What
is the Mist/Smoke?
The mist produced in the
burning experiments looks very similar to the smoke produced when paraffin is
burning badly with a smoky flame or the paraffin vapour produced when the
blowlamp is hot and the flame suddenly goes out.
The reasons I am confident
that it is a product of burning tetra ethyl silicate are as follows:
-- when burnt at high
concentration in the paraffin there is a white reflective powder deposited on
the burning parts of the blow lamp.
-- when burning well, pure
paraffin produces no smoke or mist visible in the spotlight. When the tetra ethyl silicate is in solution
at 1% and the flame is burning well then the white reflective mist accumulates
rapidly in the atmosphere.
This suggests that
particles are produced which are of approximately smoke particle size. They float in the air without significant
change for more than half an hour.
This is even better than I
had hoped.
The next question is what
they are chemically and whether there is any potential problem.
They could be silicon
crystals or silicon dioxide, which is sand or silica chemically. Both would be pretty inert and harmless when
they had fallen to earth.
It should however be noted
that asbestos is also largely silica or silicon dioxide. Is there a danger here?
There are several lung
diseases, which are relevant here:
-- Asbestosis as a result
of inhaling asbestos dust.
-- Silicosis as a result
of inhaling silica dust.
-- Pneumoconiosis as a
result of inhaling coal dust. Miners disease.
--Emphysema as a result
usually of smoking.
The common point about all
these diseases is that it is the size of the particle, which results in the
body's normal mechanism not being able to get rid of it. All of these particles are fairly chemically
inert to the body so the body cannot dissolve them and the large size means
that the lung mechanism can't expel them.
The result in each case is long-term serious lung disease.
Obviously it would be very
bad news for this proposal if the particles turned out to be similar to
asbestos dust.
All mammals have a very
good mechanism, the cilia, for expelling small naturally sized particles from
the lungs by feeding them up the tubes and into the digestive tract or from the
nose with mucus. By naturally sized I
mean the same size as pollen particles which I believe are similar in size to
fine smoke particles.
I believe that the mist
produced will consist of very small particles, which come into the safe range.
Obviously this needs to be properly investigated.
The smoke or mist seems to
float in the atmosphere after burning for a long time. With air movements in
the upper atmosphere particles might only reach the ground in raindrops of
which they have formed a nucleus.
There would then be even less of a problem with people inhaling them.