1st CVE took place

On Saturday 20th October the first CVE took place within the tyroleanwide disaster relief exercise.

The Contamitaion Vecor Experiment (CVE) tries to measures different decontamination methods by putting 500 nanometer sizing latex microspherules on the skin of a person, which is later decontaminated through standard military decontamination procedures. On saturday 20th october the tyroleanwide desater relief exercise with 150 injured and 30 contaminated persons was a perfect opportunity to conduct the CVE for the first time to test the field fitness of the PolAres contamination vector analysis strategy. Hence, a team of five people and a camera team from the Austrian Braodcasting Cooperation ORF met at 10:00 on a cold morning at the Tivoli (soccer) stadium. The Red Cross started already to make up the 150 "patients" with different injuries, 30 of these should simulate a contamination.

The PolAres team selected 14 people for the CVE. All of them where informed about the experiment and got at least one body surface area contaminated. Therefore a part of the skin (mostly back of the hand and palms where chosen) were marked with an UV pen to find the contaminated region later. Then with a micropipette 100 um of a liquid with the microspherules were put on the marked skin.

At 13:00 the exercise started and the PolAres team split in two groups. One group went to the decontamination area at the university clinic. This site was operated by the Austrian federal army. The other group stayed near the Tivoli stadium at the red cross medical field centre where the firefighters also operated a decontamination tent. The seriosly injured & contaminated people where brought to the firefighters' decontamination tent and were thoroughly washed with water. After passing throught the decontamination process, the PolAres team waited to obtain samples. With an UV-Lamp, the contaminated area could easily be found and with a clear adhesive foil a sample was taken. After all injured had passed through the decontamination tent, surface samples from the tent, from the protective overall of the firefighters, from shoes and from the floor were taken.