fyi-from the New York Times

["Richard L Whitman" <richard_whitman@usgs.gov>]

This article in the NY Times talks about one of the promising technologies
for rapid testing of pathogens.  Of course, its application in ambient
water may be difficult and to a large degree depends on efficient, rapid
sample preparation.


----- Forwarded by Richard L Whitman/BRD/USGS/DOI on 03/10/2003 09:34 AM
-----
                                                                                                           
                      "Kirschner,                                                                          
                      Bruce"                   To:       "'Richard_Whitman@usgs.gov'"                      
                      <KirschnerB@winds         <Richard_Whitman@usgs.gov>                                 
                      or.ijc.org>              cc:                                                         
                                               Subject:  fyi-from the New York Times                       
                      03/10/2003 06:42                                                                     
                      AM                                                                                   
                                                                                                           
                                                                                                           




Richard:

Your beach folks might be interested in this article from the New York
Times.  Once someone is signed in to the Times, it is available at the URL
below:

Bruce


http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/10/technology/10PATE.html




March 10, 2003
Invention Tests Water Safety
By SABRA CHARTRAND


HOMELAND security includes safe drinking fountains.

In January, officials at the Super Bowl knew that the game, a symbol of
American culture that packed tens of thousands of people into one place,
made an ideal target for terrorists. So Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego was
blanketed with video cameras, metal detectors at every gate and swarms of
security guards and bouncers. Air space was also regulated - all in an
effort to prevent anything from gunfire to bombs to an airborne attack.

But officials also knew that terrorists could take a page from a spy
thriller and poison the stadium's water supply with bacteria or chemicals.

So outside the stadium, behind a cluster of flagpoles and palm trees and a
chain link fence, stood a portable shed housing a machine the size of a
small refrigerator. A computer monitor rested on the machine, from which
black tubing not much bigger than a garden hose stretched to a large
industrial pipe nearby.

It was the lone pipe carrying water into the stadium, where fans and
workers
lined up at drinking fountains, used bathroom sinks and ate food prepared
in
stadium kitchens.

The black hose drew a stream from that water main and fed it into the
machine in the shed, where laser beams scanned it for micro-organisms. The
machine was looking for pathogens like E. coli or anthrax, or particles
that
it could not identify but knew should not be present in ordinary drinking
water.

The system sent a stream of data to computer screens not far away.

"We have data from every five seconds of water that went into the Super
Bowl," said Dr. Gregory Quist, one of two inventors who received a patent
in
February for the system of instantaneously identifying dangerous particles
in water.

Water is traditionally tested for purity by taking a sample, isolating
organisms and culturing them in a laboratory for a day or more to determine
whether they are harmful.

"In the case of a bioterrorism attack, that's far too late for any remedial
action," said Dr. Quist, who is also president and founder of PointSource
Technologies, in Escondido, Calif., which owns the patent. "The stadium was
very well secured; there were people every 20 feet, security and military
forces, people checking everyone, but the pipe carrying water was
unprotected and someone upstream could have attacked it."

He added, "Our device can give those results in real time, and
continuously,
at the point of entry."

The patented system relies on a laser beam to identify micro-organisms in
water.

"A side stream of water, which we assume to be representative of the water
in general, passes through a laser beam," Dr. Quist explained. "As it
passes
through the beam, light is scattered. We gather the light and, using a
mathematical technique, we can determine what kind of particle it is by its
shape, size and internal composition."

The descriptions, he continued, "are unique in general for different types
of micro-organisms. E. coli looks different from campylobacteria or
cholera.
The laser beam picks up one particle at a time, so if there's one bad
particle, we can find it.

"It's like being in a dusty room and seeing the dust particles in a
sunbeam," he said. "If a trained microbiologist can look at it with a
microscope and tell the differences, then our system can tell the
differences."

One organism commonly found in water is algae.

"The amount of algae goes up and down, depending on the time of year,
temperature of the water, chlorination," Dr. Quist said. "But that doesn't
harm anyone, it just makes the water taste bad.

"Things like E. coli and anthrax we can pick out from other biological
backgrounds like algae, and make a distinction between what is bad and not
bad," he added.

The system is not perfect. Pathogens like E. coli and shigella are "very
difficult to tell apart," he said, and so far the company's software has
only half a dozen organisms in its database.

More importantly, the system scans for living bio-organisms, but not for
chemicals. If water was poisoned with chemicals, the system would only tag
them as foreign or unidentified.

"Even though there may be an infinite number of possibilities that bad guys
can put in water, if it is different than what is ordinarily there, our
system can profile it and we can see the change," Dr. Quist said. "If the
particles we have identified skyrocket, or if unidentified particles
skyrocket, or if there is a change in the water, then we can detect that."

The chief executive of PointSource, Salah Hassanein, said the technology
was
originally developed for detecting contamination in industries like
pharmaceuticals, food manufacturing, agriculture and fisheries. The company
has 16 patents pending for related technologies, he added.

"It's a detection system more than an antiterrorism system," Mr. Hassanein
said.

But these days, detection is an antiterrorism weapon. "We built it for
peacetime, and then all of a sudden 9/11 happened," Dr. Quist said. "And it
happened that what we were doing could be applied to defense of the
homeland."

PointSource's system is also being tested at a Los Angeles water utility,
and in a study with the American Waterworks Association Research
Foundation,
Dr. Quist said. He and another inventor, Hanno Ix, received patent
6,519,033.





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