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

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

6-3. Due to concerns over possible re-contamination of residences cleaned under the Indoor Air Residential Assistance program, EPA should treat buildings as a system and implement a post­ cleaning verification program to ensure that residences cleaned by the program have not been re-contaminated.

6-4. Work with FEMA and OSHA to assess whether the ongoing residential testing and cleaning program should be expanded to address potential contamination in workspaces in Lower Manhattan, or whether other measures need to be taken to ensure that workspaces are not contaminated with WTC dust.”

On March 2, 2004, a little more than six months after the Inspector General’s report, EPA

responded to its critics by setting up a 17-member panel to revisit issues relating to the indoor

cleanup, and committing to retest up to 20 percent of the involved apartments (840 of 4,200) to

ensure that they are safe for habitation. On the above date an article in the New York Times

stated that:

“Responding to criticism from residents and officials of the way the federal Environmental Protection Agency handled the cleanup, a 17- member panel of scientists, environmental experts and a resident - most of them independent from the federal government - was formed to look into an issue that still disturbs many people more than two years after the attack. The panel wants to make sure that the first cleanup was done properly and that apartments have not been recontaminated by polluted air carried through ventilation systems from apartments in the same building that were never cleaned.

“Once the retesting of a representative sample of the apartments is completed over the next few months, the panel will make recommendations that federal environmental officials will consider but do not have to carry out.

“Besides retesting, the panel will evaluate the practice of testing for one element, asbestos, to determine whether other contaminants were present. And the panel will have up to two years to trace the path of the dust cloud created by the collapse of the twin towers through downtown streets.

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