Law Department notice on WTC document preservation, Oct 2001

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

Major Conclusions of Non-EPA Lessons Learned Reports

Lessons Learned for Public Health from September 11,2001: A One Year Perspective; Philip J. Landrigan, M.D., M.Sc., Jordan Slutsky, Angali Garg, M.S., Mona Lisa Mouallem, Lauri Boni; Center for Children’s Health and the Environment of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine; September 2002:

• Inadequate preparation for disaster as public health authorities had not established partnerships with agencies outside the health field • Unclear lines of authority which resulted in poor risk communications, a disorganized approach to worker health and safety, and failure to agree on who should clean up residences. • Neither workers or the public were provided accurate information on health risks in the first weeks after the attacks. • Protection of workers was seriously inadequate • Lack of exposure standards for chemicals in settled dust or on surfaces inside buildings

Lessons Learned on Environmental, Occupational, and Residential Exposures From the Attack on the World Trade Center; Paul J. Lioy, Ph.D. and Michael Gochfeld, M.D., Ph.D; American Journal of Industrial Medicine, December 2002:

• Improved data collection for emergencies is needed. This should include development of: ► improved portable and flexible emergency response monitors, ► strategies for the rapid acquisition of settled particulate material samples in catastrophic events that yield resuspendable dust/smoke, and ► a rapid method for determination of site-specific and event-specific analytes that could cause acute or chronic effects.

• Need to develop emergency response standards for: ► community evacuation, worker re-entry, and residential/commercial re-entry, in various community or occupational zones at increasing distances from a disaster site, and ► Short-term exposure in establishing evacuation and restricted entry zones, and determining an “all clear” based on potential acute health outcomes.

• Need to develop a formal post-disaster cleanup protocol and a lead agency to implement the program so that cleanup can proceed without delay. Also need to develop a set of residential dust/smoke clearance levels to permit safe re-entry after cleanup.

• Need to conduct research on the design of respirators to ensure that they will be used in emergency response. Many of the existing non-air pack respirators are heavy and not easily worn over the nose and mouth during complex operations.

110 Report No. 2003-P-00012

NYC-WTC_000145630