Let ‘s consider this intriguing potential lead concerned a report about Atta’s red hands. I had never considered a latex allergy which is as good an explanation as I’ve heard proposed.
Shortly before 9/11, Atta went to a pharmacy with red hands, as if he had been working with bleach or detergent. Delray Beach, Florida pharmacist Greg Chadderton explained:
“There are two fellows, well dressed, and I asked if there was anything I could do to help them. And the one fellow, Otto, turned over to me showed me his hands, and he said “They’re itching and they’re burning, do you have a cream for this?” His hands were red from this area down (indicating from wrist down) on both of his hands, they were red. Not the normal colour you and
I would have from just being like this, but they were red. They weren’t blistering - they were simply red. They were red as if you had taken your hands and dunked them in a bucket of bleach or something. But they weren’t red on this side (backs of hands) where you would think, that’s what puzzled me, it was very perplexing that this side (palms?) was all red, it was almost as if he had touched something like this.”
He was given a cream called acid mantle.
Maybe his red hands related to a gas or spray later used to subdue passengers such as the red pepper spray introduced as an exhibit in the Moussaoui trial. This is the interpretation I favor after seeing the Moussaoui trial exhibit.
There is another disturbing possibility that has been suggested. The late Midhat Mursi aka Abu Khabab, the chemist helping Zawahiri with his Zabadi, or Curdled Milk, project, worked with a chemical additive for his pesticide/nerve agent. It increased absorption into the skin. Saponin, a natural detergent, is used for that purpose in a variety of commercial contexts. In late 2002, a plot was foiled when an attempt to purchase 1100 pounds of saponin was noticed by a chemical company and stopped. Authorities are not talking.
A final alternative for Atta’s red hands concerns the use of chlorine bleach to decontaminate anthrax. (which I doubt because forensic analysis shows the anthrax was grown in the Northeastern United States). Was Atta in Northeast US or Canada shortly before he visited the pharmacist? (I don’t know). I know he was in Toronto in the Spring but would have to check a timeline beyond that.
Under a latex allergy theory — or any theory — why would they only be red on the palm?
I recently used a spray can to paint a bird house and got green on my fingertips where it was in contact with the nozzle. Maybe practicing with pepper spray caused contact and the redness (just on his palm where there was contact). (I don’t know anything about pepper spray to know if it would have this effect).
But it seems the key clue is that the redness was only on his palm. And a key thing to consider would be his whereabouts shortly before he visited the pharmacist.
I can answer that from my own problems with latex gloves.The first time I got a rash it was the most intense where my hands perspired the most. My own hands get red on palms first then the knuckles and wrists.
Would you be so kind as to provide some detail for that assertion. What means of qualitative and/or quantitative analysis were used?