Law Department notice on WTC document preservation, Oct 2001

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

completed, the data will become available to the public on a CD-ROM. We agree that EPA should continue to explore long-term improvements for data collection.

Monitoring Capabilities Need to Be Increased The amount of monitoring data for pollutants other than asbestos was limited in the first few weeks following September 11. In the beginning, monitoring efforts were hampered by several factors. There were difficulties associated with getting access and security, power supply sources, equipment availability, and analytical capacity. One environmental monitoring expert who participated in environmental sampling and analysis after the WTC collapse suggested that emergency response monitors must be improved and recommended that lightweight and manageable battery operated air samplers be developed that are able to measure a wide range of particles and gaseous substances.

In the case of a major disaster that causes a significant dispersion of particulates, the levels of TSP can be a concern, particularly in regard to acute respiratory symptoms. However, in the WTC response, these particles were not monitored because of a lack of TSP monitors. The availability of TSP monitors has decreased over time as EPA’s National Ambient Air Quality Standards program has shifted its focus from measuring TSP to measuring smaller particles. While health studies support measuring smaller particles from the standpoint of the National Ambient Air Quality Standards program, experts told us that it is useful to measure the levels of TSP in a disaster to determine potential short-term or acute health effects.

EPA Headquarters’ Lessons Learned Report addressed equipment needs and recommended that EPA clearly identify such needs. In addition, the Office of Air Quality and Planning Standard acquired funding for a Mobile Rapid Response Laboratory to collect data quickly in emeigency situations and transmit data to a central database via satellite. The Office of Air Quality and Planning Standards plans to establish two such mobile laboratories.

Risk Communication The collapse of the WTC towers disrupted normal communication infrastructures, yet required that difficult decisions about the condition of the environment be made quickly and under extreme stress. Under these conditions, EPA made extraordinary efforts to successfully assemble an extensive amount of information on its web site and otherwise communicate to the public. Despite these efforts, the information EPA communicated was in some cases inconsistent with prior Agency positions, inconsistent with other communications regarding the WTC disaster, or incomplete. Some of these communication problems may have been avoided if the Agency had updated policies and procedures in place for communicating to the public and had followed existing risk communication

63 Report No. 2003-P-00012

NYC-WTC_000145583