World Trade Center document custody notice, Law Department

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

A particularly problematic issue is the feet that there is an inherent conflict of interest for building owners to actually do testing, which is expensive, because it might result in them having to hire a professional hazardous materials contractor to do proper remediation, which is even more expensive. Tenants have been forced to go on rent strikes to compel their building owner to test and remediate,*^ and at least one building (80 John Street) has already gone to court.^® In a related problem, building owners may use testing methods that are either arguably incapable of finding the type of hazardous materials emitted from the World Trade Center (see above-mentioned reference to problematic DEP-recommended testing approaches), or, if one takes a more cynical view, specifically designed to find nothing dangerous that would require expensive remediation. For example, in the case of Tribeca Tower (105 Duane Street), building management argued that by doing “200 ambient air tests” it had acted “extremely responsive[ly], despite the fact that tenants (supported by private contractors and an EPA scientist) have argued that hazardous materials in settled dust won’t show up in air tests, and that only sensitive dust sampling or aggressive air sampling would yield useful information.^’ With no guidance other than the lenient DOH guidelines, individual tenants were left to their own uninformed devices when deciding how to deal with the WTC dust in their ^artments.^’ One resident described the chaos that reigned: We reluctantly made our own rules, divined from press reports, high school science as we remembered it and die advice of friends and neighbors. But even that was mixed. One scientist friend had his apartment tested and declared it safe for his family; the managing agent of his building, however, reported high levels of asbestos and lead. In the end, 248 stuffed animals, 8 handmade baby quilts, S mattresses, a trousseau’s worth of sheets and towels, a kitchenfill of food and 13 leaf- and-lawn bags of toys went into our trash, but not our books, draperies and upholstered furniture or our clothes, diough the bill to dry clean them industrially was $16,500 .... We washed the walls, but didn’t repaint. Some people we know repainted, but kept their mattresses. Some people kept their stuffed animals but threw away their furniture. Some people kept what they couldn’t bear to lose and got rid of the rest. We have still not decided what to do about our floors: will stripping, sanding and resealing them contain the toxic mix of asbestos, fiberglass, concrete.

Drenger, Ronald, “Tenant-Landlord Battles Heat Up Downtown,” Tribeca JYib, January 4,2002. Rayman, Graham, “Tenants vs. Landlord In WTC Cleanup Case,” Newsday (Queens Edition), September 15,2001. Drenger, Ronald, “At Tribeca Tower, Tenants Press Health Concerns,” Tribeca "Mb, January 4,2002. Johnson, Kirk, “With Uncertainty Filling the Air, 9/11 Health Risks Are Debated,” New York Times, February 8,2002.

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