World Trade Center environmental data report, 2001-2002

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

“We came cross several drums of cleaning chemicals at the former Vista Hotel,” Touw remembers, “and the excavators turned up a white vapor wafting up.” Suddenly, the site had to be evacuated, though, fortunately, says Touw, it only turned out to be casks of laundry detergent.

Air and water monitoring The federal EPA Region II began taking samples of air and dust a few days after the terrorist attacks occurred. It also gathered data on drinking water, river water and sediments. So did the state Department of Environmental Conservation.

A challenge for local officials was interpreting environmental monitoring data from the various agencies—as different agencies were coming up with different levels and measuring for different contaminants. According to the Region, it “used established standards where they were available and modified guidelines” to produce benchmarks. For example, it used PELs (Permissable Exposure Limits) for lead, certain volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and asbestos. Otherwise it put together ad hoc benchmarks, for substances like dioxin and PCBs.

EPA was available to the city for the health data it needed, but its samples were supplemented by samples taken by other agencies. Among the many agencies with responsibility for protecting health, safety and the environment there was the city Department of Health, the state and various federal agencies, including FEMA, as well as EPA. But their sampling methodology and evaluation criteria were different.

Various agencies were sampling for different toxicants, and, to make matters more complicated, there were different toxicological criteria among different agencies. For some compounds, there were no standards at all. There had never been an air quality standard for asbestos, for example, since it is normally regarded as an indoor air pollutant. And there were different standards for asbestos under various agencies. OSHA had one standard; EPA had a more protective standard. But neither of these was health-based. Photo: EPA (air monitor)

“Since the first day of the World Trade Center disaster, the rapid and continued coordination among federal, state and local environmental, occupational and health agencies around such monitoring and risk communication has probably been unprecedented,” Jessica Leighton, the city DOH’s assistant commissioner for environmental risk assessment testified in a State assembly hearing held in late November.

Contaminants were not uniformly dispersed—so that one could find high levels of certain pollutants in one area and not in another. But risk assessment was one of the biggest challenges for the various agencies because it was so difficult to accurately pinpoint the hazards in this instance. Several factors made it particularly difficult. The first was that equipment to monitor the air was not in place on September 11*

59

NYC-WTC_000144977