Extreme cold weather creates a significant cold weather challenge for hazardous materials response. When chemical spills, chemical releases, or vapor threats occur in cold-weather environments, traditional decontamination methods—especially water-based decontamination—can become ineffective or unsafe.
Dry decontamination in cold weather provides an alternative approach that supports emergency decontamination when freezing risk and ambient conditions limit conventional options.
This blog summarizes what was shared publicly through HazmatNation and provides operational context based on FAST-ACT’s experience supporting emergency preparedness and response across transportation, industrial, and healthcare environments.
In December 2025, the White House issued an executive order designating illicit fentanyl and its core precursor chemicals as a weapon of mass destruction (WMD). This designation reflects a growing federal acknowledgment that fentanyl is not only a driver of the opioid crisis, but also a serious hazardous materials threat to first responders, including law enforcement, fire,… Continue reading Fentanyl Decontamination and Responder Safety: Why Federal Designation Matters for First Responders
This November, the FAST-ACT team continued its commitment to advancing chemical preparedness and CBRN defense through nationwide engagement and collaboration. From Charleston to Los Angeles and Fort Campbell, FAST-ACT and its partners showcased how dry decontamination technology enhances operational readiness and response efficiency across military, emergency, and defense sectors.
While campaigns like USPS Hazmat Awareness Month help reinforce safety practices, incidents related to hazardous package handling can happen at any time of the year, from chemical spills to opioid exposure or lithium battery leaks.
Ensuring employee safety requires a combination of awareness, proper handling protocols, and practical chemical decontamination tools that can neutralize threats quickly.
This blog will cover how Emergency Response Teams, security sector professionals, and regional governments can integrate dry decontamination technologies and vapor threat neutralization strategies into their event playbooks to ensure safe, efficient, and scalable response to Chemical Warfare Agents, Biological attacks, terror incidents, or lithium-ion battery fires that may arise in high-density environments.
This blog will explain the scale and stakes of these events, highlight why chemical decontamination and decontamination methods are essential to safety, and reaffirm how FAST-ACT’s solutions merge with personal protective equipment (PPE) and multiagency workflow to deliver readiness, efficiency, and confidence.
This guide breaks down cyclosarin’s chemical properties, health effects, and environmental behavior, while also showing how FAST-ACT decontamination solutions protect communities against these toxic chemicals.
This post concludes our hospital decontamination blog series, following Part 1: Rethinking Hospital Decontamination and Part 2: Inside the Protocol: A Hospital SOP for Dry Chemical Decontamination.
This August, the FAST-ACT team was on the road providing hands-on training and support to first responders facing today’s most urgent chemical and hazardous material threats.
