"We're getting hammered right now," Cross says, shouting over the hum of
the engines. He's taken his gloves off to manipulate the display panel
on his pollution monitor. The acrid smell of diesel is unmistakable.
"Anytime you can smell it, you are in a regime that is very polluted,"
he says. "In many ways your nose is a better mass spectrometer than any device on the market."
Cross' monitor measures the presence of microscopic particles suspended
in the air. Earlier, in his home, the device reported average
concentrations of between 10,000 and 100,000 airborne particles per
cubic centimeter of air (the latter after he burned some toast). Now it
detects millions. The massive size of the fire trucks' engines, combined
with their inefficient combustion, means that the air is replete with fine and ultrafine particles, specks of waste
at least 36 times finer than a grain of sand,
often riddled with toxic combinations of sulfate, nitrate and ammonium
ions, hydrocarbons, and heavy metals. Though we have long known that
these tiny particles cause and exacerbate respiratory problems, like
asthma and infections and cancers of the lungs, they are also suspected
to contribute to a diverse range of disorders, from heart disease to obesity. Now cutting-edge research suggests that these particles play a role
in some of humanity's most terrifying and mysterious illnesses:
degenerative brain diseases.
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