DEP fax header with article title, June 2002

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document JRN-09-2002 10:15 NYC DOH LRSU 212 676 6159 P.03/06

But Levin and others fear the unpredictable effects of the combination of many dangerous substances released into the downtown air could lead to significant long-term health problems.

"Nobody knows," said Regina Santella, a professor at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University and director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences' Center for Environmental Health in Northern Manhattan "We know what the monitoring data tells us and we know the symptoms of what people have. It's just hard to reconcile the two pieces of information."

ERA'S Role Questioned

In the weeks after the World Trade Center towers fell, tens of thousands ofNew Yorkers tried to decide whether it was safe to move back into apartments and businesses near the site of the attacks. The EPAplayed a leading role in calming those fears.

"I am glad to reassure the people of New York... that their air is safe to breathe and their water is safe to drink," EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman said a week alter the attacks. "The good news for the residents ofNew York is that the air, while smoky, is not dangerous," an EPA spokeswoman told the Los Angeles Times at about the same time. And at the end of September, another spokeswoman, citing recent tests for asbestos, told the New York Daily News; "There was not a significant risk, even in the early days."

The agency released selected test results that seemed to buttress those assertions.

But the EPA also found more troubling results, and it did not release that data until after the nonprofit New York Environmental Law and Justice Project filed a Freedom of Information Act request. These tests found elevated levels of dioxin, PCBs, lead and chromium, all toxic substances, in the air, soil and water around the site.

In a Sept. 26 EPA test, for example, three of 10 samples near the attack site showed elevated readings for lead. Exposure to lead can damage the kidneys and central nervous system, and is especially dangerous to children. An Oct. 11 EPA test in the ground aero area found benzene, a colorless liquid that evaporates quickly but can cause leukemia in long­ term exposure, measured SS times above the federal Occupational Safety and Hedth Administration's limit.

Those results were not released until late October.

EPA spokeswoman Bonnie Bellow said the late release was an oversight, caused by the chaos of those first weeks. She added that the agency had performed 3,561 tests for asbestos in New York, and only 29 of those

http;//www. washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/Al 1173-2002Jan7.html 01/08/2002

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