.
One example of an unlikely — but not impossible — attack cited in the guide is a big city’s water supply being contaminated by a toxic agent. To succeed, experts said such large quantities would be needed so as to contaminate every millimeter of water in a reservoir. The attackers would also need detailed knowledge of the system and access to its critical nodes, they said.
Misinformation and the resulting panic in an attack from a radiological device, or “dirty bomb,” was more dangerous than exposure itself, council members said.
Dr. Andrew Karam, a radiation expert at the University of Rochester, New York, said people were mistaken if they believed they needed a lot of background information to understand the effects of radiation exposure.
“If we have a dirty bomb attack in the United States, I would be willing to bet that the death toll from ignorance will be greater than the death toll from the attack itself,” Karam said. “It’s more dangerous to get into a car and drive away than it is to go inside and to shelter yourself from the radioactivity.”
In July, the New York City government published its first household preparedness manual since the height of the Cold War in the 1960s when Americans lived in fear of nuclear attack by the Soviet Union. It gave the same advice as it did then: “If you can’t get out of the building, get under a sturdy table or desk” even though the suggestion became the butt of jokes.
Council founder Whelan called home radiation detector devices offered by some purveyors “a scam.” She said parachutes sold by stores to people who live or work in skyscrapers were dangerous because they required training to use and were vulnerable to weather conditions.
“Homeland Security Department advice notwithstanding, you do not need duct tape,” Whelan added.
Last year, the new US Department of Homeland Security urged people to supply themselves with duct tape for windows in event of a chemical or biological attack. The guide released last week said closing windows and shutting off ventilation systems would provide sufficient protection.
Retired Maj. Gen. Randall West said the guide showed that “if we are educated, we won’t be as afraid and we also won’t do silly or foolish things that we think are protecting us when they are not.”
Council executive director Dr. Gilbert Ross said the Department of Homeland Security had a copy of the guide but had not yet responded to its contents. “It is with such knowledge and information that people can elect prudence over paranoia,” Ross said.
The group recommends being prepared for an attack like the one in October 2001 when anthrax was sent through the mail. It said having a supply of the antibiotic Cipro for treating anthrax was reasonable, but being vaccinated for smallpox was unnecessary because a smallpox attack was only theoretical.