News article on caustic dust and air monitoring, WTC area

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

the people they are charged with protecting." ■> Rushing and Bunch found a new apartment as far from the World Trade Center as they could get and still be in the city. The apartment is on the lowest floor available.

Even within the EPA, professionals believe the agency did a disservice by not acknowledging and releasing the Geological Survey's data.

Cate Jenkins, a senior environmental scientist in the hazardous materials division at the EPA headquarters, said: "The pH levels the USGS documented were far too high for EPA to ignore. They insisted that all the information regarding health and safety was being released to the public. Well, that's not true. There's nothing, internally or in public releases, that shows the agency ever disclosed specific pH levels."

Late Thursday, the EPA’s Bellow told the Post-Dispatch: "We have no specific data on pH levels." Bellow added, "This is all the available information on the subject"

Late Friday, the EPA responded to the question of why it didn’t collect its own pH numbers.

"EPA had enough information about the alkalinity of the materal from the World Trade Center without doing further analysis," Bellow said.

The question of why EPA didn't release the data it had had remains unanswered.

The EPA is in a no-win situation. No government agency had been prepared for the enormity of the terrorist attack on New York. Tight budgets - federal, state and city - ruled out planning and drills for an unfathomable event of this size.

Even most critics say that no amount of preparation could have kept the workers fleeing the twin towers - and the rescue workers racing to save them - from sucking in lungfuls of toxic dust and smoke.

But it's what the EPA and OSHA and the New York state and city health departments did after the dust settled and the smoke cleared that has generated the most criticism.

On Monday, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, the New York Democrat who represents the people in lower Manhattan, is holding a congressional hearing to determine who dropped the ball. He is expected to announce that legislation will be introduced to "force EPA to do the proper testing inside offices and apartments and release the finding in a form that would be of value to the public and their physicians."

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., has scheduled a Senate investigation of the issue.

Less than a week after the attack, on Sept. 16, EPA Administrator Christie Todd Whitman told New Yorkers: "There's no need for the general public to be concerned."

That was the same day that USGS and NASA flew their first sampling missions over the city.

The EPA said its boss's comments that there were no dangers from dioxin, benzene, PCB or asbestos - all cancer-causing agents - were based on thousands of outside air samples. Last month, the Post-Dispatch reported that high levels of asbestos were found in many apartments and offices. The EPA said its regulations did not call for indoor testing. 4

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