Experts are continuing to criticize a Bush administration plan that has placed sensors around the country to constantly monitor air quality for evidence of biological terrorism, the Associated Press reported today (see GSN, Jan. 24).

Supporters said the plan, dubbed “Biowatch,” allows authorities to discover if a dangerous agent has been released long before victims become ill.

“Prior to it being rolled out, the only real way to tell if a biological agent had been released was to see if people started turning up sick or worse,” said Bob Bostock, homeland security chief for the Environmental Protection Agency.

Critics said the system’s sensors would not detect harmful agents in enclosed areas such as airports or subways, and outdoor biological attacks would probably not spread far enough to reach the sensors.

“The probability of being able to identify something in time to make some sort of public health decision, is pretty small,” said Jacqueline Cattani, director of the Center for Biological Defense at the University of South Florida.  “If you saw planes going over and releasing major clouds of this stuff, there’s a chance that people would get suspicious a long time before anybody checked the filters,” she added.

Calvin Chue, a researcher at the Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies at Johns Hopkins University, said the cost of the system will be high and the probability of detecting an attack will be low.

The system includes at least 31 cities, and the White House announced earlier this year it expects the program will cost $1 million per city each year (Associated Press/NBC, July 11).

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