Baghdad hack

It was over 50°C (130°F) outside when Mark Lyles slipped on his flak jacket, helmet and goggles, grabbed his N95 dust mask, and climbed aboard a Blackhawk helicopter at the US Central Command Zone in Iraq four years ago. The prop blades kicked up a fine grit that would hang in the air for days. Lyles knew that these particles, finer than talcum powder and teeming with microbes, would become lodged deep within the lungs of the soldiers stationed there. Part of his job as a Navy captain and cell biologist was to sample Iraq's soil on the ground and in the air; he presented some surprising findings from that analysis this September at the 10th annual Inhaled Particles conference in Sheffield, UK. "It's constantly there," Lyles says of the dust, "sometimes it's bad and sometimes it's worse."