EPA testing and support testimony coordination, Dec 2002

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

pote. _.al lifetime exposures, we're probably going to be very lucky in that these: cay not be exposures of significant health risk."

The -gree of environmental risk caused by the destruction of the towers has been /..le subject of clamorous debate since before the dust even settled.

Many .ascue workers and nearby residents have complained of respiratory prob1-ms and have accused the authorities of withholding information. The feder-ss Environmental Rrotection Agency took the unusual step this year of promising to clean up and test apartments in the entire area south of Ganal Strefc .

The . udy is to be published in the February issue of Environmental Science & Tec...:iology, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Chemical Society, whicc _s a scientific and not an industry-sponsored group. The report is avail.ille on the society's Web site at www.acs.org.

Dr. I.jy, the associate director of the Environmental and Occupational Healc:. Sciences Institute, which is affiliated with Rutgers University, caut* .ed that the study did not determine how much of various particles peop-L = may have inhaled near ground zero.

But ... Lioy said it was a positive sign that the finer particles - those small = than 2.5 millionths of a meter - appeared to have made up less than 1 per,, ent by weight of the million or so tons of dust produced by the disaster. In normal air, he said, fine particles make up 20 percent to 30 perc< - of the total mass of particulates.

But cer Montague, the director of the Environmental Research Foundation, a publ- ■interest group based in New Brunswick, N.J., said that the quantity of f- , particles remained troubling.

"One _ ircent of a million tons is 10,000 tons," he said. "So you've got 10,0 ' tons of fine particles. That's a lot."

Mr. tague also noted that the study reported on the relative cones. ..ration of fine particles in the dust that settled, not the dust in the Smaller particles would be more likely to remain airborne, he said.

Mr. ..setague said the same team of scientists had published an earlier find;..; that there were "significant ambient levels" of compounds similar to poly.-. _orinated biphenyls, or RGB's, in the first day after the attack. RGB'. ..ave been linked to cancer. "Everyone who breathed this stuff should cont: e to have their health checked, because no one really knows what was in is he said.

Dr. Z.. s-y said that larger particles, particularly pulverized concrete and glass, were likely most responsible for the "World Trade Genter cough" that many .-^ople have reported. Smaller particles, he said, were more likely to caus.:. sancer, emphysema and other long-range problems.

The ;impounds analyzed in this study, known as polycyclic aromatic hydrosarbons, are the products of incomplete combustion. They include fluorese and pyrene.

The - ,._ative prevalence of larger particles. Dr. Lioy said, was probably due to t: wide variety of conditions in the various fires. "This was just mass chaos, and the fire was a chaotic fire," he said. "You would not expect anytl. ng consistent in terms of the nature of the burn."

Most f the dust samples were collected within a couple of blocks of the Worlc 'rade Center. Two were collected from atop cars about half a mile east jn Market Street near the East River.

Aero; the East River, in Brooklyn, many people have complained that the 5

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