Perhaps the biggest respiratory threat that soldiers have had to deal with over the last 80 years or so isn't Sarin or Mustard gas, but toxic carcinogenic materials that are inhaled from burn pits, fumes from discharging firearms, and debris from explosive breaching.
From the issues that 9/11 first responders faced to soldiers deployed overseas, it is clear that soldiers need some type of respiratory protection.
"We think about respiratory protection with our M50 gas mask," Jason Davis who served in the 75th Ranger Regiment told Connecting Vets.
With the last real chemical threat faced by American troops coming in World War I, today's chemical, biological, and nuclear protective suits are usually unnecessary.
"Realistically, when we talk about protecting the operator we are rarely, if ever, protecting them from nuclear, biological and chemical," Davis said. "We are generally needing them to protect from lead, antimony, and aluminum."
Davis, who also served with the Asymmetrical Warfare Group which worked to defeat enemy tactics during the war on terror and spread those lessons throughout the Army, became interested in his current field with the passage of the PACT Act and began investigating the causes of respiratory diseases within the veteran community.
"When you look at an operator's lifestyle of heavy volume shooting and demolitions, and working in environments that have burn pits all around it, the way I typically describe this to people is hey, about 50-60 years ago we went on this campaign to get people to stop smoking," Davis described. "So every time you put that little cancer stick in your mouth and you sucked on it, you were literally sucking in particulate hazards into your lungs. That then goes throughout your circulation system and causes all kinds of diseases and concerns, which we are all well familiar with.
"Now imagine sucking on a 100x100’ burn pit all day, every day — smoking a cigarette may be the safer of those two options."
Of course, the next question is how to have a similar "anti-smoking" campaign in the military that still allows soldiers to do their actual jobs. To that end, Davis began working with a company called Ventus to develop the TR2 respirator. It does not provide protection from chemical weapons and is for daily use rather than exceptional circumstances.
The TR2 can be worn with or without a helmet and filters 99 percent of solid airborne particulates and 97 percent of oil-based airborne particulates, and is also designed to be used in conjunction with military radio systems.
"I believe powered helmets are the future, but the challenge will be to make them ‘dead stick' capable meaning unpowered: it's got to protect just as well, if not better than an M50, with no power...the power is a luxury, not a requirement," Davis said.