World Trade Center environmental data report, 2001-2002

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

Other critics have also called attention to the fact that even though many of EPA Regions responded within the first few days, EPA’s Region II office turned some away, including Region 8, which had particular expertise in asbestos.

A veteran hazardous waste expert at the EPA, Cate Jenkins charged that the EPA used a much more sensitive method for settled dust sampling which found a “positive” result for hazardous materials in its own building, yet turned away the services of the other region, which could have applied the same expertise more widely helping the people of New York determine the hazards of the dust in their homes and offices.

Likewise, others say officials in New York viewed hazards differently than at the Pentagon. Places where workers were decontaminated were called “decon” at the Pentagon, officials say, but “washdown” stations at Ground Zero.

Despite such critiques, many environmental health specialists called in to advise in the crisis expressed praise for the first responders in New York.

“Agencies without having a plan did a terrific job,” says Alison Geyh, an assistant professor at John Hopkins University who came in to help with assessing risks for rescue workers.

However, the city was not clear about which agency was overseeing the health and safety aspects, wrote Donald Elisburg and John Moran of the National Institute of Enviroiunental Health Sciences.

“This situation created a very complex safety and health setting in which there was confusion as to which occupational safety and health standards were applicable, whether enforcement agencies indeed had enforcement jurisdiction, and at what point in time the WTC Disaster Site safety and Health Plan would become effective and operative,” they wrote.

Environmental health: a low priority? A primary problem early on, say officials who were there, was confusion about what kind of event it was: Was it a disaster scene or a public health emergency; was it a crime scene?

The nation was reeling fi-om more than an environmental health disaster. Whether the event constituted an “act of war” or an “act of international terrorism,” as pundits argued that day, it was the worst assault on America’s soil in its history—a fact that made the scope of the environmental and public health challenges posed by the implosion of the buildings and continuing fires seem, at least for the moment, secondary.

It was in fact the worst international terrorist event in our nation’s history, involving four separate but coordinated air hijackings and the killing of more than 3000 people, including citizens of not just oiu- nation but 78 different countries.

This event was not only a human disaster but a crime scene as well, making for special dynamics, because law enforcement agencies at all levels of government were involved. “Instead of the usual crowd control concerns of keeping on-lookers at a distance, these agencies were tasked with the arrest of anyone who did not follow instructions,” wrote Paul W. O’Brien for the University

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