St. Charles County Joins Homeland Security BioWatch Program

Specialized air filters collecting tiny radioactive particles were how the U.S. military detected the Soviet Union had tested its first atomic bomb in 1949.

A similar principle can be used to detect many airborne threats, which is why St. Charles County is joining a federal program to monitor for biological “agents”—intentionally released pathogens—in the air we breathe.

Under an ordinance approved July 13 by the County Council, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) BioWatch program will pay for at least three air monitoring stations to be placed in the county.

“This will create a network of air filters that we will collect every day, 365 days a year, and send by courier to the state public health lab in Jefferson City to be tested for biological agents,” says Emergency Management Director Jani Albright. “The idea is to catch a threat as quickly as possible to limit the number of people who are affected. You can mitigate it a lot quicker if you know it’s there, compared to waiting for hundreds of people to show up at the hospital and then trying to backtrack and figure out what’s causing it.”

Before now, the closest air monitors in the St. Louis region were along the Missouri River, says Rob Wylie, a former fire chief who now works on the County’s executive staff.

“By the time monitors in St. Louis County would have detected anything, it would have already moved across St. Charles County, as the air moves west to east,” Wylie says. “The benefit of taking this on is we can deploy monitors to our western boundary so we have an earlier warning.

“It’s for our own protection, with things like SSM and Progress West hospitals at the western part of our jurisdiction,” Wylie adds. “But we also have a Boeing facility and infrastructure that’s a major part of the financial system in St. Charles County, which are nationally important assets.”

DHS will pay the entire cost of the program through an annual grant to the County.

The federal grant will be used to pay for one full-time manager and six intermittent technical positions on the Emergency Management team, a division of the County Police Department. Costs covered by the federal funding also include the purchase of vehicles and related equipment.

BioWatch is a nationwide biological surveillance program founded in 2003 under President George Bush after the anthrax attacks of 2001. Participating regions act as a safety grid to give an early warning of a possible bioterrorism attack. 

Regional partners include the city of St. Louis Fire Department and Metro East locations through the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency. 

The program could be up and running by this fall.