Indoor air quality report log, March-May 2002

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document Air, water, soil . contaminated | oxic chemicals and metals are being released ' into the environment around lower.Manhattan : by the collapse of the World Trade Center tow- ers and by the fires still burning at Ground Zero, ac- . cording to internal government reports obtained by” “hour. day is 1: the Daily News. Dioxins, PCBs, benzene, lead - and chromium are among. the toxic substances detected in the - air and soil around the WTC site by .Environmental Protection _ Agency equipment: —. some- times at levels far éxceeding fed- eral standards, ‘the’ documents. ° ‘show-~—; caret Mamaancanlin hte + oe EPA’ monitoring ‘devices ‘also. have found considerable contam-_ inants in the Hudson River — in the water and in the sediment — especially after it rains. Six weeks after the WTC at- tack, benzene — a colorless liq- uid-that evaporates quickly and can cause leukemia, bone.mar- row damage and other diseases in long-term exposure -— contin- ues to be released into the airin plumes from the still-burning fires at relatively high levels. . The federal Occupational Safe- ty and ‘Health Administration's permissible ‘exposure. limits for workers han- 7 dling benzene’ over. an eight- part per million. But the EPA documents _re- veal that the standard has been exceeded by considerable mar- gins. On Oct. 2, for example, ben: zene levels from three spots, around Ground Zero were mea- . sured at 42, 31 and 16 times - higher than the OSHA standard. DAILY NEWS Friday, October 26, 2001 © On ‘Oct. 12, one reading mea- sured 21 times higher. The highest benzene level was recorded Oct. 11 — 58 times . higher than OSHA’s permissible exposure limit. The documents obtained by The News detail the presence of . many hazardous. substances’ — * _ many of them odorless — in lev- els above or approaching EPA or. OSHA safety standards. “Yes, they are high,” said EPA spokeswoman “Mary :Mears, .. when asked to comment.on the ° ‘hazardous-substance - readings contained in her agency’s docu- ments. “But you get a little dis- tance from the’plume and they go dramatically down? When questioned, site. Because emissions ‘of sub- stances like benzene have ex- ceeded OSHA levels, the EPA has-urged rescue and cleanup workers to use respirators. Compounding the effects ~~ he effects of exposure to‘any hazardous substance de- “pend on dose, duration, how the ‘person is exposed, personal . traits and habits, and whether, ; other chemi- _ cals ‘present, ac- cording to the _Agency _—_ for Toxic . stances = and Disease Registry, a branch of the. Department of Health and - Human Services. In many instances, govern- ment scientists believe, short- term exposure is not a real con- ” . tern, though other experts be- {leve small amounts of. certain carcinogenic substances eventu- _ ally can cause serious disease. .” The'EPA documents, which in- clude’hundreds of pages of daily | monitoring reports, were ob- tained under a Freedom of Infor- mation Act request by the New York ‘Environmental Law and Justice Project and made avail- - able to The News. ‘Until now, : “public attention © has focused largely on the poten- tial hazards of asbestos in the air. But the EPA: records reveal _ that the release of toxic chemi-* cals from the collapse of ‘the ‘ twin towers and the’subsequent. subterranean fires has been far ‘though, Mears conceded that shifting ° winds sometimes blow the. - plume directly at workers at the are : Sub- f “more extensive than fist ‘be: lieved, -Among the findings contained in the EPA documents: im Water « discharged,,,into, the - Hudson River from a sewer pipe at Rector St. on Sept. 18 showed ‘dioxin levels” ‘more! than five ee ee eed -of contaminants, according to {internal eovemment reports obtained by the Dally News.” . ‘in i993, times higher than any previous- ly recorded in New York Harbor | by the state Department of Envi- ronmental Conservation. -Moni- “tors also found PCBs and dioxin ‘levels in “river “sediment ’ ‘that _ were several times higher than a* previous study, of, the river done woe BA test of ‘toxic metals in water. dischargéd x into ‘the Hudson showed chroshium, copper, lead . and zine at levels “elevated “to i several’ orders ‘of : magnitude above ambient Tanne teria for or ere f ird- oF ye NYC-WTC__000144508 5 hp Seep nner cenidess ted