World Trade Center document custody notice, Law Department

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

Broadway, and found results below levels of concern [emphasis added]. (Note that there is no mention of dust sampling.) The enclosure to which Ms. Whitman refers is entitled “USEPA Air Analytical Results from 9/13/01 Sampling Event.” Under die section “methodology,” the document indicates that both air and dust samples were taken. Air samples were “analyzed by TEM EPA 40CFR763 AHERA” and dust samples were “analyzed by PLM EPA-600 R- 93/116.”®* Ms. Whitman’s letter implies that, because the tests found only results below the “level of concern,” there was no special action taken in the buildings. But in reviewing the documents obtained under FOIA by the New York Environmental Law and Justice Project (documents that Ms. Whitman did not include in her correspondence to Congressman Nadler), Dr. Jenkins found that positive results for hazardous materials were indeed detected by EPA tests. In fact, the documents show that the EPA used a much more sensitive “TEM” method for settled dust sampling which found a “positive” result for hazardous materials, despite Ms. Whitman’s enclosures m the Nadler letter that said it had used the “PLM” method. According to Ms. Jenkins, this high sensitivity transmission election microcopy or TEM method for dust sampling was used nowhere else in Lower Manhattan, and “but for the results from the more sensitive tests. Region 2 would not have abated asbestos from its building.” That “abatement,” according to Jenkins, included, but was not limited to, HEPA vacuuming and an evacuation for some period of time.” This is, indeed, in stark contrast to the DOH cleanup guidelines that EPA officials directed Lower Manhattan residents to follow: i.e., use of a wet rag or mop. Either the testing and cleanup measures used at the EPA office were necessaiy to protect its workers or, the EPA wasted tax-payer dollars on an unnecessary cleanup. If such sensitive testing is used in EPA’s own building, why not in the rest of downtown Manhattan? The EPA is also treating New York City differently than it has treated many non- Superfund hazardous materials contamination sites around the country. Whereas the EPA has stated it lacks jurisdiction to test for and remediate hazardous materials in private spaces in Lower Manhattan, it has acted on indoor air in locales (with no Superfund designation) such as Herculaneum, Missouri; Kellog, Idaho; and MacFarland, California.’®

” Letter from Christine Todd Whitman (EPA Administrator) to Congressman Jerrold Nadler (NY-08), February 22,2002. ’* Ibid., enclosure, “USEPA Air Analytical Results from 9/13/01 Sampling Event.” Jenkins, Cate (Ph.D., Environmental Scientist, Waste Identification Branch, HWID, Office of Solid Waste, US EPA), “3/6/02 Draft: Asbestos in Settled Dust and Soils,” March 6,2002. ” Martin, Robert J. (National Ombudsman, USEPA) “Testimony before the United States Senate Subcommittee on Clean Air, Wetlands, and Climate Change,” February 11,2002.

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