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breathe in, breathe out

Chuck Simmins sent me the link to this piece by Jane Galt - Inert(?) from the WTC

Microscopic analysis of WTC dust by Nicholas Petraco, BS, MS, DABC, FAAFS, FNYMS at The New York Microscopic Society lecture held at AMNH 28 May 2003

45.1% Fiberglass, rock wool (insulation, fireproofing) 31.8% Plaster (gypsum), concrete products (calcium sulfate, selenite, muscodite) 7.1% Charred wood and debris 2.1% Paper fibers 2.1% Mica flakes 2.0% Ceiling tiles (fiberglass component) 2.0% Synthetic fibers 1.4% Glass fragments 1.3% Human remains 1.4% Natural fibers trace asbestos (it became illegal to use during the construction of the WTC)

Other trace elements: aluminum, paint pigments, blood, hair, glass wool with resin, and prescription drugs were found.

1.3% human remains.

That thought disturbs me more than anything else in the report, on a whole different level.

There's something to make you lose sleep at night.

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Sad. Disgusting. Disturbing. The breakdown of the components of the dust in Lower Manhattan. And now I'm mad again. (Link found via Michele)... [Read More]

Comments

This might be an urban legend. I just googled the society, the researcher and some of the terms and got no hits whatever. I can't believe this wouldn't have gotten wider publicity if it existed.

To clarify: I'm sure there were pulverized human remains in WTC dust. It stands to reason. I just am not sure this particular report exists.

Lex, Nicholos Petraco is a real person, an expert in his field. He wrote a book on forensic science as a matter of fact.

If he's analyzing dust, it seems possible that normal human dust elements, like skin flakes and all that, might be part of that 1.3% I'm not sure how you'd tell the difference between normal human shedding and remains from the actual event.

my dad and i discussed this at length a while back. i personally wouldn't live or work anywhere near the WTC site. i think we're going to start seeing a big surge in respiratory illness in the next few years from people who were exposed to that area.

Were the samples for this analysis retrieved in the last few days, or right after 9/11?

Simmins
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My grandfather was a bigimist just to prevent this sort of error.

for those of us who were down there on the 11th and who were in the area for months immediately after, it has always been obvious that the air was much worse than the epa and official reports said. in the immediate days after the atomization of so much inorganic and human matter, i dont doubt that we all breathed in much more than our share of all the stuff mentioned in that report you are linking to -- whether its accurate on exact amounts or not.

of course after those immediate few days you still had the thick air lingering in the entire downtown area, the smoke which came from the ongoing fires at the site, and ever the wonderfully positioned barge of debris right next to stuyvesant high.

its just all so much, and so obviously bad for us, that all i can do at this point is laugh any time i think about it.

think theyll have a cure for white lung in 10 years? ... or should i place my order for a full collection of replacement chest cavity organs now?

read this yesterday on another blog, Asymetrical Information, I think. It got debunked severely. There are massive amounts of things that should be there but aren't and other things that appear to have been overstated.

Like it was said above, the fact that human remains were floating in the air to be inhaled is indisputable--but the nature of those remains, and the exact amout would be virtually impossible to calculate against a background filled with normally shedded human skin