Handbook of Chemical and Biological Warfare Agents, Volume 1

D. Hank Ellison served in the United States Army as a chemical officer and has worked for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as both a remedial project manager and federal on-scene coordinator under the Superfund Program. He currently is president of Cerberus & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm that specializes in response to technological disasters. As a private consultant, Ellison has responded to hazardous material incidents involving highly poisonous materials, chemical fires, water reactive substances, and shock-sensitive materials throughout the state of Michigan. He has provided chemical and biological counterterrorism training to members of emergency medical service (EMS) units, hazardous materials (hazmat) teams, police special weapons and tactics (SWAT) teams, and explosive ordinance disposal (EOD) teams. During the anthrax events of 2001, he helped state and local governments as well as Fortune 500 companies to develop and implement response plans for biological threats. He currently advises clients on issues of hazardous materials, and related safety and security concerns. He also served as a safety officer and then the training officer for the United States Department of Health and Human Services DMORT-WMD emergency response team, which has the primary mission for recovery and decontamination of fatalities contaminated with radiological, biological or chemical materials. He deployed with the team to New Orleans in response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Mr. Ellison holds an MS degree in chemistry from the University of California, Irvine. His graduate research involved methods to synthesize poisons extracted from Colombian poison-dart frogs. He holds a BS in chemistry from the Georgia Institute of Technology. In addition to his works on weapons of mass destruction, he is the author of Chemical Warfare During the Vietnam War: Riot Control Agents in Combat, published in 2011, as well as a chapter on the hazardous properties of materials in Managing Hazardous Materials: A Definitive Text published in 2002.