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As tornado demolitions begin in St. Louis, dust and health concerns swirl 29%
By Sarah Fentem61%
5/22/2026, 10:00:00 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 30 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Overconfidence Bias, and Ambiguity (Equivocation), with Appeal to Authority as the most egregious example at 26.6% saturation with 353 hits. Analysis detected 2,213 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,328 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 39% and a BS Rank of 29% (12,070 of 16,813 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 71.80% of the article peer group.
On Enright Avenue, a two-story house – built in 1903 – is finally coming down.
The EF3 tornado that slammed north St.
Louis on May 16, 2025, hit the Academy neighborhood hard, essentially decapitating the Victorian home.
In seconds, the storm turned the tall building into a short one-story structure.
As the operator of the yellow excavator carefully uses the bucket to bop the top of a century-old chimney, the wall crumbles like a dried-out sand castle.
As the rubble falls to the ground, clouds of brown-gray dust rise into the air.
The construction crew has brought equipment for this purpose.
A truck parked on the curb holds a small swimming pool’s worth of water, and a worker continually wets the site using a heavy-duty hose.
Before demolition began, workers soaked the site with hoses to cut down on what experts call “fugitive dust.”
“Even as we're loading trucks, we have to keep it wet, because that prevents the dust,” said construction worker Kristie Jenkins.
But some dust during demolition is unavoidable, especially when houses are old and the weather is dry.
Even with preparation and hoses, fine particles linger in the air, potentially causing health issues for the people who still live and work in tornado’s path.
“There's truly no way to prevent any dust [from escaping],” she said.
“But if he wasn't spraying, you probably wouldn't even be able to see the machine with all the dust.”
City, state and federal contractors are slated to demolish hundreds of homes damaged or destroyed by the tornado in the coming months.
Some were owned by residents; others were vacant buildings.
But no matter who is paying for the demolitions, residents are in for a dusty summer, and experts say neighbors should take precautions.
The nearly two-mile-wide tornado hit some of the city’s most vulnerable neighborhoods, areas that had already struggled with decades of disinvestment and population loss.
City officials admit progress has been slow.
Because many of the homes destroyed or damaged were vacant or condemned, federal money can’t be used to pay for their demolition.
A year after the storm, the city has demolished around 100 homes, according to a tracker maintained by the city agency STL Recovers.
Earlier this month, Mayor Cara Spencer announced that 120 homes would come down in the next few months with the help of state-apportioned recovery dollars.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Land Reclamation Agency, the Missouri Department of Economic Development and private property owners are also demolishing buildings and removing debris from the tornado zone.
City officials estimate up to 1,600 buildings will need to come down.
Around 80% of those properties were vacant or condemned prior to the storm.
Hariel Johnson, whose house abuts the Enright Avenue demolition site, said she was thrilled when crews began tearing down the house next door, which had been vacant for years.
“When the storm came, God went on ahead and said, ‘I'll help you,’ and he just knocked it on down for us,” she said.
“He kept going on, but I was blessed.
We were blessed.”
Johnson said her house lost a few windows, but she was not hurt.
Since then, she’s noticed more dust around the neighborhood.
Johnson, who has asthma, said she doesn’t want to wear a mask because it interferes with her breathing.
“I don't get out as much, but when I do go, dust is everywhere.
Like when I have to go to the doctor,” she said.
“We don’t know what’s in everything they [when] they knock it down.”
Because of the dust and debris kicked up by tornadoes and subsequent demolitions, people with asthma and other respiratory conditions may face a higher risk of getting sick, experts said.
For people with healthy respiratory systems, the dust may be little more than a nuisance.
But demolitions can trigger flare-ups in people who have pulmonary disease or other underlying conditions, said Jay Turner, an environmental science professor at Washington University who is on a team studying the air quality in the tornado’s path.
“For people who are predisposed – maybe they have asthma or emphysema or something like this – this could exacerbate or magnify that condition,” he said.
“The nuisance plus an existing illness could lead to some perhaps more severe discomfort.”
The materials inside century-old homes may also pose risks, said Rachel Sanford of the American Lung Association during an interview with St.
Louis Public Radio shortly after the tornado.
The buildings can contain chemicals such as arsenic, nickel or lead and materials such as fiberglass and asbestos that could damage lungs when people breathe them in, she said.
“A lot of these particles are really, really small, so that means that they travel very deep into the lungs when they're inhaled, and they can really cause a lot of damage,” she said.
Containing dust is a “direct concern,” for the city and Spencer, said St.
Louis Chief Recovery Officer Julian Nicks, who added people around demolition sites should take precautions.
“That includes saying keep your windows closed, do not watch it from outside, if you are, make sure you're wearing a proper mask,” he said.
In addition to limiting time outdoors, residents should also respect barriers around construction zones, vacuum indoor spaces to remove settled dust and change air filters in air conditioners more often than usual, city officials said.
Most dust mitigation measures require keeping sites wet, Turner said.
City press releases announcing demolitions stated crews will “apply continuous water suppression throughout the demolition to control dust.”
St.
Louis has rules intended to limit the spread of dust during demolition work.
The City of St.
Louis demolition handbook states that “it is essential to control fugitive dust to ensure the health of workers on site and members of the surrounding community.”
Much of the guidance focuses on wetting demolition sites to keep dust from spreading.
According to city spokesman Rasmus Jorgensen, either misting fans or large hoses are required for demolitions to contain dust.
Nicks said a professional contractor oversees all the crews working on recovery office-funded demolitions.
He added workers also remove asbestos-containing material from houses before demolition begins.
The city is working to buy more equipment for construction workers to use for dust suppression, Nicks said.
The city needs more meters that attach to fire hydrants that allow crews to fill up trucks and control the flow of water.
He added that if residents see construction crews violating dust-containment procedures, they should take photos and videos and alert the city through its 311 helpline.
“We have strong laws around finding and taking demo licenses of people who don't actively follow those tactics,” he said.
In the next few weeks, Turner’s group of researchers will attach about a dozen gray boxes to utility poles and other sites around the tornado-affected neighborhoods to monitor airborne particles.
The small devices are connected to a central server that records how many particles are in the air and how big they are.
“If there's numerous demolitions happening every day, back-to-back days, the question is: What is that cumulative effect?”
Turner said.
“We don't know as well as we might like the impacts of short-term exposure to higher dust levels.”
In addition to Turner’s group at Washington University, the city is in the process of recruiting a team to monitor asbestos and lead in the air.
Turner and other scientists hope the monitoring effort will provide a clearer picture of what lingers in the air after demolitions.
“[It’s an] exact test for what's in the air and checking to make sure they're below best practice standards set by the EPA,” Nicks said.
If either team finds high levels of pollution, the city could remedy its demolition standards.
“This is a top priority,” he said.
“We still want to move with speed on demolition, but we don't want to do it at the risk of public health.”
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