Mysterious Peruvian Meteor Disease Solved

Technician writes "The meteor that crashed in Peru caused a mystery illnesses. The cause of the illness has been found. The meteor was not toxic. The ground water it contacted contains arsenic. The resulting steam cloud is what caused the mystery illness. "The meteorite created the gases when the object's hot surface met an underground water supply tainted with arsenic, the scientists said." There is a very good photo of the impact crater in the article. The rim of the crater is lined with people for a size comparison."

Makes sense

[PlatyPaul]

The symptoms [wikipedia.org] match.

And, before anyone starts up with the whole "apple seed" thing - that's cyanide, not arsenic [snopes.com].

Re:Who are these scientists?

[PlatyPaul]

Well, for what it's worth, some people were on the right track from the start. From the first BBC article [bbc.co.uk]:

A local journalist, Martine Hanlon, told the BBC experts [that he] did not believe the meteor would make anybody sick, but they did think a chemical reaction caused by its contact with the ground could release toxins such as sulphur and arsenic.

Re:How embarrassing!

[PlatyPaul]

Arsenic pollution doesn't have to be man-made, and groundwater-borne arsenic frequently isn't. Go check out the Wikipedia page on it [wikipedia.org], which is also summarized nicely here [wikipedia.org]. The external links are particularly enlightening, and you can check up on all those shiny statistics.

Re:Don't Believe it..

[TheViffer]

that would be black helicopters [wikipedia.org] ... not black planes

Meteor != Meteorite

[DrMindWarp]

Meteor's don't impact anything but meteorites do. Perhaps confusingly they leave a meteor crater.

Re:DON'T TRUST THEM THEY'VE BEEN INFECTED

[samkass]

the glow of reentry is compression heating of the air in front of the meteorite, not the meteorite itself.

Who said it was the meteorite itself that heated the ground water? Compression heating is perfectly capable of it.

Re:Steam...from a cold meteor?

[oni]

Some of the kinetic energy from any impact is converted to heat. Even if the object is made of ice, it's still going to do that. In this case, it released enough KE to boil a bit of water and make the first few people who rushed to the site ill.

But you're right, the meteorite wasn't a glowing hot ball that took days to cool, and boiled water the whole time. This was a quick, flash effect that was over instantly.