World Trade Center environmental data report, 2001-2002

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

the results were a series of disasters on a scale greater than EPA had ever encountered in emergency response.” (7)

The report is organized chronologically.

First, we revisit the actual events involved in the terrorist attacks and the immediate emergency actions of first responders, looking specifically at the various agencies charged with health and environmental issues surrounding 9/11—the cleanup, air quality monitoring, communication with the public, etc.—that worked with them.

Second, we review the array of challenges before New York, Washington, D.C. and nation in trying to come to grips with this crisis and in trying to return their cities to normalcy, starting from the initial crisis stage and progressing through to the various phases of recovery. What were the various environmental health challenges and how were they met? What were some of the secondary threats that emerged as a result of the disrupted infrastructure? We also examine environmental professionals’ own assessments of their tasks and challenges and how they met them.

September 11 crystallized the importance of environmental health. It also signaled the rise of this discipline on a par with other emergency response professions. Third, we examine the response of the community and the public to the government’s handling of the crisis and the controversies over various issues, as well as some expert opinions on gaps and vulnerabilities in the system of assuring public health and environmental protection.

Fourth, we look at ‘lessons learned,’ compiled from the comments of experienced disaster response experts, officials involved in environmental health protection and remediation, private consultants engaged in studying the aftermath and others with firsthand knowledge of the events.

In many ways, September 11 crystallized the importance of environmental health and the various professionals engaged in this field and signaled the rise of this discipline on a par with other emergency response professions.

Yet it encompasses difficult professions to explain because they are obscure—like industrial hygiene. “Nobody knows or understands what you do, and you seldom get to see the real results of your work,” wrote Mike Plagge, an industrial hygiene advisor for American Superconductor in Middleton, WL, in The Synergist, the publication of the American Industrial Hygiene Association. “It’s not glamorous like being a firefighter or a doctor. How often does someone thank you for preventing an occupational disease?”

All that has changed since September 11"’’ (8/ Most agree that has forever ratcheted up the relative importance of public health and environmental health in relation to other aspects of concern, from real estate and property damage to medical preparedness.

“There is more awareness now about what it takes to protect the public and how important the role of the environment is,” says Alison Geyh, Assistant Professor, Environmental Health Sciences, Johns Hopkins University; one of the key public health researchers who braved fumes and dust to investigate the hazards at Ground Zero. (9)

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