News article on WTC worker health study results, 2003

GPLEVLOOO OLM-OAN Uncertainty Lingers Over Air Pollution in D By KIRK JOHNSON The air in Lower Manhattan after Sept. It has swirled back into the news — what people knew about it, when they knew it and wh. about it. at they sald A report by the federal News Environmental Protec- Analysts tion Agency's inspector general lambasted the agency’s former admin- istrator, Christie Whitman, for her reassuring statements about the air quality after 9/11. Those comments investigators said, could not possibly have been based on scientific fact. Mrs. Whitman has strongly defended herself, saying she spoke only what was known at the time. But the underlying issue, research- ers, doctors and politicians say, re- mains just as unresolved today as it was back then in the chaotic, emo- tional days after the attacks: How do you communicate something about which no one has ever had any expe- rience? Was there a standard of con- fidence about the environmental risks and unknowns that was scien- tiftcally or perhaps even morally ap- propriate under the circumstances? In an interview on Friday, Mrs. Whitman, who left the agency in June, said that on Sept. 18, 2001, when she announced that the air in Lower Manhattan was “safe to breathe,” the statement was correct. Outside the smoldering pit of ground zero, she said, the pollutants that the agency was measuring had dropped to near-normal levels. But she said she also believed that New Yorkers — anxious, terrified and in a real way lost at that moment — simply would not have steod for a cold or vaguely worded sctentific response. THE NEW YORK Times METRO sunpay, sEPTEMBER 7, 2003 ¢ | TY - “They're now saying we didn't have enough information,” she said. But when people are really upset, you can’t win. You've got to say something, and what we communi- cated was what we knew. There may . be fong-term health implications we never could have conceived of, but . we sou Ser atop and stay, ‘We can’t u for 10 years.’ That absol wouldn't work," solutely Many researchers say they be- lteve that whatever the intentions, Mrs, Whitman's confident words did have Implications for haw New York- ers perceived the environmental risks and how they viewed the gov- ent’s overall res disaster. Ponse to the “There were uncertainties, and in those situations, you should say, one, you don’t know, and two, you'll find all right. Whether it was politics, economics or simple human nature at work, the momentum, they say, out,” sald Dr. Stephen M. Levin, the ¥@8 hard to resist. medical director of the Irving J. Sell- “There was a tremendous pres- koff Center for Occupational and En-| Sure to act like people could move vironmental Medicine at the Mount back into their homes, schools and Sinaf School of Medicine. “And then you make statements based on real data.” ~ . Dr. Levin, whose center has exam- ined about 6,000 people exposed to trade center debris, sald he thought some companies used Mrs. Whit- man’s comments to justify ordering their employers back to work down- town even as the dust and smoke swirled, and some of those workers, he satd, became his patients. He says .gome ground zero workers who de- veloped lung problems also may ‘have given themselves “permisston” not to use respirators because of her words, even though the final respon- sibility was their own. Other health experts say it is not as simple as science and numbers. There was an anxtous emotional pitch In New York ih those hours, they say — a hunger for certainty and confidence that things would be Wall Street,” sald Professor David Rosner, the director of the Center for “the History and Ethics of Public Health at Columbia University. “We warited the city to be normal again.” Other scientists who were involved from the earliest days in testing the alr downtown say that Mrs. Whit- man’s statements were, in a way, right and wrong at the same time. The cumulative evidence through the months of independent testing by ac- ademic researchers and private companies ultimately supported what she had said. But at the time, they say, she could not have known that they would, “Generally for the public, her . statement wasn’t that far off in the end,” said George D. Thurston, an assoctate professor of environmental medicine at the New York Universt- ty School of Medicine. “But tt was premature and had no basis at that point. People don't want to be re- assured. They want the facts.” Some of the facts about the disas- ter’s impact will never be known. Few health investigators hovered around the laborers who cleaned dust-choked buildings near the disas- ter site, for example, so scientists do not know and never will know what those workers breathed. Other unknowns are still on the horizon. On Friday, New York City and federal health officials began a 20-year project to track the health of up to 200,000 people who were ex- posed to the disaster. One of the goals, registry organizers say, is to broaden the base of knowledge for use In future disasters. But some politicians and scientists say that cynicism about the govern- ment and the environment, furthered by Mrs. Whitman’s assurances, could make future disasters even harder to deal with. “] know this, if there is another attack, I won't listen to a damn thing they say,” sald State Senator David A. Paterson, a Democrat from Man- hattan, who satd last week that he planned to hold legislative hearings ays After 9/11 G) 4 to investigate how the administra- tion of Gov. George E. Pataki han- dled the environmental crisis. Some researchers say the E.P.A. was simply the wrong agency for the job, since its responsibility is to mon- itor and regulate atmospheric condi- tions long term, not in the pell-mell crush of a crisis. “There may have been politics, but I think it had much more to do with bureaucratic structure,” said Pat- rick L. Kinney, an associate profes. sor at Columbia University's Maill- man School of Public Health. “The E.P.A. is not a fast-moving organiza- tion. It's hard for them to make statements. and respond in a quick way to changing circumstances.” Mrs. Whitman said that the agency had learned from the crisis but tha! she had no regrets or. seconc thoughts about anything she had satc or done. aa . “Nobody was trying to tell peopl that things were normal,” she said “Things were not normal, But to thi extent they were normal in the ambi ent air quality outside ground zero, don't think there was anything wronj with saying that.” yusWNdO |BOd IIIGNd 11/6 OAN