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The LA Fires Spewed Out Toxic Nanoparticles. He Made It His Mission to Trace Them
Nicholas Spada is one of the only scientists in the world using a nuclear x-ray process to study deadly nanoparticles in wildfire smoke. What he’s uncovered in California is a nightmare.
Spada is now trying to help others find the answer to many of the same questions he remembers asking as a child in Lompoc, California, growing up in the shadow of a vermiculite processing plant that coated his neighborhood in fine white dust. He had already reached out to his contacts in LA, including Jeni Knack, an environmental health advocate, and Melissa Bumstead, a longtime activist for families near the Santa Susana Field Laboratory, who took the lead on locating those willing to house Spada’s monitoring arrays for a month or more. In reports prepared for the families who had submitted samples, Spada and Baalousha included a disclaimer: These were not diagnostic tools, not exposure-level tests, but environmental screeners compared against conservative thresholds agreed upon by an academic consortium.
Or read this on Wired
