World Trade Center environmental data report, 2001-2002

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

From the very moment that the terrorist attacks began, the health of great numbers of people began to be potentially affected, according to federal health documents. (13) Injured people began flocking to local hospitals within minutes of the attack and peaked two to three hours later.

“Among 790 injured survivors treated within 48 hours, approximately 50% received care within 7 hours of the attack, most for inhalation or ocular injuries; 18% were hospitalized.”

The high particulate count could have been of grave health importance to some populations, leading to heart attacks and asthma worsening, according to Lung Chi Chen, of New York University Department of Environmental Medicine.

Local mistrust Months before, many had decided to move out, some on the advice of doctors. A former resident of Battery Park, Steve Swaney, for example, moved because of his wife’s respiratory ailments and his own anxieties. “You can’t tell me or people in this neighborhood that there’s nothing in the air,” he said at the time. “Anybody with a kid still living down here is nuts.” So few children were left in the complex that the day care center was on the verge of closing.

Congressman Nadler charged that EPA had “created a full-scale crisis of public confidence.” Another New Yorker, Diane Miller, who up until recently lived in a co-op apartment two blocks away from the disaster site, delayed returning to her home in the financial district. She considered herself one of the fortunate, having friends who could loan her places to stay while the dust settled. An asthmatic and mother of an infant boy, she said, “I don’t need to have an official designation of whether it’s safe or not. If I’m in a place with bad air and I’m coughing all the time, I leave,” said Miller.

Yet many thousands returned to their homes and offices, because the official word was that the environment was totally safe.

Four months after the disaster, noted the Congressional Research Service, in a report entitled Federal Disaster Policies after Terrorist Strikes, “residents and workers in the area continued to report respiratory difficulties and related problems,” begging the question of whether public agencies failed to protect the health of the general public and first responders. (14)

Some critics charge that the EPA failed to protect the public and first responders “by issuing inconsistent and misleading statements about the safety of air quality in the vicinity of the WTC,” the CRS report notes. Indeed, some information on hazards was delayed for weeks, making it less useful to people concerned.

Among the most outspoken critics was Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), who charged that EPA and other agencies had failed in their public health mission.

“It has now been exactly five months since the terrorist attacks and, unfortunately, the people in Lower Manhattan still do not know whether or not it is safe to live and work in the area,” Nadler testified before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works/ Subcommittee on Clean Air, Wetlands, and Climate Change on February 11,2002, in hearings covering the “

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