Public Communication Strategy for Environmental Risk Data, Jan 2001

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

(Much of this is being done already by the DPH, but there are specific areas that need to be addressed by other agencies who have some regulatory authority over residential and commercial property owners)

6. Initiate a major communications campaign that incudes a regular, centralized way for these agencies to update the public through press releases. This might entail designating one agency to communicate with the press to describe the efforts being undertaken by all of the agencies involved in the initiative. In addition, there needs to be a pro­ active way to get information out to the public. For example, we could initiate a campaign to disseminate the ERA testing maps which show test sites and data plotted by time. These exist as large posters and could be widely posted and updated weekly.

7. Increase capacity for Risk Communication: Currently the DPH has been working with the federal government (ATSDR) to communicate data to the public. While this effort has been very beneficial, we need a systematic presence in the neighborhoods staffed by environmental risk communication professionals. For example regular lunch time seminars for office workers and routine evening meetings for residents to go over findings for the data and answer people’s questions would go a long way to addressing concerns. Websites are good but the amount of information can be overwhelming.

OPTION B

This would require a more pro-active presence. Using the 6 points outlined above, this approach would add:

1. Inspectors to start doing some routine checking of buildings to see if there is dust settling outside and inside of buildings, to ask superintendents what cleaning methods are being used, to do some spot checks with residents.

2. Collect and analyze existing cleaning and testing data, (we know there has been quite a bit but it is very hard to determine how many building owners have actually had some testing conducted, when it was conducted, are they cleaning on a regular basis, etc.

Operations

It is essential that a lead person be designated to oversee this initiative and to ensure regular communication among the various agencies. If we had some pro­ active steps taking place for a few weeks we could monitor the response and we would probably have a much better way to determine what is the actual “demand” on city services.

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