World Trade Center environmental data report, 2001-2002

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

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I. 1

Photo: Paul Olivier

“While I was walking down Church Street, with all my instruments, I came within 1000 feet of the South Tower, and unfortunately the building came down,” says Borri, sounding every bit the uiuTiffled scientist. “It’s a good thing I walked slowly.”

How does one continue on one’s mission without getting distracted by such details as a 110-story building comes down in front of you? “You concentrate on what you need to do,” says Borri, who simply walked amid the vehicles and victims covered with layers and layers of soot, “taking samples off the people coming out of the building.”

The high-tech gadget he carried, one of the few available in the United States, is far more precise than its century-old cousin, the Geiger Counter. Borri checked the World Trade Center site for signs of radiation before and after the collapse of the buildings. Radiation could have originated in industrial radiology sources, such as the installing beams of the huge office buildings, which may have contained some radioactive elements from x-rays taken, and from depleted uranium used in ballasts in aircraft wing tips (such counterweights in airplane wing tips give the most weight for least volume, says Borri). It might also be left from any medical or dental offices.

The far more serious threat, of course, was the chance that one of the hijackers might have carried a suitcase of radioactive materials or a dirty bomb, a conventional bomb spiked with radioactive

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