NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document
From: Chapin, Diana
Sent: Friday, April 26, 2002 1:32 PM
To: Ward, Chris; Giisenan, Michael; Sturcken, Charles; Avaltroni, Robert
Subject: FW: In the news - Dr. Levin
fyi
---- Original Message-
From: Ronald J. Tramontano [mailto: ■state.ny.us]
Sent: Friday, April 26,2002 1:26 PM
To: [email protected]; [email protected];
[email protected]; [email protected]
Subject: In the news - Dr. Levin
Forwarded by Ronald J. Tramontano/CEH/OPH/DOH on 04/26/02 01:23 PM
April 26, 2002
Expert Says Asbestos Slightly Raised Risks for Disease Among Residents of
Lower Manhattan
By KIRK JOHNSON
The risk of asbestos-related disease, including cancer, has risen slightly for tens of thousands of
people in Lower Manhattan as a result of the collapse of the World Trade Center, a prominent
New York physician said yesterday.
The risk is higher, he said, for those who worked under the most hazardous conditions, and much
of the danger could have been reduced or eliminated entirely if proper preventive action had
been taken.
But the physician. Dr. Stephen M. Levin, the medical director at the Mount Sinai School of
Medicine’s Irving J. Selikoff Center for Occupational Health and Environmental Medicine,
which has treated more patients for trade center-related respiratory complaints than perhaps
any other hospital, also had some reassuring news.
In a presentation in Manhattan before a panel of the American College of Preventive Medicine,
Dr. Levin said that for the vast majority of people exposed to asbestos ? from being caught in
the dust cloud of the collapsing towers, for example, or from cleaning up their apartments
or offices ? the risk of ever getting sick was “very, very small.”
He also said, after examining test results and cleanup records in some schools in Lower
Manhattan, including Stuyvesant High School and Public School 150, that students and parents
in those schools should have little concern about long-term health effects.
NYC-WTC_000160976
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