Media ‘steered away' from explaining true ‘detonation' in Texas
Christopher Busby
Russia Today TV, 19 April 2013
It always amazes me (and many others I expect) that no-one asks the right questions in these affairs. I was asked by RT to give my “expert analysis” of the health risk from the fumes produced by the explosion. Although my research and expertise is currently in the area of radiation risk, I was trained as a physical chemist, worked in pharmacology and do know something of the subject of the health effects of chemical exposures. I'll say something about that later. But whilst I waited for my slot on the RT news, I found certain critical facts entirely missing.
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If a tank of anhydrous ammonia exploded it would only release the pressure of the contained ammonia. There is not much energy in that. But one firefighter at the Texas site likened the explosion to that of an atom bomb, with hundreds of homes flattened. A brief trawl of the internet will show that this was an Ammonium Nitrate explosion. Any expert should know this. It is basic stuff. To labor the point: the severity of the explosion and its devastating effect was not due to the failure of a tank of liquid ammonia. It was due to the detonation of the product,
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I believe the answer is that for ammonium nitrate to explode, it has to be detonated with a detonator or with some major explosion. And this raises the question, in the week of the Boston bombings, of some individual having placed such a detonator into the store of ammonium nitrate. And the establishment absolutely do not want to start that particular hare running.
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Anyway, my question stands: why did we not hear about the explosive properties of ammonium nitrate? Why were we steered away to something that could not have been the cause? I will return to the issue of science and truth in the media in later articles where I will address the whole area of how Science is used to justify Policy rather than to influence it.
