It is a total hoot that Ed keeps focusing on silica when he was about the only person paying any attention to Amerithrax who didn’t know that Dugway used silica to create anthrax simulants (such as Matsumoto described was done in making the simulant used in the Canadian experiment in 2001 that immediately dispersed across the room upon the envelope being opened).
Yup, and he still stands by the statement from Alibek - “there is no principle to coating”.