News article on community park spring cleaning event, 2001

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document Studies Will Take Sept. 11's Measure In Health Effects By KIRK JOHNSON Public health researchers in New York, struggling to determine the real dimensions of the health threat at the World Trade Center site, are beginning an ambitious series of long-term studies to identify and then track a wide range of people who lived through the nightmare of dust, smoke and stress when the towers fell. Two Manhattan hospitals, for instance, are collecting bloed samples from pregnant women who say they were in the vicinity of the trade center on the morning of Sept" 11 er in the đays afterward. Mount Sinai School of Medicine will send out 3,000 letters to obstetricians in the region as early. as next week, also seeking pregnant women who were near ground zero for a related study that will look at the possible effects of maternal anxiety as well as toxic substances in the Beginning next Monday, physicians and investigators from Oueens College will start searching for nonunion day laborers, many of them now dispersed into the work force, who 'helped clean up dust-saturated buildings around the rade center in the weeks just after the attacks. The New fork Acdlemy of Medicine' is beginning an even more mbitious task: building a registry of every person - fram the firefshters,to members of the New York Clty Transit tunnel crews — who worked, even for a day, at ground zero. The researchers say that while these studies are, in certainrespects, the sort of work that invariably follows major disasters and accidents, they also say that the variety of the inquiries reflects a disturbing but ever-growing realization among health experts: four months after the attacks, very little can be said with scientific certainty about the health risks that recovery workers or bystanders faced in the disaster and the cleanup. That-uncertainty, which some health and environmen- tal experts now say was perhaps not adequately reflected by public officials in the days and weeks after the attacks, underscores how unique the World Trade Center disaster Granazero was as a public health emergency. The blast of dust and smoke - and stuay is seeking 300 ot them - some the toxic substances, fibers and ash more exposed to the ash and dust, that blew through New York in the some less - while Mount Sinai is days afterward - is without prece- hoping for another 300, with some dent in medical literature, which overlap likely between the two. means that there are no studies to Cleanup workers, many of them fall back un for guidance on whether—immigrants who do not betong to to be alarmed or reassured labor unions, have gone on to other The air-monitoring system that jobs and may be impossible to find was set up after the attacks - in- One cleanup company that had 1,800 deed, the whole science of air moni- workers two weeks after the attacks toring - is based chiefly on long- now has 50, according to Dr. Steven term exposures associated with ordi- Markowitz, director of the Center for nary air pollution or workplace haz- the Biology of Natural Systems, an ards. This means that the effects of environmental and occupational short, intense bursts of pollution - health research institute at Queens the sort experienced by many thou- College, which is leading the search sands of people on Sept. 11 - are far for those workers. Dr. Markowitz said his mobile ex- less known. amination vehicle, to be parked near *There are gaps in our knowledge base," said Dr. Frederica P. Perera, City Hall, will have a physician, a a professor of public health at Co- breathing-test technician and an in- lumbia, who is leading one of the terviewer, all of them fluent in Span- ish, the language spoken by most of prenatal projects. Professor Perera said that based the cleanup crews. He said that part of his motivation in starting the on the evidence already reported, she does not expect to find wide- study is the issue of economic disad- spread health consequences in her vantage. *These guys are about the least prenatal study. The air-quality likely group to get any medical atten- measurements for things like asbes- tion," he said. "They either don't tos, PCB's and dioxins, taken in the have access to health care, or will go neighborhoods around the World to a neighborhood doctor who doesn't Trade Center, have consistently have a clue about toxins." shown little cause for worry abou: Even defining what "exposed" long-term health. means has required rigorous new But as a scientist, she cannot offe) methodology. The Mount Sinai study, any definitive reassurances when ar for example, has identified three anxious resident or downtown office zones around ground zero, each of worker calls. *Because of the uncer which - based on existing air moni- rainty, and the paucity of the data toring - will figure in the analysis it's important to lay to rest the anxi- Meanwhile, researchers at the eties," she said. "And we'd like to be University of Medicine and Den- able 10 provide reassurance based on tistry of New Jersey and at the La- data." mont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Some $10.5 million was made Columbia are working on pinpointing available by the federal government where the smoke plume went in the alone this week to finance medical days immediately after the attack and health studies and worker envi- In this way, a zone of exposure in, ronmental training related to Sept. say, Brooklyn Heights, which was 11. downwind just after the attacks, Studies like these are intensely might be better compared to one in complicated, a difficulty compound- TriBeCa in Manhattan. ed in New York by the demographics of an area where residents, tourists and office workers- many of them commuters - are mixed together. No one has any idea how many preg- nant women, example, were downtown on Sept. I1. The Columbia ThE NEWYOrK TIMES 1/"/0a 10F2 NYC-WTC_000143039