World Trade Center environmental data report, 2001-2002

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

well as neighborhoods within a five to six block radius as a federal Superfiind site “to enable federal dollars to be spent on proper monitoring, inspection and cleanup.” The advantage of this, Kupferman says, is to guarantee that regulations are enforced to ensure thorough removal of toxic residues.

Paul Bartlett, an environmental scientist with the Center for the Biology of Natural Systems, agreed that some sort of “emergency designation” for the whole area could help ensure health and safety, and perhaps institute an effective health-tracking system to follow the area’s public health. As it is now, he charges, “the kind of environmental monitoring we’re getting from EPA and other agencies doesn’t adequately measure contaminants.”

Earlier in November, local politicians had begim to weigh in. Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), whose district encompassed the neighborhoods in Ground Zero, had earlier formed the Ground Zero Elected Officials Task Force, with Sen. Hillary Clinton, to coordinate the efforts of all the government representatives from the area. This Task Force had heard “countless complaints from citizens who suffered from adverse health effects, and/or lacked the resources necessary to test and clean their apartments and buildings properly,” Nadler said later. As mentioned, Nadler felt that the city had neglected the issue of indoor cleanup. When it commissioned a study to look at indoor pollution and the effect of the dust on people living downtown, it found extremely high levels of asbestos in two buildings near Ground Zero.

The Task Force also thought that the environmental health efforts were too scattered among agencies, and asked that their be one city agency designated to oversee everything having to do with debris cleanup in lower Manhattan."

“If I knew then what I know now, I would never have sent my child back [to school].” By January, the smoldering fires where the Twin Towers once stood were finally quelled. But if one looked beyond the crater to the hundreds of apartments and offices in the surrounding neighborhoods of the Financial District, Battery Park City, Tribeca and Chinatown, there were thousands of people still worried whether their homes and workplaces had been adequately cleaned up from the thousands of tons of dust thrown off by the buildings’ collapse — and wondering if it was safe to stay.

There were some 30,000 residents and as many as 300,000 were working in the area before the terror attacks, according to figures from the city and the New York Development Corporation. But those numbers had greatly fallen.

Independent scientists, doctors and public health advocates had been coming forward to express concern that some health risks were being overlooked or not fully publicized.

At the time, for example, The Gotham Gazette reported. Dr. Paul Lioy of the University of Dentistry and Medicine of New Jersey revealed that he had foimd levels of lead in dust samples from around the World Trade Center disaster area that could be hazardous. At a public meeting at New York University, Dr. Lioy said that the lead needed to be removed from homes and buildings, especially where children lived, and advised homeowners to apply to the Federal Emergency Management Agency for aid, and renters to approach their building managers.

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