World Trade Center environmental data report, 2001-2002

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

"It's not safe, and what's proof of this is that medical clinics have diagnosed people with occupational [asthma already and other respiratory problems, people that not only work down there but live down there," Joel Kupferman, executive director of the New York Environmental Law and Justice Project, told CNN. (2)

Some officials monitoring air, water and soil admitted that pollutants did “climb to hazardous levels” on occasion. "The further you get from the site, the data does not demonstrate significant risks to people," William J. Muszynski, acting regional administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency told a reporter for CNN. "I think you can sensationalize --1 mean, I think you can look at the numbers, a spike, and believe that number is overly significant," the EPA's Muszynski said. "Most of what we do is based on long-term exposure."

Tests of soil in the immediate vicinity of the World Trade Center did show elevated levels of asbestos in o le of four soil and debris samples, Chris Paulitz of EPA told MSNBC. “So officials plan to keep Up the monitoring,” he said, to ensure that concentrations do not reach high enough levels to cause respiratory ills. Rain was washing away some of the heavy particulates in the air, he said.

Understandably, in this climate of confusion, the city Department of Health was besieged by phone calls from residents and others. In its own communications, the DOH was not quite so definite as EPA’s Whitman had been. While encouraging people to move back to their homes and restore their lives to normalcy, the city urged citizens to take precautions with dust and ash, Sandra Mullin of the city’s Department of Health told MSNBC Online, “to protect people with underlying respiratory problems.” The agency advises “simple housekeeping tips like removing shoes, keeping windows closed and changing filters in air conditioners.” (3)

While the official word was that ordinary citizens were at no real risk from being in contact with the ash and dust remains of the trade towers, others thought far more precautions should be taken.

“Hazards are being swept under the rug in the interests of restoring calm. You have every reason to be concerned when they don’t give you the data.”__________________________________________________ From the beginning, Kupferman, for example, was a strong advocate for more public right to know and greater precaution. “Hazards are being swept under the rug in the interests of restoring calm,” claimed Joel Kupferman, a lawyer with the nonprofit Environmental Law and Justice Project, who faults the city for failing to make public its measurements of toxins in the air and dust. “You have every reason to be concerned when they don’t give you the data,” he charged. (3)

At the time, of course, there was no dearth of air quality monitoring in and around the site. The U.S. EPA wds monitoring the area’s outdoor air for asbestos and particulate matter and for levels of asbestos in the dust. And the state Department of Environmental Conservation was also adding to that effort (with further measurements of fine particulates.

But controversy ensued over whether government scientists were testing for precisely the right chemicals, or, whether they were deliberately withholding information from the public.

Kupferman filed a Freedom of Information Act request to get data about the EPA's monitoring of pollutants, but both his group and the Queens-based Center for the Biology of Natural Systems,

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