NYC-WTC_000199812

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

2.0 STUDY DESIGN AND SAMPLING STRATEGY

The buildings were selected to provide one example of a residential building that had apparently incuned a low exposure to the dust, and one example of a residential building that had obviously incurred a high exposure to the dust. The selection was based on the proximity of the building to Ground Zero, the degree to which the building was shielded from Ground Zero by other buildings, and the external integrity of the building.

2.1 The Low Exposure Building

The low exposure 7-story building had been fully renovated and modernized into spacious luxury apartments, with one apartment per floor. It is located on Warren Street, four blocks north of Ground Zero; numerous low-rise and high-rise buildings are found between this location and Ground Zero. The building showed no signs of external damage. All of the windows are intact, most of which are on the north side facing away from Ground Zero. The Sth Floor penthouse apartment comprises three levels ~ the top one being a loft with an exit onto the rooftop. The building superintendent reported that a layer of dust had coated the stairwells and staircase several days before the sampling, but that these areas had already been cleaned. No other part of the building had been cleaned. The apartments on the 2nd and 5th Floors were selected for the study. The building superintendent reported that these apartments were normally cleaned regularly. It was concluded that the visible dust (Figure 2) on table tops near the window and on the inside window sills likely originated from the dust cloud generated by the destruction of the World Trade Center buildings.

2.2 The High Exposure Building

As shown in Figure 1, the high exposure 30-story apartment building is situated on South End Avenue, close to and southwest of Ground Zeroz>AWHMlo^s«^#ev^ thc«ppa’iicveljSr had be«5a brQken, but the building showed no other signs of external damage. This building was selected for study because it appeared to be the nearest one to Ground Zero that had electrical power available for operation of air sampling pumps. Apartment lOD on the

3

CITY_21MC100_006730091

NYC-WTC_000199821