NYC Performs Final Subway Airflow Test

By Tanya Lewis, Staff Writer   |   July 25, 2013 06:34pm ET

200 airflow samplers, like the one above, have been deployed all over New York City to track the flow of a harmless tracer gas in the subway system. Credit: Tanya Lewis View full size image

NEW YORK CITY — On a street in Manhattan's Lower East Side, an unremarkable gray box protrudes from a telephone pole. Inside the box lies a state-of-the-art airflow-sampling device, one part of an experiment to track how a gas disperses through the city's streets and subway system.
Today, researchers from Brookhaven National Laboratory in Long Island performed the third and final test in the experiment (July 25). The goal of the project is to develop a model for how a dangerous airborne contaminant, such as sarin gas or anthrax, would spread throughout the city in the event of a terrorist attack or accidental release. [What Were the Worst Subway Attacks in History?]
The scientists released tiny amounts of a colorless, nontoxic gas at several locations around the city. The airflow samplers, located at various points throughout the city, measured the gas to determine how fast and how far it spread.