A new version of Fibertect, the nonwoven decontamination wipe created by researchers at Texas Tech University, has proven itself more viable at cleaning up a nerve chemical surrogate than the decontamination substance currently used by the US Department of Defense (DoD), which is currently being phased out.

“When compared to the powdered decontaminant called M-291, the all-cotton version of our nonwoven wipe paired with an activated carbon centre cleaned up not only the chemical surrogate to the nerve gas soman, but also adsorbed its vapors five times more effectively,” said Seshadri Ramkumar, lead investigator on the project and inventor of Fibertect.