World Trade Center environmental data report, 2001-2002

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

samples requiring quick laboratory analysis greatly exceeded the Regions’ capabilities” and they couldn’t get access to other national labs. (2)

Others would be far less charitable in their assessments. “The heroes were the police and firefighters who got people out of the buildings,” says Mt. Sinai’s Philip Landrigan.

If a terrorist incident without chemical, nuclear or bioterrorism could so strain the system, what would happen in the event of a highly environmentally hazardous event? EPA says: in its leaked report, “EPA’s mission was to protect front-line responders from dust and contaminants released when commercial aircraft were deliberately crashed. Although the Attacks did not contain weapons of mass destruction (WMD), the results were a series of disasters on a scale greater than EPA had ever encountered during emergency response.” (2)

Since there’s like to be some sort of environmental contamination in future attacks, local agencies need to be prepared to deal with the kinds of issues to surfaced in New York - indoor contamination and removal, assessment of risks to vulnerable populations.

And, experts point out, all sorts of future environmental disasters, from earthquakes in urban areas, to tornadoes, fires and hurricanes, could involve a complex building collapse.

Critics also some major policy failures: No agency enforced proper respiratory protection for workers; no agency took charge of the environmental health piece of the 9/11; and no agency focused on indoor cleanup, and, in fact, according to critics like Congressman Jerrold Nadler, tried to evade it.

If EPA has authority under the National Contingency Plan to control the release of hazardous substances it should be ready to address complex building fires in the future. Some blame the insufficient awareness of the risks and hazards on political factors like the rush for normalcy and to get financial district back running; lack of good sampling in the first days due to factors beyond their control, like no electricity and not being prepared, and the anthrax crisis coming on its heels; too much focus on asbestos to the exclusion of other toxicants; and too much focus on physical hazards of cleanup and not enough on environmental health.

September 11*, of course, has made the idea of unthinkable environmental disasters involving hazardous chemicals or nuclear byproducts far more imaginable but that has done little to slow their commercial production or encourage their being more strictly regulated. Certainly, the focus on terrorism has permanently changed the terms of the environmental debate in some respects: After 9/11 politicians began to view environmental hazards as security threats too.

At first, the political winds favored regulating toxic chemicals at chemical plants more strongly. Environmentalists in the past used to play down the terror threats of chemicals because industry would complain “Greenpeace was courting attacks by spotlighting potential hazards,” wrote Wall Street Journal reporters Jacob. M. Schlesinger and Thaddeus Herrick. “But soon after the Sept. 11 attacks, the activists made terrorism the new centerpiece of their old crusade. That fall, Rena Steinzor of the Natural Resources Defense Council told Congress: "Human error... killed several thousand people in Bhopal. What price will we pay for deliberate sabotage at such a facility?" (3)

102

NYC-WTC_000145020