Panel agenda for Air Quality After 9/11 conference, March 2004

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

“Out of a total of 442 air samples EPA has taken at groimd zero and in the immediate area, only 27 had levels of asbestos above the standard EPA uses to determine if children can re-enter a school after asbestos has been removed - a stringent standard based upon assumptions of long­ term exposure. OSHA has analyzed 67 air samples from the same area, and all were below the OSHA workplace standard for asbestos.”

The assurances given in EPA press releases and the absence of more definitive information fi-om

state and city agencies encouraged many residents and workers to return to their homes and jobs

in Lower Manhattan. This cause and effect has led to widespread criticism of all the agencies

involved. “Messages in the Dust,” a report on official responses to 9/11, published by The

National Environmental Health Association in September 2003, includes the following opinion

of Paul Lioy, PH.D., Professor of Environmental and Community Medicine at Rutgers

University:

“Paul Lioy criticizes the agencies for letting people come back to Lower Manhattan prematurely. ‘People came back but they never should have been allowed to be back,’ says Lioy, ‘No one should have been back at work. Children should definitely have not been back in school.’ This was a chaotic time, but there was no basis, he says, for the city and federal government to state that the environment was safe to reinhabit.”

“The International Ban Asbestos Secretariat” published an article, “Asbestos Spectre Haimts

Manhattan” (by Laurie Kazen-Allen), on September 11,2002 which stated:

“The continued denial of asbestos health risks after September 11 by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and New York State and City bodies, including the New York City Health Department was contradicted by doctors, scientists and civil servants whose theories were supported by independently gathered data. Tests carried out in November and December, 2001 of 59 apartments in lower Manhattan, found elevated asbestos levels in 20 per cent of the buildings. Despite the widespread knowledge about the hazards of asbestos and the warranted anxiety over indoor contamination levels, nothing was done for over eight months.”

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