The course on Reconnaissance and Sampling Operations in a Highly Contaminated Environment is a capacity-building initiative to support the OPCW member states to fulfil national responsibilities under Article X of Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). It will reinforce the member states’ capacity by providing specialised knowledge to chemical emergency response specialists in this critical aspect of chemical incident management. The course will also strengthen the capability of participants to prepare and respond to chemical incidents through setting up safety measures and procedures to carry out their tasks.
The course is for specialised emergency response specialists responsible for conducting reconnaissance and sampling operations after chemical attacks or chemical incidents.
Objectives
The training programme envisages developing specialised knowledge and skills and enabling the participants to understand:
- CWAs / TICs their classification, properties, types of exposure and mechanism of action.
- Principles of protection in a contaminated environment, MOPP levels and donning and doffing procedures.
- Detection procedures/ techniques.
- Reconnaissance operations in a contaminated environment and evidence collection from incident site.
- Chemical threat perception in a highly contaminated environment.
- General sampling procedures rules, types of collected environmental samples / techniques.
- Decontamination principles/ methods/ equipment and decontaminants.
- Administration of first aid / antidotes for chemical causalities.
- Chain of custody / transportation procedures of toxic samples.
- Sample preparation as well as analysis procedures of toxic samples in laboratory.
- Laboratory safety procedures for handling toxic chemical samples.