Handheld chemical cloud identifier hits first responder market.

BLOCK Engineering has shrunk a fixed-sight chemical cloud detector down to where it can be carried into the field.

Its Fourier-transform-infrared spectrometer, the Porthos, can find and identify a chemical cloud at distances of up to 5 kilometers, chief executive officer Petros Kotidis said.

Users point at a suspected area where agents might be found, and it reads the spectra. An on-board computer with a library of substances highlights the cloud or fumes on a view screen and tells operators what they are seeing.

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Kotidis wouldn't disclose how many agents are in the library, "but we have all the dangerous ones," he said. It detects all the chemical agents the military requires--nerve, blood and blister--and toxic industrial chemicals such as ammonia, boron trichloride, phosgene, nitric acid, sulfur dioxide and hydrogen cyanide. Additional chemicals can be programmed as needed, company literature said.

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