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Pages 1-8

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From page 1...
... Although IED attacks have been less frequent in the United States than in other countries, IEDs remain a persistent domestic threat. Restricting access to precursor chemicals might contribute to reducing the threat of IED attacks and in turn prevent potentially devastating bombings, save lives, and reduce financial impacts.
From page 2...
... Much of the transformation can be attributed to an internet-enabled increase in the availability of mat­ rials and know-how, and to differences in other aspects of the threat environment related to actors, motives, and methods. At the request of DHS, the Academies assembled a committee of experts in chemistry, energetic materials, supply chain management, economics, illicit markets, defense, law, and other fields to prioritize precursor chemicals that can be used to make HMEs; analyze the movement of those chemicals through United States commercial supply chains and identify potential vulnerabilities; examine current United States and international regulation of the chemicals; and compare the economic, security, and other tradeoffs among potential control strategies.
From page 3...
... To assess the Precursor Chemicals Used to Make Homemade Explosives (Chapter 2) , the committee assembled a chronological list of incidents that involved explosives, beginning nearly 50 years ago with the first major domestic incident that employed HMEs, which occurred in Sterling Hall at the University of Wisconsin.
From page 4...
... 4 RESTRICTING ACCESS TO EXPLOSIVE PRECURSOR CHEMICALS TABLE S-1  Ranking of Precursor Chemicals into Three Groups NOTE: * See discussion in Chapter 2 for explanation of including UAN in Group A
From page 5...
... , authorities in the EU believe their restrictions on access, which have included retail bans, licensing, and registries, have reduced the threat of attacks using IEDs made with HME precursor chemicals, albeit at some cost to commerce. They frame threat reduction as the decrease in the amount of explosives precursors on the market and the increase in capacity for law enforcement authorities to investigate suspicious incidents involving explosives precursors.
From page 6...
... A full analysis, as would be necessary to support a policy decision, would require more time, data, industry participation, and specificity about the structure and content of proposed actions. Any such analysis should also consider the results of existing domestic programs that restrict access to precursor chemicals, including those intended to curb illicit drug production, and programs adopted in other countries.
From page 7...
... The committee also stresses the importance of periodically reevaluating priorities among precursor chemicals, in light of changes in the threat environment, and of designing control strategies with means of harvesting and leveraging data to learn from experience and strengthen the strategies over time. Pursuant to the primary goal of reducing the threat of IED attacks by restrict­ ing access to precursor chemicals, the committee details six recommended courses of action and four research areas meriting future attention in Chapter 6.
From page 8...
... RESEARCH PRIORITIES In addition to the aforementioned recommendations, the committee identified several areas of research that could provide additional pathways for limiting access to precursor chemicals or designing appropriate regulations. Major topics for future research include the following: • standardization of explosives incident data collection; • substitution of precursor chemicals in commercial products; • standardization of regulatory thresholds; and • understanding behavioral responses, including those of terrorists, to proposed controls and those of policy makers to terrorist attacks.


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