World Trade Center environmental data report, 2001-2002

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

On the eve of the two-year anniversary of the terror attacks, the Environmental Protection Agency released an evaluation of the agency’s response to the incidents that gave credence to critics who said the government downplayed risks and returned people to their homes and offices prematurely.

The Environmental Protection Agency's Inspector General released a headline-grabbing report (6) on 21 Aug 2003, revealing that, at the insistence of the White House, the EPA presented “an overriding message that there was no significant threat to human health” even though there was cause for caution. Specifically, the agency reassured people that the air was safe to breathe when, in fact, it didn't have enough evidence to make that call so quickly.

Today the debate continues, as many New York citizens voice continued concern about the potential toxicity of lingering dust in indoor areas of their apartments, and office workers, too, fear the safety of their indoor environments. Even though the EPA Inspector General, in her report, sided with local critics of the government’s response, EPA now seems reluctant to go any further to meet residents’ demands.

Yet even now, the OIG is urging the EPA to re-launch a new systematic program to make sure the agency’s apartment cleaning does reduce residents’ exposure to indoor pollutants. As in future terrorist events, the EPA is tasked under a 1998 Presidential Decision Directive, according to the OIG, “with the leadership role in cleaning up buildings and other sites contaminated by chemical or biological agents as a result of terrorism.” (6)

“When disaster strikes you will be called upon to be there 24 hours a day,” says Ron Burger. “What’s different now is that you will have people standing behind you carrying guns.”

In the ugly event that we are to Suffer another terrorist incident, how well would another city or town respond in conjunction with other government agencies?

We are not trying to lay blame or point fingers but assess the response and the lessons that can be gained. We hope it will help professionals face the multiple-faceted challenge posed by the "War on Terrorism."

Our methodology in this report was to review actions taken by agencies concerned with environmental health in New York City and the District of Columbia as well as reactions from the public at large and other institutions involved.

To do this we interviewed key people in the field about what they did, looked over available public documents and identified basic themes, and surveyed the social history of these events in the media and among various advocacy groups. From this, we developed a list of issues and critiques generated since these critical events and presented a litany of “lessons learned.”

We also included, where possible, excerpts of other “lessons learned” analyses, since most government agencies reviewed their activities with respect to their September 11* response, including the Environmental Protection Agency and the Worker Education and Training Program at the National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences (WETP). EPA concluded in a 2002 report, for example, “Although the attacks did not involve weapons of mass destruction (WMD),

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