New York Times article on physician assessment of asbestos risk,

L86LSL000 OLM-OAN —~ EWws ) DAILY N (Thursday, May 9, 2002 A crusader cheers feds’ decision. lawyer Joel Kupferman was one of the few voices challenging the fed- eral Environmental Protection Agency's assurances there was no health threat to the public from pollutants released by the World Trade Center collapse Kupferman, who has operated his tiny New York Environmental Law and Jus- tice Project on a shoestring budget for years, could often be found in his second- floor office across from the EPA’s build- ing, working late into the night as he com- piled hundreds of complaints from ten- ants, homeowners and office workers about the air quality in their buildings. When he wasn’t writing down com- plaints and fighting with landlords, he was filing Freedom of Information re- quests to various government agencies to obtain hundreds of pages of environmen- tal test data. More than one government official la- beled him a kook. But to the many wor- ried inhabitants of lower Manhattan, Kup- ferman soon became the people’s lawyer — the only one who helped them without demanding a fat fee. So yesterday, when the EPA did an | Dex months ago, environmental ee ee ~ oO CA aetna about-face and finally announced the fed- eral government would clean up some 15,000 residential apartments below Ca- nal St., Kupferman was sitting upfront in the audience at the jammed press confer- ence. He wore a stylish new gra pin- mitted that they relied on individual build- ing owners to test and clean up their own properties and did only sporadic monitor- mg. The fact is that monitoring 15,000 apartments and hundreds of commercial buildings below Canal St. was too huge a stripe suit for the occasion — a big task for the DEP smile across his face. : Nadler has been insisting for months “The EPA cleanup is that under the federal Na- long due,” said Mayor tional Contingency Plan, Bloomberg. “It is better the EPA must be the lead to err on the side of cau- agency for cleaning uw tion.” any releases of hazard. Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-Manhattan), who rep- resents the area, got most of the press atten- tion. Of all the politicians in this town, Nadler has fought the hardest to get EPA to assume responsibility for indoor cleanup. In the days after Sept. 11, the EPA and the Giuliani administration divided the clean- up tasks. The city agreed to monitor the quality of indoor air, and the federal gov- ernment would be in charge of the out- door air problems. But officlals at the city’s Department of Environmental Protection have since ad- UOY, 1690 990 tOt {BSAS-bAS-Y08-F}) TADD-da8-0Q8-t isd 12809 at lesua mart enqisu0r OUe tav0 STIQI.I8O2. _ - arene meer ges <2 We Wr we ws he eye es & ow ous materials. By an- nouncing that the Feder- al Emergency Manage- ment Agency would pay for cleaning up all apart- ments below Canal St. and that the EPA would supervise the ef- fort, the agency finally gave Nadler his due. This does not mean there is any “imme- diate” health danger from pollution, said EPA regional administrator Jane Kenny _ something the agency has been saying from the beginning. But to ease worries about long-range health effects, the gov- ernment is now prepared to do a com- Bsc O ROE TY a RRA AAR | at. wwwwe 2 +); plete cleanup. The EPA cleanup, howev- er, is only for individual e>artments, not for hundreds of office buildings. And it is not clear that the common spaces of any residential buildin MEANY cleaned, un- less all the paral together: of Ashestos primary “concern i eS cleanup will) center: on. asbestos. So far, there are no dans, to test build- ings for other cont ich as mer- cury, lead or dioxin. “We applaud the fact EPA is finally ac- cepting responsibility,” Kupferman said. “But we want to be sure they eliminate all pollution, and I’m not sure this will.” According to Uday Singh, an industrial hygienist, for instance, conventional methods for cleaning up asbestos will not necessarily remove mercury contamina- tion. “It is practically impossible to re- move mer unless you use a HEPA fil- ter machine fitted with an activated char- coal filter,” Singh said. Much remains to be answered about this new cleanup effort. But after months of being dismissed as a kook, Kupferman and the Py card. he helped could say they E-mail: igonzalen(@edt nydaymewn.obm eee wie ROT, Cag ® tteitetdtititss 3; Ba oboe & Oa) JUSLUNDO [BLOd IIIGNd 11/6 DAN