NEW YORK: Forget the duct tape, the gas masks, home radiation detectors, potassium iodide pills and parachutes as protection from a “dirty bomb” or chemical or biological attack.

That is the message of a public health guide published this month by a group of hundreds of doctors and scientists to counter the surge in so-called terrorism protection products that grew out of the September 11, 2001, attacks on America.

Dr Elizabeth Whelan, founder of the American Council on Science and Health, said people taking incorrect measures “may well be the result of misinformation from vendors of various terrorism protection gear, the media and government.

“Terrorism facts and myths have become blurred,” Whelan told a news briefing to introduce the “New Yorker’s Guide to Terrorism Preparedness and Response: Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear.”

Bioterrorism oversight expert Dr Henry Miller of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University said unsophisticated means of attack still presented the greatest threat.

“Many dreaded scenarios are technologically very difficult to achieve,” Miller said. “I think the likeliest mode of attack is likely to be a relatively simple one.”

For example, the guide recommends that New York residents ask apartment building owners to restrict or prohibit public use of their underground parking garages for vehicles. Before and since the hijacked plane attacks two years ago which killed about 3,000 people, car and truck bombs have been favoured by Al Qaeda, the network blamed for the strikes.

In July, the New York City government published its first household preparedness manual since the height of the Cold War in the 1960s when Americans lived in fear of nuclear attack by the Soviet Union.—Reuters