On Wednesday, U.S. researchers confirmed that a new dry wipe can clean up chemical agents such as mustard gas. This can give soldiers an easier way to deal with toxic materials on the battlefield.

The researchers at Texas Tech University in Lubbock developed the wipe as a reply to a call by the U.S. military for better ways to decontaminate military personnel and equipment.

Seshadri Ramkumar of Texas Tech, who developed the wipe, reported in a telephonic interview, “This is the first time this kind of wipe has been developed and it has been tested against a real chemical agent.”

It was quite astonishing to notice that the wipe outperformed 30 different materials in the tests performed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California using mustard gas and other toxic chemicals. The test even included materials that are currently used in military decontamination kits.

“The dry wipe has an activated carbon core sandwiched between an absorbent layer on the top and bottom. It is meant to replace loose particle cleaners currently used by the military,” informed Ramkumar, whose study appears in the journal Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research.

He said further, “When a soldier is fighting and there are open wounds, he will not be able to put loose particles on the skin. They needed something which is not loose particles and they also needed something which can be used both on human skin and on sensitive equipment. This is a tremendous improvement.”

The product known as Fibertect has been licensed by the university to Hobbs Bonded Fibers in Waco, Texas.