In 2019 a small group of women set out to take on a big hazmat problem — CBRN.

The 10-member CBRN Women are co-located in Norway and Lebanon and tout their passion for the work, their wide knowledge of CBRN and their broad reach being from multiple countries and nationalities. 

The group is trained in medical preparedness and CBRN incident response.

One of the group’s goals is to draw more women into the CBRN-response field, especially in the Middle East. It is a challenging field and the group says it is most proud of its ability to improvise to get the job done.

CBRN Women train no less than three times per year as a team, and they cross train with as many different stakeholders as possible. For example, the team recently completed advanced training in Spiez, Switzerland with the Swiss Army.

One of CBRN Women’s biggest challenges is having enough personal protective equipment. Some of that challenge stems from their members being from so many different countries with different cultures.