Law Department notice on WTC document preservation, Oct 2001

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

NYCDOH provided adequate cleanup directions to residents, answered as follows:

Consistent with their responsibilityfor the indoor environment, the City DOH, worldng with ATSDR and the Centersfor Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) took the lead on the development and dissemination ofpublic health recommendations related to building cleanups. DOH statements emphasizing wet wiping, moping and use ofHEPA vacuums were reasonable. EPA’s advice has been more conservative and suggested that people encountering more than minimal amounts ofdust should consider this as a “worst case” and likely to be contaminated with asbestos. Under these circumstances, they should hire a certified asbestos cleanup contractor... ”

Asbestos medical experts we consulted agreed that professional cleaning was preferred for the asbestos contamination found. Further, the experts stated that, at a minimum, if members of the public were to clean residences themselves, they should have been instructed to wear respirators. A study by NYCDOH found that most residents did not follow the City’s recommended cleaning practices. Although not specifically mentioned in the study, this conclusion would suggest that these residents did not obtain professional asbestos abatement contractors to clean their residences. The increased risk that residents placed themselves in by cleaning residences themselves is not known.

Although Agency press releases did not recommend professional cleaning of residences, EPA officials told us that they consistently recommended that residents obtain professional cleaning during interviews, public forums, and other communications. We were unable to determine when EPA first told the public that they should obtain professional cleaning for WTC-contaminated indoor spaces. The earliest instance we could locate was on October 26, 2001, when the EPA Administrator recommended professional cleaning in a televised interview on MSNBC:

However, again, as we saidfrom the beginning, ifyou live there and you have any kind ofbreach - a window open, a broken window, anything like that in your apartment - or you have a heavy amount ofdust - you should get a professional cleaner to clean it out... butjust wiping it down, using your regular vacuum cleaner, that’s not good enough. But - you know - we provided that information and it is up to the City Health Department and OSHA and others to follow-up...

26 Report No. 2003-P-00012

NYC-WTC_000145546