Scotty, activate the portal shields

The future is now with air-testing device

No, it’s not a lost episode of Star Trek. Portal shields are in use today when a gathering of political leaders may tempt the bioterrorist to strike, said Randy Culpepper, MD, MPH, a bioterrorism expert with the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick in Frederick, MD.

"It would be really cool — if there was an attack — if we had some machine out there in the environment sucking up air and analyzing it continuously for the presence of biological agents," he said. "Well, we have those. We have that ability."

Portal shields are environmental biological warfare agent monitors that suck in surrounding air, concentrate it, liquefy it, and filter out particle sizes of nonessential organisms. The collected material is then put on ELISA test strips that can identify microorganisms (e.g., anthrax, smallpox, etc.) generally thought to be potential bioterrorist weapons.

Six of the portal shields were stationed around a building in Washington, DC, last year for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit, he said. The air-sampling devices were also used at the political conventions of the Democratic and Republican parties last year.

"The government deploys literally hundreds of people to be on site for all these events — experts in chemicals, biologicals, radiation," he said. "The idea is to get [portal shields] smaller, faster, more rapid. [We would like to use them] not just for the environment, but for our patients as well. I can take a clinical sample, and within minutes I can have some kind of answer on what’s going on in that patient. That’s where the technology, the research is heading today."