A recent story about the deaths of a woman and injury to others points out the gaps that remain after untold billions of dollars spent on response to terrorism programs.

While focusing and spending billions on the exotic threats such as military chemical warfare agents being used in a low probability event, we miss the value of raising the awareness and operations level across all sectors of public safety to everyday events.  It is still more likely and  the consequences predictable that a simple accident of mixing two cleaning agents will hurt people, or someone will intentionally commit suicide  using commonly available chemicals which became popular in Japan before spreading the practice elsewhere.

The key is not how toxic something is or isn’t, it is about recognizing a potential hazard (not identifying it with technical, expensive equipment), avoiding obtaining a dose and understanding how to keep others from being significantly dosed and treating those who have been affected appropriately.

Any piece of detection equipment requires a trained operator who ensures the equipment remains calibrated and serviceable, and deploys the equipment regularly to understand what the equipment does or does not tell them so others can make better decisions.