Analysis of very fine and coarse particulate levels at WTC

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document JAN-25-2002 FRI 09:40 AH FAX NO. P. 07 I'lwl •nUpalrJi: NY ollicink uwlepaiiinuile Jowgor

gr. LOUIS PDST-DISPATCH NY officials underestimate danger 'Dlls story was published ip A'section on Sunday, January 13,2002.

By Andrew Schneider Of The Post-Dispatch 2002, Rt, Louis Post-Dispalch Federal .and state officials in New York have grossly underestimated or played down the number of people In lower ManhaUan who arc al risk of being sickened or killed from exposure to asbestos released in the collapse of the World Trade Center.

Evaluations of anstlysos done by teams of leading asbestos researchers show the increased risk of death to people who live, work or study in homes or offices that have not been properly decontaminated could be ms high as one addition al cancer death for every 10 people exposed.

These figures come as federal and state officials continue to bwist that there is no significant health risk to those living and working near ground zero from the du st of hundreds of thousands of tons of asbestos-containing products used in the floors, walls, ceilings and on the steel of the twin towers. "1'hc agencies have made it k priority to get the lower Manhattan financial and stock markets up and running al any cost. In so doing, they have allowed ihou.sands of people to be exposed to subslanccR that haven't oven all been identified,,let alone quantified," .said Joel Shufro, Executive Director of the blew York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health, which represents more than 250 unions.

Tcdcral .and state officials am not ilisputing that the dust is making thousands of New Yorkers ill. Tor months people have been plagued with effects .such as severe si rub infections, asthma attacks, nausea, headaches, rashes, beet-red eyes, and coughing that can bring a person to his knees. Tills Is capsed by the pulverized concrete, fiberglass, metal and other*debris in the toxic dust Blorm and smoke that inundated the city after the towers crumbled Sept. 11.

These symptoms arc not indications of asbestos exposure. It taken 18 to 30 years for asbestos to exert its deadly effects. Thig latency period — the lime from when a fiber is impaled in lung tlsauo to when a person knows they are ill or dying -- makes it easy to Ignore or overlook the h-vzftrda of asbestos.

"Those .(asbestos) exposures may have grave adverse public health consequences, but we will not know exactly what those consequences arc for decades," Shu fro said.

HELP RUSHES IN WITH NEW AND OLD TECHNOLOGY When the World I'lade Center went down, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Hpalih Administration rushed teams to the site. Over the months, they , gathered thousands of samples but used 20-ycar-old methods for collecting and counting asbestos Aber? to assess th<bcalth fUka from dust that blanketed lower Manhattan, the agencies and their slate countciparls said only low levels of asbestos were found outside, "The public faces little or no danger from asbestos," numerous agency heads echoed.

Civilian scientists nndjihysicians hired by unions, tenant groups, contractors and New York

NYC-WTC_000151965