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| (National Park Service photo) |
Sinful actions are not encapsulated within brief moments of time.
They tend to linger on, sometimes for generations.
Nowhere has this been more evident than within the aftereffects of war. 9/11 has become a literal and symbolic reminder of all that is wrong with such murder and mayhem.
The dust from this tragic event is apparently
still settling. Samples
from its billowing blanket of burnt particles have been analyzed in research laboratories for years.
Journalist Michael McAuliff was there at the scene back in 2001. A decade later, he brought his own personal envelope filled with the “clumpy, powdery gray dust” to be tested.
In an article for The
Huffington Post, McAuliff stated, “It had a pH of 10 or 11, which is why the stuff burned people’s eyes and noses and respiratory tracts and the esophagus.” Today this effect translates into what is known as the “increasingly deadly ‘Trade Center cough.’” Cases of cancer, GERD and sinusitis have notoriously multiplied.
Components from McAuliff’s analyzed dust sample included the following: carbon soot, fiberglass, chrysotile asbestos, polystyrene foam, and lead. Plus there were less lethal, but decidedly grimmer, “very fine fragments of photographs, fingernails, bones, hair and tissue.”
Resources
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/09/september-11-dust-pocket-of-terror-911-anniversary_n_954582.html?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000618
Copyright September 12, 2015 by Linda Van Slyke All Rights Reserved
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