Law Department notice on WTC document preservation, Oct 2001

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

this information, and actions taken by the public to reduce their exposure to potential contaminants. The results of this survey will be presented in a separate OIG report.

Limitations: Except for a survey by NYCDOH and a random telephone poll of New York residents, the information we reviewed was not collected by statistical sampling methods and may not be representative of the public’s and emergency crews’ actions with respect to government communications.

Objective 5. What additional actions, if any, should EPA take to improve its response and recovery efforts in the WTC area related to ambient and Indoor air quality?

This objective primarily focused on the indoor residential cleanup - the only significant EPA WTC recovery activity ongoing at the time we completed our review. We did not audit the results of the cleaning and testing to determine compliance with the prescribed procedures of the program or to determine the actual effectiveness of cleaning conducted. Our analysis was based on a review of the procedures for the testing and cleanup by our certified industrial hygienist, a comparison of those procedures to commonly accepted asbestos abatement procedures, and a comparison of the cleanup goals to remediation goals that would have been required if this were a designated Superfund site. We also reviewed a peer review report of COPCs developed by EPA for indoor cleanup.

Objective 6. Should EPA revise Its preparation and contingency planning for dealing with air pollution resulting from environmental catastrophes?

To answer this question, we summarized lessons learned from the work we conducted to complete our other objectives. We also interviewed EPA officials, other government officials, and non-govemment environmental experts to obtain their suggestions for improving EPA’s capability to respond to similar disasters in the future. We also reviewed EPA and non-EPA “lessons learned” reports.

Prior Audit Coverage

The OIG has not conducted any prior evaluations of EPA responses to large-scale disasters. However, our report on EPA’s actions related to asbestos contamination in Libby Montana (EPA’s Actions Concerning Asbestos- Contaminated Vermiculite in Libby, Montana- 2001-S-7; March 31, 2001) discussed several issues related to the regulation and analysis of health risks from asbestos that were relevant to this evaluation.

76 Report No. 2003-P-00012

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