My money is on it being a manufacturer purposefully or negligently hiding/not disclosing its use.
this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2025
116 points (98.3% liked)
News
31021 readers
4192 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Tin foil hat take: wouldn't a predictable natural disaster be the perfect place to unload a bunch of waste material?
Bro, there are big chunks of beryllium in microwaves, used as shielding of the emitter, iirc. So... did they have a microwave in the kitchen like everyone else does or what? Seems like poor investigating.
OH! OH!
Can you fashion a rudimentary lathe?
Let's get out of here before one of those things kills L.A!
Why is it legal to use?
"beryllium is safely used commercially in numerous products"..why is this legal. Did nobody think about fires?
Reminds me of asbestos.
My money is on high end speakers. Beryllium became a thing not that long ago in expensive audiophile grade equipment.
https://www.focal.com/technologies/the-beryllium-tweeter
http://www.bm.rs/Marten/Marten%20-%20Why%20we%20use%20Beryllium.pdf
Maybe someone had Berylia roof or floor tiles.
Not a scientist, but I am wondering if maybe beryllium could be found naturally in the soil?
Another thought: Wikipedia says that the gemstones emerald and aquamarine contain beryllium. Thousands of houses were burned in the fire. Maybe the source is burned gemstones in the houses?
Highly unlikely, the melting point of those materials is higher than most house fires. The boiling point would be even higher. Even then, the amount of beryllium in all of those gems combined wouldnt be enough to significantly impact the air quality.
House fires can't melt gemstone beams
You heard it here first, these fires were an inside job.
Highly unlikely they contribute much, but emeralds don’t really melt, and certainly don’t boil. They just decompose.
Thanks for giving me this interesting and completely worthless rabbit-hole. Now I know way more about the manufacture of synthetic emeralds than I could ever possibly need.
I didn't want to get into a discussion of vapor pressures, so I was just using those temperatures as stand-ins to get an idea of what temps would required. But you're right, I probably should have used the sublimation temp.