World Trade Center environmental data report, 2001-2002

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

they may be compared. In both cases, there were a lot number of surviving victims needing medical care, but in both cases, there were plenty of physical damage, infrastructure disruptions and environmental hazards needing attention, from hazardous materials monitoring to decontamination.

But critics of those charged with enforcing occupational safety and health standards in New York don’t mince their words: “First responders, and many unequipped workers like those in construction went in to do heroes’ work and became martyrs instead,” says Joel Shufro, executive director of The New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health (NYCOSH), a coalition of unions and health professionals.

“Where we see a real need is to imderstand incident command, chain of command, so that all the things like protecting disaster responders, can get done,” says Joseph (Chip) Hughes of NIEHS’ Worker Education and Training Program (WETP).

Almost all those polled agree one of the biggest areas to improve is risk commimication, how public officials communicate hazards to the public. New York City Health Department’s Kelly McKinney admits that the real lesson for his department was for officials to conununicate what they know “every day and all day long.” He adds, “If it is a hazard, be clear about what you know and don’t know - and where the uncertainty lies.”

“The public is a little bit smarter and could have understood more complexity.”

“EPA came out way too early about the safety of the site,” says Alison Geyh of Johns Hopkins. “The public is a little bit smarter and could have understood more complexity.”

Paul Lioy criticizes the agencies for letting people come back to Lower Manhattan prematurely. “People came back but they never should not have been allowed to be back,” says Lioy, “No one should have been back at work. Children should definitely have not been back in school.” This was a chaotic time, but there was no basis, he says, for the city and federal govenunent to state that the environment was safe to reinhabit.

Environmental health professionals feel they made a positive difference in many areas. “We were very lucky to have be prepared with incident command, urban search and rescue, medical and occupational response, and quick federal response in ruling out a bio-terrorist attack,” says Arlington County’s Mark Penn.

Despite the problems in pinpointing air pollutants at Ground Zero, there were many words of praise for those who worked hard to get data under pressure and to be responsive to the needs of agencies. Bruce Lippy praises Leighton of DOH because “She did a really nice job of getting hundreds of air samples and reviewing them.

“Agencies without having a plan did a terrific job,” says Alison Geyh. “Three times a week people on the AQ issue spent an hour on the phone making sure everyone was aware of what they were doing; “It was a huge time commitment on the part of Region II EPA, NY State Department of Environmental Conservation, NYC DOH and others. Kelly McKinney did a fantastic job, running on overdrive and fiimes. He was good at keeping things on track.”

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