World Trade Center environmental data report, 2001-2002

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

When he came across a human hand with a candy bar still in it, he admits, he had to pause. “I was getting a little rubbery,” he remembers. “I had to come home and decompress. But it was tough to sleep.”

The biggest criticism was that the environmental health effort lacked coordination. Among the problems Mt. Sinai’s Landrigan identified: A “disorganized approach to worker health and safety.” This, he feels, came about because of “unclear lines of authority.” Other problems that would crop up included a lack of health-based standards for certain chemicals that made their way into the air and water. “These problems,” Landrigan warned, “must be addressed and the necessary improvements to the system must be made, if mistakes are not to be repeated in future disasters.”

Assessing Risks From an environmental perspective, probably the most difficult challenge confronting the agencies was identifying the substances in the dust and their potential health hazards.

I “Determining which pollutants I were out there in concentrations E that were hazardous,” was at the A. I top ofEPA Region H’s list of I challenges. That meant assessing a Il the risks of exposures to H pollutants it wasn’t required to I monitor by law—such as dioxin, I PCBs and dozens of other I compounds—and for which I health standards had not been set.

Photo: Michael Rieger/FEMA News Photo

Of course, too, truly life threatening hazards awaited in the recovery effort. There were many hazardous materials, such as Freon tanks for the air conditioning units, stored in six underground levels of the WTC. If the fires reached these levels they might have triggered larger fires or toxic plumes. There were hazards amid the rubble because moving debris could open pockets of oxygen that could mix with combustible dust and vapors and cause other explosures. So pinpointing sources of hazards were key.

Among the first agencies to help in this regard was EPA. But On-Scene Coordinator (OSC) Steve Touw, who had been to Hurricane Hugo and Floyd, as well as oils spills and overturned tank trucks, was unprepared for the scope and size of the environmental disaster at the 16-acre World Trade Center site. “The resources brought to bear were like nothing I’d ever seen,” he says.

Among other responsibilities, Touw was tasked with collecting hazardous materials, and so he had to determine where those might be by tracking hazardous waste permits oft file—finding oil storage tanks in the basement, sources of perchloroethane from dry cleaning establishments, and so forth.

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