Law Department notice on WTC document preservation, Oct 2001

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

Executive Summary The September 11,2001, terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York City and the environmental aftermath were unprecedented. Airborne dust from the collapse of the towers blanketed Lower Manhattan and was blown or dispersed into many of the surrounding office buildings, schools, and residences. This complex mixture of building debris and combustion by-products contained such ingredients as asbestos, lead, glass fibers, and concrete dust. Responding to this crisis required organizations from all levels of government to coordinate their response efforts and to make critical public health and safety decisions quickly, and without all of the data that decision-makers would normally desire.

Unfortunately, this country may experience more terrorist attacks, and a response to such a tragedy could be needed again. Accordingly, we initiated this evaluation, in consultation with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Deputy Administrator, to evaluate EPA’s response to September 11. During our evaluation, we sought to answer six specific questions that address how EPA responded and how it could better respond in the future. Those questions, along with summaries of what we found and recommendations for each, follow.

Did the available monitoring data and analyses of that data support EPA’s major public communications regarding air quality and associated health risks resulting from the collapse of the World Trade Center (WTC) towers?

EPA’s early public statements following the collapse of the WTC towers reassured the public regarding the safety of the air outside the Ground Zero area. However, when EPA made a September 18 announcement that the air was “safe” to breathe, it did not have sufficient data and analyses to make such a blanket statement. At that time, air monitoring data was lacking for several pollutants of concern, including particulate matter and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Furthermore, The White House Council on Environmental Quality influenced, through the collaboration process, the information that EPA communicated to the public through its early press releases when it convinced EPA to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones. An EPA draft risk evaluation completed over a year after the attacks concluded that, after the first few days, ambient air levels were unlikely to cause short-term or long-term health effects to the general population. However, because of numerous uncertainties - including the extent of the public’s exposure and a lack of health-based benchmarks - a definitive answer to whether the air was safe to breathe may not be settled for years to come. Details regarding the handling of indoor contamination are discussed in relation to Objective 2 below.

EPA has initiated actions to strengthen its risk communication procedures for emergency situations, including the development of a draft Plan for Incident

I Report No. 2003-P-00012

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