Chemical analysis of a disaster

WITH THE COLLAPSE OF NEW YORK CITY'S TWO World Trade Center (WTC) towers on Sept. 11,2001, more than 1 million tons of dust enveloped lower Manhattan. And fires that lingered at ground zero until December created a plume of smoke initially detectable from space. Aerosols that could be seen and smelled were inescapable during and long after the attack on the World Trade Center. But aerosols are also transient. Were it not for a handful of scientific groups that quickly mobilized, usually donating time and money to collect ambient air data and dust samples near ground zero, little would now be known about the WTC aerosols. Many of the scientists who tested and analyzed the WTC air gathered for a symposium at the recent American Chemical Society national meeting in Newark City to discuss their results. They described the composition of the fallout dust, estimated where it came from, and proposed how its properties led ...