Many (if not most) cities and many industries have HAZMAT teams trained and equipped to deal with accidental spills and releases of toxic industrial chemicals. They have not been trained or equipped to deal with terrorist incidents, but chemical weapons of the types that would most plausibly be used by terrorists are not fundamentally different from the chemicals that these teams already address.

Among the first responders to chemical terrorism, fire departments can be a major resource. All fire departments have personnel who are trained and equipped to work with respirators and protective gear (as hazardous vapors are always a part of fires), and they are of course trained to deal with emergencies. The police are not routinely equipped to respond to chemical incidents per se (although they play an essential role in maintaining order). Equipping police units with protective gear is, however, a practical way of expanding the number of individuals who can actively participate in the response to a chemical incident.

Weapons of Mass Destruction Civil Support Teams from the Department of Defense are deployed around the country.¹ These groups have a limited but possibly useful capability to coordinate communications among responders and to carry out chemical and biological analyses.

Another substantial capability in place is the military, including active-duty, reserve, and National Guard personnel. The military has trained and equipped for chemical warfare during the past 50 years. It maintains large supplies of relevant equipment—protective suits, prophylactics, and medical countermeasures against nerve and blister agents. These assets are geared, however, to wars on foreign battlefields. An important issue is to understand how to use this capability in time of need inside the continental United States.