New York Times article on 9/11 lead tests, post-2001

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

New York Daily News - Juan Gonzalez - Juan Gonzalez: 9/11 lead tests covered up Page 2 of 3

"Extensive cleanup was done before the employees were allowed to return a few weeks later," said DOT spokeswoman Kay Sarian.

"The city tried to give us some ridiculous reason that it [the lead contamination] was from before 9/11," said Lee Clarke, health and safety director for DC 37.

Nearly five years later, it has become increasingly apparent that city officials simply hid from the public some of the worst results of their environmental testing in those early days.

This column revealed Wednesday that some top city health officials were deeply worried about air quality in lower Manhattan and opposed efforts to open more buildings around Ground Zero but were overruled by City Hall.

And they had reason to worry.

If was not until February 2002 that the Department of Environmental Protection finally published the results of its earliest testing for asbestos in the air of lower Manhattan after 9/11.

That data showed that an amazing 70% of the early samples had high levels of asbestos - another contradiction to the official story from federal Environmental Protection Agency and City Hall that there was no air-quality problem.

Other internal DEP documents show that the agency, like DOT, never even disclosed on its Web site some of the worst asbestos results from those first few days.

Many of these documents would have stayed buried were it not for Joel Kupferman, an attorney with the nonprofit New York Environmental Law and Justice Project, Kupferman has spent the past five years doggedly filing scores of Freedom of Information requests with every government agency for 9/11 documents.

This week, he finally received a new batch of records, including the Sept. 14, 2001, lead test results from 40 Worth St. and made copies available to The News.

"I'm more concerned than ever about how much lead and other contaminants remain in buildings in lower Manhattan that weren't properly cleaned," Kupferman said.

Virtually the entire New York congressional delegation demanded Tuesday that the EPA do what it should have done from the start, what its own inspector general recommended three years ago. It should inspect and, if necessary, clean every building in lower Manhattan - and even Brooklyn - that was contaminated by dust from Ground Zero.

Originally published on August 25, 2006

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