(86g) Decontamination of Surfaces by Vapor Phase Hydrogen Peroxide

The danger of terroristic attacks by chemical and/or biological weapons makes very actual a need of appropriate crisis plans comprising methods of decontamination of stricken spaces. Remediation of huge areas exposed by chemicals is very complicated, mainly due to large surfaces with complicated shape. Thus, application of gas and/or vapor agents seem to be only way. Vapor phase hydrogen peroxide (VPHP) seems to be very promising method. It was already applied by remediation of government building in the U.S.A. after anthrax attacks. Hydrogen peroxide is strong oxidizing agent, thus we can expect that it can leads to oxidative decomposition of biologically active compounds. Since the VPHP is nowadays fully adopted like the decontamination method, it is strange that almost no information is available for its use for chemical compounds.

We focus our research on mechanism and chemical structure effect on course of decontamination. Our goal is to explain relationship between structure of organic compounds and degree of decomposition. It was tested various aromatic compounds to get deeper information about synergic effect of various substituents. It was also applied VPHP for decontamination of biological active compounds, like alkaloids, pharmaceutical substances, etc.

Acknowledgement: The work was supported by the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Czech Republic, Grant No. FT-TA 4/071.