It’s a weird day at the office when the staff is bitching about black boogers.
Violating office etiquette regarding bodily function is kind of my thing. So when I got to my desk, after a weekend of Lollapalooza raging, I couldn’t wait for someone to ask me about my constant sniffling. “My snot isn’t green,” I said. “It’s black.”
“Mine too!” someone shouted from afar. And then suddenly, everyone. Everyone had black snot.
The one thing everyone had in common? We all went to Lollapalooza.
So I called up Northwestern Medicine, needing to know if I was endangering all of Tribune Tower with mutant mucus. I fumbled with scientific words trying to make a conversation about snot sound remotely professional. And despite my painfully long-winded questions, the answer was quick and easy. Pyrotechnics.
Apparently post-Lolla black snot is likely to be mucus-trapped soot from stage fireworks, according to Dr. David Zich, an emergency medicine physician for Northwestern Medicine.
But are we dying? Nope. The soot “gets trapped in the mucus so it doesn’t get absorbed in the body,” Dr. Zich said. But soot is inside me! “Soot shouldn’t have toxic effects.” OK, Dr. Zich. I get you. I’m going to be fine.
But how? HOW DID IT HAPPEN? I was a sweaty, camping mess at Bonnaroo this year and was totally not snotting soot.
Well fireworks explode at concerts. So soot.
Then the Chicago wind probably blew the soot to where the people were. Gusts peaked at 30 mph Friday, 25 mph Saturday and 35 mph Sunday, according to the National Weather Service.
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And finally humidity likely held the soot close to the ground, making it more likely to enter our nostrils, according to Dr. Zich. Relative humidity peaked at 82 percent across the three concert days, according to the NWS.
So there you have it, we experienced the perfect storm for non-toxic, black boogers.
Dr. Zich does admit he didn’t waste his weekend taking air samples at Lollapalooza. But, “if you left for the event without black snot and you came home with black snot, then you can be 99.99 percent sure that it was strictly something environmental,” he said.
He also admits to not attending the music fest. I don’t blame him. Black snot blows.