> Within that radius, the injuries from such a massive blast in a downtown location can be as varied as the victims who experience them, but a number of them are likely from glass and other flying projectiles. Flat, delicate, frangible, and installed in large sheets, glass is the perfect target for a blast wave of even minuscule magnitude; it shatters and flies easier than any other substance.

The glass damage must be horrible. Your entire home covered in tiny pieces of glass.

I hate when glass breaks at home because no matter how much you clean, it gets everywhere and months later you discover small shards in some distant place.

Once I tripped on my way home after grocery shopping, almost at the destination. It wasn't even a big fall, but some glass bottles broke. They were next to plastic bags filled with oats. In the "recovery operations" I conducted afterwards, I threw away the remainders of the bottles and cleaned the oats bags under flowing water, to get rid of the glass bottle's contains on the bags. As I did this, I noticed the oats themselves getting wet, below the transparent plastic. I wondered, how can this happen, it's supposed to be water-proof. Then I found a tiny, almost invisible cut where a glass shard has entered the plastic bag. It was a big shard and I don't know what had happened had someone not noticed it and ate it.

Horrified, I threw away the entire bag of oats, the risk of more, possibly smaller shards remaining was too big. Other bags which passed the "water test" I kept and I ended up eating their contents.

I hope the people of Beirut are doing similar checks for their stored food, for their own safety. I read that many folks already have glass shards in their bodies due to the explosion but that's past damage that can only be managed. The future damage is preventable.