NYC-WTC_000204893

NYC 9/11 Public Portal Document

AIR SAMPLING AT THE WORLD TRADE CENTER SITE BY THE OPERATING ENGINEERS NAHONAL HAZMAT PROGRAM SEPTEMBER 27, 2001 UPDATE Bruce Lippy, CIH, CSP

INTRODUCTION

The Heavy Equipment Operators of the International Union of Operating Engineers (lUOE) continue to play a critical role in the clean-up of the World Trade Center terrorist attack site. The amount of debris on the site has been significantly reduced by the round- the-clock efforts of the Operating Engineers and other dedicated craft workers on site. The amount of dust released on the site has been lessened since last week but the fires continue to release smoke, sometimes more heavily than during the previous week. Operating Engineers have been moving their equipment further onto the large debris pile and, therefore, experiencing longer and more intense exposures to the smoke.

The lUOE National Hazmat Program has had a team of Industrial Hygienists collecting daily air samples of operator exposures since Wednesday, September 19*. The team has collected over 50 samples of potential contaminants, including airborne asbestos, lead, total dust, organic vapors, and acid gases. The lUOE National Hazmat Program’s technical office in Morgantown, West Virginia has been compiling the data every day and then disseminating it over the Internet to the New York City Department of Health, the EPA, and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. The team has also been reviewing the data collected by federal and state organizations.

RESULTS OF THE lUOE SAMPLING

All of the samples were collected inside the open cabs of heavy equipment operated onsite. Most of the results have been acceptably low, generally well below any applicable OSHA standard or National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) recommendation. Several samples for asbestos that were analyzed by transmission electron microscopy, however, were well in excess of the EPA final clearance level for asbestos abatement projects. A bulk sample of settled dust showed 0.6 percent asbestos, which is below the 1.0 percent level that EPA considers asbestos­ containing material.

The highest result for airborne lead was only one-tenth of the level set by OSHA. Most of the readings were below the limit of detection for the method. A bulk sample of the dust showed approximately 120 parts per million (ppm) of lead. As a reference point, the EPA considers 400 ppm to be a level of concern for lead in soils where children play.

All the measurements of total dust were well below the OSHA standard of 15 mg/m\ The highest reading at the World Trade Center was 3.2 mg/m\

The team measured parts per billion concentrations of several organic chemical vapors in the cabs of the equipment, including acetone, hexane, and benzene. Each of the three

CITY_21MC100_006753975

NYC-WTC_000204893