What was actually tested
The Qal-Tek protocol covers all three CBR agent classes in a single, repeatable surface-contamination model. For radiological performance, the panel deliberately included the isotopes that drive day-to-day decontamination work in nuclear medicine and nuclear pharmacy:
- Iodine-131 (I-131) — thyroid therapy and diagnostic, the most common cause of "hot" surface contamination in clinical NM.
- Cesium-137 (Cs-137) — used as a sealed-source standard and the canonical reference isotope for radiological-event simulation.
- Technetium-99m (Tc-99m) — the workhorse of diagnostic nuclear medicine, present in the majority of compounded doses.
For chemical and biological challenges, the protocol used representative surrogates appropriate to each agent class on the same surface substrates. The test was structured so that one product, one application protocol, and one surface type produced numbers comparable across agent classes — which is exactly the question hospitals and first-responder agencies need answered.
What "99% removal" means and what it doesn't
The 99% number describes how much of the deposited radiological surface contamination was lifted from the substrate by a single S4FE-D® application followed by a wipe. It is a removal figure, not a destruction figure. The contamination is now in the wipe, where it can be sealed and managed under your standard radioactive-decay-in-storage protocol.
This is the right metric for surface decontamination. A radioisotope cannot be chemically destroyed — it has to decay on its own timeline. The decontamination question is: can we get it off the surface, captured, and into a controlled storage path? Qal-Tek's answer for S4FE-D®, on the isotopes that matter, was 99% of the time, on the first pass.
Why test across all three agent classes
Hospitals don't only spill radio-iodine, and CBRN responders don't only meet sarin. A real decontamination tool has to perform on whatever it actually meets, and most surfaces in real life are simultaneously chemically dirty (hand-print residues, drug-compound aerosols), biologically dirty (skin flora, patient fluids), and — in a hot lab — radiologically dirty.
The Qal-Tek panel was designed around that reality. The 98 / 98 / 99 figures are performance on three independent contamination types, run separately, on the same product. That's what allows S4FE-D® to be the single decontaminant in a hot-lab cabinet rather than three or four bottles depending on what you spilled.
Reading the report yourself
The full report — including the surface substrates, deposition method, dwell times, and recovery analysis — is available on the Resources page as a gated PDF. We strongly recommend RSOs and EHS officers read it directly rather than rely on a summary; the methodology is what makes the numbers meaningful.
Related claims that should not be conflated
S4FE-D® is a surface decontaminant. The Qal-Tek report does not establish:
- EPA disinfectant registration (S4FE-D® is not a registered disinfectant in the EPA sense, though biological matter binds and lifts the same way).
- Performance on porous surfaces such as raw concrete or untreated wood (these typically require a second application or gross removal first).
- In-solution decontamination (S4FE-D® is engineered for surface films, not bulk-volume work).
Used as designed — surface application, short dwell, wipe or rinse — the verified numbers are the ones the report shows. We publish them because they survived independent measurement, not because they sounded good in a brochure.