Memo: Response to public correspondence request, May 2002

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

“I wore mine the first hour or so, but then it got too hot and kind of hard to talk,” said Donald Kimbell, a 51-year-old retired police officer from Ruston, La. “Most folks that were in there didn’t wear ’em.” Meanwhile, day laborers _ as many as 5,i by some estimates _ cleaned dust from downtown apartments for as long as 10 weeks running, said Dr. Steven Markowitz, director of the Queens College Center for the Biology of Natural Systems. Most workers said employers did not provide respirators, said Markowitz, who operated a mobile exam room for workers near ground zero. Some workers said they brought their own respirators but were prevented from using them, he said. “The employers would tell them not to use the respirators because it would alarm the other workers,” Markowitz said. One Polish-bom worker said respirators were used inconsistently in buildings around ground zero. “Some people wear it, some people not, nobody checking,” said the worker, a certified asbestos handler who asked to remain anonymous for fear of angering potential employers. “You should be wearing it in every room. Nobody tells us how much asbestos inside.”

Despite such reports, federal and city agencies issued only one citation for improper cleaning. Respirators, and other safety gear and procedures, are required under federal regulations governing work with asbestos-containing material; asbestos abatement can cost three to four times more than a standard cleaning job. The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which is charged with ensuring worker safety, selected 34 buildings around the trade center site in January for random inspection after receiving complaints about dangerous work conditions. The first inspections did not occur until up to 10 weeks after many day laborers stopped working _ and as late as last month about a half-dozen buildings had yet to be inspected. OSHA gave employers advance notice of the inspections, which officials said is standard practice. No asbestos violations were found. Linder city regulations. New York’s Department of Environmental Protection is required to ensure that asbestos workers, their clothing and equipment are decontaminated so asbestos fibers do not escape from work sites. Union officials repeatedly told the department that non-union laborers weren’t using proper gear or procedures, said Sal Speziale, president of Laborers Local 78, which represents 3,200 hazardous-materials workers. Speziale claims that inspectors did little to crack down on violations. “It seemed like they didn’t do nothing to rectify the situation,” he said. Thirty-seven asbestos projects were registered with the department in lower Manhattan after Sept. 11, and it received more than 170 asbestos-related complaints. Charles Sturcken, the department’s chief of staff, said inspectors found only one violation _ a failure to properly register a project that was otherwise safely carried out. “If there’s a complaint about asbestos, we’ll look into it,” Sturcken said. “If we don’t catch them, we don’t catch them. That’s unfortunate.”

Between Jan. 14 and Feb. 25, the Queens College medical team examined 410 immigrant workers from Ecuador, Colombia, Peru and the Dominican Republic. Its findings are expected in June.

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