NATO STO

Over the years the awareness has increased regarding potential adverse health effects of exposure of military personnel to chemicals. Exposures can adversely affect the health of warfighters, directly affecting military readiness and influence results on the battlefield. These chemicals may originate from various sources, among others from the use of ammunition. In contrast to exposure to chemicals from other sources, firing ammunition often results in concentrated, pulsed, repetitive, exposures that are challenging to assess. This questions the use of current occupational health exposure guidelines that may not suitable for evaluating the toxicological hazards when firing ammunition. The recent RTG AVT-277 evaluated the limits of currently used approaches to estimate hazards from firing ammunition. One of the conclusions of this RTG was that there is no uniform approach to perform the qualitative and quantitative measurement of emission products at the breathing zone when firing ammunition in a pulsed manner. These measurements are important to get a better understanding of the parameters influencing the formation and final composition of emitted products. This knowledge is essential for the development of model that can predict the emissions from weapon/ammunition combinations. This RTG proposes to advance our understanding step towards the final goal of performing an adequate prediction of the chemical hazards when using ammunition and even performing a representable risk assessment.