BEIRUT COULD BE COVERED IN BLANKET OF TOXIC DUST
▶ Chemistry expert calls on city’s residents to wear gloves and heavy-duty masks when clearing the debris caused by Tuesday’s disaster
Beirut will probably be covered in potentially harmful dust particles, despite the cloud of pollutants and nitrogen dioxide produced by this week’s blast dissipating.
The debris at the city’s port, where the explosion occurred, has not yet been analysed fully, said Najat Aoun Saliba, a professor of analytical chemistry and the director of the Centre for Nature Conservation at the American University of Beirut.
But she said a quick study showed there were no traces of uranium or other radioactive substances.
The city’s residents were still at risk of breathing in harmful ammonium dust, finely ground debris and glass dust, which could have coated much of the city in the days since the explosion.
“I think, environmentally, what worries me now is the diversity and the waste generated from glass powders and from the dust that is going around in the city,” Prof Saliba said.
“Now people are trying to clean up the mess in front of their homes and you can see roads covered with glass and even powders and this is extremely dangerous if inhaled.”
She said people should wear masks and gloves to protect themselves and spray lots of water to settle any airborne particulates.
But cheap paper masks will not filter out the finest, and potentially most harmful, dust, she said.
“I’m telling people that the same precautions that you take for the pandemic – you need to keep them and actually double down on them,” Prof Saliba said.
She urged people to wear thick gloves if they were removing broken glass or glass dust, as well as a face shield or goggles to prevent dust from getting in their eyes.
She said heavy-duty masks should be worn so people did not inhale the glass dust.
Harmful smoke rose into the air when the ammonium nitrate exploded. “Chemically speaking, ammonium nitrate on its own will produce nitrogen dioxide and we saw that with the brown smoke over Beirut on the night of the blast,” Prof Saliba said.
“What we know today is that the brown smoke that was there on the night of the blast has dissipated.”
That does not mean that people living in the city are safe. “We need the inventory of what was there during the blast and we need to take samples from the ground,” she said.
“What are the other chemicals that were burning with the ammonium nitrate? I’m sorry, I don’t have an answer for that because we were not able to do a thorough chemical analysis.
“We don’t know whether there were other chemicals stored and that in addition to what they’re saying, the cars, the metal, the structures, the fuel perhaps, I’m not sure what was in it.
“We need a clear mapping of the industrial facilities that are in the area and for the material that was stored in the containers.”
She said air-quality monitors at the university recorded an increase in particulates and pollutants caused by the dust in the city that reached hazardous levels.
But she said these amounts decreased within hours of the explosion as the wind cleared the air.
The levels of dust also did not exceed those amounts monitors would expect in the notoriously polluted city.
“Usually, when we get dust storms from the desert close by, we get to this level sometimes. But what is more important is the amount of NO2,” Prof Saliba said.
Cheap paper masks will not filter out the finest, and potentially most harmful, dust caused by the port blast