Through the Haze: the Truth about 9/11 Air

by Mike Weiss

New York, April 24 - “I lived downtown in Battery Park City before 9/11, a couple of blocks south,” said Craig Hall. “On 9/11 I took my children to school that morning, one to nursery, one to PS 89. I came out of my son’s nursery the first plane had just gone in. I walked south back to Battery Park, I was standing and . . . then I saw the second plane go in. I watched it fly down West Street and then go into the second tower just above my head . . . I grabbed my children, one was in a stroller and I ran for my life. We were caught on the edge of the dust cloud. Luckily we ran north and the wind for some reason that day the wind blew south, and it saved us.”

Hall is president of the World Trade Center Residents Coalition, and on 9/11 as far as he knew, he and his family were safe. He knows better now. Because no government agency warned him about the dangers from 9/11 dust he went back to his apartment a few days after the tragedy and over the next five weeks tried cleaning the apartment himself.

“The place was covered, dust everywhere – the windows were open.”

Severe allergies, nosebleeds, 30 percent decreased lung capacity – as well as the thyroid surgery his wife has endured are all common signs of the effects of breathing in the toxins from 9/11. The approximately 3,000 direct deaths on that day can be blamed on the terrorists, but who is responsible for the approximately 10,000 people suffering physical health impairments because of the air they breathed in soon after?

Even if the causes of 9/11 air contamination are gone, there is now a new hazard in the air. The construction boom in lower Manhattan, such as the city has never seen before, has produced 35 new buildings since 9/11 and many more are under construction. Idling diesel concrete mixers, bulldozers, cranes, trash-haulers – all spew their toxins into residential areas. And all this dust from demolition and construction activity seems eerily like a reply of 9/11 where a seemingly unconcerned government is standing by as the populace takes the brunt of a new and unknown health hazard in its midst.

Christine Todd Whitman and the EPA

Soon after the events of 9/11, on September 18, 2001, Christine Todd Whitman in her role as Administrator of the federal EPA released a widely-known statement, often pointed to in later accusations of her actions. The statement, which is still supported by the EPA and runs on their web site (http://www.epa.gov/wtc/stories/headline_091801.htm) is as follows: "Given the scope of the tragedy from last week, I am glad to reassure the people of New York and Washington, D.C. that their air is safe to breathe and their water is safe to drink."

However, what is not so clearly known but has only come to light through a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the New York Environmental Law & Justice Project is an internal EPA memo dated the day before. On September 17, 2001 the EPA Region 2 World Trade Center Emergency Response Activities to Date update memo states, “The majority of sample results thus far indicate that asbestos levels are below levels of concern. The highest levels came from a monitor located one-half block from ground zero, demonstrating the need for rescuers to wear appropriate protective gear.”

Instead of making this memo public and alerting people to a hazardous waste danger, as is the clearly stated responsibility of the EPA by powers granted in the National Contingency Plan, Administrator Whitman did just the opposite. She reassured the public that the air was officially deemed safe, and because of this thousands of New Yorkers have since paid the price.

How do we know people got sick because of 9/11 dust?

There are three main centers for studying people who have sought medical care for conditions they believed were caused by 9/11. The Mount Sinai Medical Monitoring Program is the largest and screens all Ground Zero workers who have come in for help. As of December 2006, this was 9,442 “responders” - workers who were performing their jobs as part of the 9/11 rescue and recovery – but not firefighters. The FDNY runs their own medical monitoring unit near their headquarters in Brooklyn. The third center is for all non-responders such as residents, office workers, and students and is called the World Trade Center Environmental Health Center. This center, with its main clinic in Bellevue Hospital, currently sees about 2,400 patients.

In a report published in Environmental Health Perspectives in December 2006, the Mount Sinai experts reported numerous respiratory problems in the 9,442 people they studied. Most (69 percent) had new or worsened symptoms while performing WTC work. “Forced vital capacity” (FVC), a measurement of lung functioning, was five times worse than in the general U.S. population, and overall respiratory symptoms and abnormalities were, “significantly associated with early arrival at the site.”

At the WTC Environmental Health Center, director Joan Reibman admits, “how do we know these illnesses are WTC-related or not? There’s a lot we don’t know.”

However, she took part in a New York State Department of Health survey which began soon after 9/11 and was completed a year and half later. In it, residents around Ground Zero showed increased symptoms and shortness of breath, symptoms which were new to this population.

In her early work with the WTC Environmental Health Center, Dr. Reibman first saw patients with sinus inflammation, asthma, and usually pulmonary symptoms only. Recently, the medical conditions she sees have begun expanding to other organs of the body, and now more people come in with endocrine problems, cancers, and depression, post traumatic stress syndrome, and other anxiety conditions related specifically to 9/11.

“We see a whole spectrum. Hundreds of thousands of people were exposed,” she said.

What was the government thinking?

“There was a lot of flag-waving,” said Joel Kupferman, director of the New York Environmental Law & Justice Project about the days after 9/11. “A lot of pressure from the top to admit that the country didn’t take a hit.”

Dave Newman from the New York Committee on Occupational Safety and Health, and a former member of the EPA’s WTC Expert Technical Review Panel said, “look at the whole record of the Bush administration, on regulatory cut-backs and especially on environmental issues.”

Then there is the rush to construction. 35 new buildings have been constructed in lower Manhattan since 9/11 and more are planned. The speed is such as to have caused 18 construction deaths in 2006, 12 in 2007, and 12 so far in the less than four months of this year. Air quality regulations only seem to get in the way.

The lack of credibility from government inspectors was obvious. Lynda Caspe lives on the top floor of a building on Franklin Street, a few blocks south of Canal Street. Broken skylights in her apartment allowed 9/11 dust to accumulate in her apartment, and when she contacted the city’s Department of Environmental Protection for help, they sent over someone to take a look.

“I asked him where’s your equipment,” Caspe related. “What equipment, I’m just looking, he said. Then he said, it doesn’t look dusty to me!”

“I asked him if he wanted to see the roof, so we went up to the roof. There were piles of it all over the place so I asked him about it – doesn’t look dusty to me, he said!”

Caspe then hired a lawyer who knew an EPA inspector and this inspector was able to arrange for a proper inspection. Using high-quality air monitoring equipment, the EPA inspection revealed high levels of asbestos in the samples in Caspe’s apartment, and soon after agreed to clean her apartment.

When asked if she has trouble believing anything the government says now, Caspe laughed, “I believed George Bush when he said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction so you know something’s wrong with my mind!”

The community responds

On Sunday April 13, 2008 in the auditorium of the Borough of Manhattan Community College near the WTC site, community groups came together to hear testimony from a panel of residents, professionals, and government officials involved in the 9/11 aftermath.

In Chinese, Spanish, and Polish translations, the audience of about 120 listened as panel members openly expressed their despair and anger at the government. The primary criticisms were for not alerting the public of dangers the government knew about and for not taking care of the medical expenses people have now, which can run to hundreds of dollars a month for themselves and their children.

Many felt betrayed.

“We helped this country get up when it was on its knees, now we have to beg for help. It shouldn’t have to be this way,” said Alex Sanchez.

Lea Geronimo, a pretty 37-year-old who looks in her twenties, was an office worker near the Stock Exchange on 9/11 and now has numerous health issues which include bronchitis, gynecological cysts, neurological deteriorations, and psoriasis patches of scabs on her face, stomach, and arms.

“It pisses me off,” said Geronimo. “The whole world economy was supposed to be in flux. Most of us had this feeling of camaraderie, ‘I need to get my office together’ – we could have left, the residents could have left, everybody, the students – but we all stayed and we did our part – and now we need the government to fund our health care and to do studies, real studies,” she said.

When asked if she still felt the government was even now honestly reporting and alerting the public to air quality hazards in lower Manhattan, she said, “it doesn’t matter any more, now we are the evidence.”

Air quality today

The Lower Manhattan Construction Command Center is supposed to be monitoring air quality for the numerous construction sites in lower Manhattan. However, this ad hoc government agency is not accountable to any other and is not responsible for reporting their data to the public. Of the data they do post on their web site, it’s unclear how they collect it, at what times of the day, and since they do not respond to media requests for information, it’s impossible to clear these issues up.

In addition, the responsibility for monitoring general air quality has reverted back to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. Since lower Manhattan is no longer officially under a state of emergency, the standards of the 1970s Clean Air Act come into play, which requires the NYS DEC to monitor the air quality from stations all over the state and report their data to the EPA.
Because they are accountable to this law, it’s clear to see how the state does this testing, even though it is limited. For example, the closest state air monitoring station to the 9/11 site is located near City Hall at one Pace Plaza, not a good thing for the residents who live across the street from the Ground Zero construction. Also, all the state air monitoring stations are located on rooftops, far away from the diesel engines on the ground. Also, the state reports its data as averaged over a 24-hour period. This means that the air quality on cool nights when construction stops is given the same statistical weight as the air quality during a hot summer day when all the machines are running.

Gretchen Ferenz, the director of the Cornell University Cooperative Extension has done a study comparing the ground air quality to data measured by state air monitors located above street level. The initial purpose of her study, as part of a training program for her students, was to see if vegetation effected the way particles behaved in the air. Specifically, if the presence of trees and other plants reduced or had any effect on the way particulate matter is suspended in the air.

By chance, her study required her to compare her own air monitor readings taken at ground level to data being reported by state air monitors, which are located on the rooftops of buildings. Even though she is quick to point out she is not an epidemiologist and her results should not be used to make any statement about public health, she said, “let’s just say our results are consistent (with the state’s), at a certain level they don’t change much. But we found that at intersections, when the light is red? Zooooooom - our readings are off the chart.”

Sources

Reporters
Penny Little,filmmaker, “9/11 Dust and Deceipt” www.911dust.org

Environmental/Health related groups
Tammy Kim, lawyer, Urban Justice Center
Interviewed in person April 13, 2008

Joel Kupferman, New York Environmental Law & Justice Project, 351 Broadway, 4th floor, New York, NY 10007 212-334-5551 envjoel@ix.netcom.com 917-414-1983
Interviewed in person April 8, April 11, April 13, 2008. Interviewed by phone April 18, 2008

Kimberly Flynn, 9/11 Environmental Action
Dave Newman, New York Committee on Occupational Safety and Health
Frederic Schwartz, Schwartz Architects, 212-741-3021 fschwartz@schwartzarch.com
Glenn Corbett, Fire Engineering Magazine, 201-993-2814 gcorbet1@ix.netcom.com
Interviewed in person April 21, 2008
Sally Regenhard, Skyscraper Safety Campaign 646-266-1987 sallyR@skyscrapersafety.org
Interviewed in person April 21, 2008

Doctors/Scientists
Kathy Burns, Ph.D., Director, Sciencecorps, Lexington, Massachusetts, 781-861-1108 kmb@sciencecorps.org http://www.sciencecorps.org
Dr. Eileen Cohen, WTC Environmental Health Center at Bellevue Hospital, inteviewed in person at the 9/11 Community Health Forum 4/13/08
Dr. Barbara Reibman, NYU School of Medicine, Environmental Medicine, inteviewed in person at the 9/11 Community Health Forum 4/13/08 212-263-6479 (asst: “lisette”) reibmj01@gcrc.med.nyu.edu
Dr. Paul Lioy, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey
Dr. Lyndon Rose, Queens Hospital WTC Medical Monitoring Program
Dr. Philip Landrigan, Mount Sinai Department of Environmental and Occupational Medicine
Dr. George Thurston, NYU Environmental Sciences
Gretchen Ferenz, Director, Cornell University Cooperative Extension
Rodrick Wallace
Interviewed by phone April 21, 2008

Government
Elias Rodriguez, EPA Region 2
Mary Mears, EPA Region 2
LMCCC – Tom Kunkel, Deborah Wetzel
Paul Stein, NYS Dept. of Health
Thomas Panzon(e) NYS Dept. of Environmental Conservation

Office of Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY)
Erin Drinkwater, Manhattan Community Representative, 212-367-7350
Interviewed in person April 13, 2008 at the 9/11 Community Health Forum
Shin Inouye, Director of Communications
Interviewed by phone February 6, 2008

Residents
Lynda Caspe, resident living a few blocks away from the WTC, interviewed by phone 4/9/08
Craig Hall resident living near WTC, inteviewed in person at the 9/11 Community Health Forum 4/13/08
Workers
Lea Geronimo office worker at 9/11, inteviewed in person at the 9/11 Community Health Forum 4/13/08

Students
Amit Friedlander, Stuyvesant High School senior at 9/11 and cancer survivor

Reports
EPA Region 2 World Trade Center Emergency Response Activities to Date, EPA internal memo, dated September, 17, 2001, released in pdf format as part of FOIA request by New York Environmental Law & Justice Project

“The World Trade Center Disaster and the Health of Workers: Five-Year Assessment of a Unique Medical Screening Program.” http://www.ehponline.org/docs/2006/9592/abstract.html
Paper written by prominent New York area environmental health doctors, primarily focusing on the Mount Sinai WTC Medical Monitoring Program and published in the magazine Environmental Health Perspectives in December 2006.

Office of Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY)
“White Paper on Lower Manhattan Air Quality” released April 12, 2002