DEP Invoice or Financial Record, September 30, 2001

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document ‘Newaday Da David Charters of the EPA Fagin By Dan Fagin STAFF WRITER David Charters has been all over the world as a member of the U.S. Environ- mental! Protection Agency's elite 26-mem- ber Environmental Response Team. But nothing he saw at the wreck of the Exxon Valdez, at Love Canal or at dozens of other environmental disaster sites around the world prepared him for Ground Zero at the World Trade Center. “The scale of it, the loss of life ... it’s just completely different from anything we've had to deal with before,” Charters said yesterday during a break from run- ning air tests at the site of last week’s ca- tastrophe. “We’re doing everything we can to protect the people who are in there busting their tails to try to save lives.” The smoldering pile is not only a rescue site, a triage area and a crime scene, it is Hazard Fills the Air also an environmental hazard. It poses significant health risks to firefighters and others at Ground Zero, especially the many who are not heeding the EPA’s ad- vice to wear bulky protective masks in their rush to look for survivors. “J can’t fault those people,” said Dave Mickunas, another member of the EPA team, which operates out of Edison, N.J. “It’s like telling people who are fighting a war, ‘Gee, why don’t you put on a dust mask before you try to take this beach.’” Even so, air testing has shown that ex- haustion and collapsing debris aren't the only risks the rescue workers face. “It is extremely dusty, and we are con- cerned about the air right at the site,” Mickunas said. “Nothing we've found so far is really all that high, but we have found asbestos and particulates that are at or a little over” safety standards set by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Agency. Those levels are high enough to pose a risk to anyone working at the site who is not wearing a mask equipped with a high-efficiency filter, he said. Not only.have experts been monitoring the air with a network of nine testing sta- tions, they’ve also been closely watching the debris being trucked to the Fresh Kills Landfill, In recent days, they've also established stations to wash down vehi- cles leaving the site and to distribute masks and other protective gear. Health officials, meanwhile, are focusing on po- tential bichazards, including risks associ- ated with the recovery of bodies. Rescue workers involved in recovering human remains have been advised to use so-called universal precautions, including See ENVIRONMENT on A66 Danger Still Rises From Ground Zero ENVIRONMENT from A65 “We are telling people it’s safe to re turn, although the dust can be an irri- -While those two contaminants have gotten most of the attention, they are Working out of a 35-foot bus that serves as a mobile high-tech testing » THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2001 'NEWSDAY, gloves and masks, to guard against the spread of hepatitis or other blood-borne diseases, said Sandra Mul- lin, a spokeswoman for the city Health Department. “We don’t see any indica- tion of risk to the general population,” she said. The -health-protection efforts are fo- cused inside a tight square less than four blocks wide because, so far, air tests have shown that dust levels in the larger surrounding area are unusu- ally high, although not high enough to ‘bé @ health hazard. ~~ ~~~ -— ~~" -~ > “Finig disease asbestosis.” NYC-WTC_000152297 tant and they need to remove it from their homes and offices,” said Mullin, adding that the city is recommending that Manhattanites use high-efficiency filters on their vacuum cleaners. Dust, especially particles less than 10 microns wide that can penetrate deeply into the lungs, is a particular health threat to smokers or people with respiratory disease. Prolonged ex- posure to asbestos, which was used ex- tensively in the Twin Towers, can cause cancer as well as the lung-scar- not the only types of toxic pollution generated by the destruction of the sky- scrapers. “You've got millions of cubic feet of office space that went up in smoke, and we've got to try to figure out what people had in there,” Char- ters said. Freon from air-conditioning units is an obvious potential risk, he said, and so are lead, mercury and dioxins pro- duced by the combustion of some plas- tics. EPA teams also have been doing environmental detective work to try to “ firid what else hiay be in the air. ~~ ~~ site, EPA technicians have been ana- lyzing air samples with mass spectrom- etry, a technique that yields a chemi- ca] “signature” for each type of com- pound in the air. “We're.covering hun- dreds of compounds,” Charters said. “So-far, there have been no surprises, and that’s good.” What has complicated the EPA’s ef- forts is the desperate search for survi- vors. Masks and other gear can make it difficult for rescue workers to com- " IMunicate with ach other. ~~ ~ [ews day G.20-01