Was the Starship Explosion a Health Hazard?

[G_j]

https://www.inverse.com/health/starship-explosion-health-hazard-future-explosions-bigger-problem



Was the Starship Explosion a Health Hazard? Future Explosions Could Present an Even Bigger Problem
Relying on trial and error alone could come at the cost of our health and environment.

BY
ELANA SPIVACK

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This test run brings us another small step toward Mars, but how tests and incidents like this one will affect people’s health and well-being is still an unanswered question. Aerospace engineering professor Moriba Jah from The University of Texas at Austin tells Inverse that we should prepare for more explosions as SpaceX continues trial flights, and that means understanding potential health outcomes.

In Port Isabel’s immediate vicinity, visible debris fell from the sky.

This visible matter remained close to the launchpad, but microscopic debris certainly spread farther. An explosion like this results in fine particulate matter (PM2.5, referring to particles that are less than two and a half microns wide), which can hang in the air for about two weeks, according to Sarah Chambliss, an environmental science postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas Dell Medical School Center for Health & Environment: Education & Research. She says these invisible particles can cause some of the most deleterious air pollution.

“They're totally invisible,” Chambliss tells Inverse. “You don't even smell them.”

These particles travel far, too. If they’re picked up by the wind, they “can disperse across, basically, continental scale,” Chambliss tells Inverse. This is the same reason why the effects of a wildfire in California register all the way over in New York.

The explosion in the air was a medley of heavy metals and rocket fuel. Starship’s Raptor engine, in particular, runs on liquid oxygen and methane — and Starship had 34 engines. “Particulate matter that's high in metal content is more toxic,” Chambliss says.

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[dalton99a]

1. Elon Musk doesn't give a rat's ass about the brown people who populate the area

[orthoclad]

2. How DARE mere humans

stand in the way of Empire!

[Oneironaut]

4. Elon is a burgeoning dystopian overlord.

He represents terminal Capitalism that has infected the US. Your use to Elon is how much money you can make him. If your answer is none, in his eyes, you might as well not exist.

[Easterncedar]

3. Anything that is so wasteful of resources should be banned

I mean it. Unless we get climate change under control most of us won’t have a future. Time to stop all this grotesque destruction.

[Easterncedar]

5. Here am I hypocritically scrolling and posting

What am *I* doing to save the world?

[Ziggysmom]

6. Back in 2022 Joy Reid of MSNBC stated Musk misses the old South Africa apartheid of the 80s he

grew up in. She got a lot of criticism for saying that, but she was spot on, I think. He's a monster.