Projects / Past Projects

New technologies for the generation of aerosols and their impact on biological weapons proliferation

Project Period: 2003 - 2004
Funding: State of Hamburg’s Ministry of Research and Education
Project officer: Petra Dickmann
Cooperation partner: Götz Neuneck, Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy Hamburg

States or groups interested in the use of biological weapons are in need of appropriate delivery technologies to disseminate biological agents, which make the control of appropriate technologies a central component of biological arms control. Based on the experience with former biological warfare programmes it can be assumed that the most efficient way to deliver biological agents is their aerosolization. Since this requires a great deal of very specialised technological know-how, the development of appropriate delivery methods is considered the most difficult phase of an offensive biological warfare programme. On the other hand aerosol technologies are of increasing interest in different fields of legitimate civilian research, e.g. in agriculture, pharmacology or coating.

The project provided an overview of current developments in aerosol generating technologies and discussed the relevance of these technologies against the background of several military and terrorist scenarios. Relevant parameters included particle size and volume of the respective technologies.