Statement of  Marjorie J. Clarke, Ph.D.

mclarke@hunter.cuny.edu

resume.htm

 

EPA Ombudsman's second hearing

on Air Quality issues surrounding the World Trade Center collapses and fires

March 11, 2002

 

My name is Marjorie J. Clarke, Ph.D. I'm a Scientist-in-Residence at Lehman College, and an adjunct professor at Lehman and Hunter College, City University of New York.  I was the Department of Sanitation's specialist on emissions from incinerators in the 1980s, the author of a book and numerous publications on the subject of minimizing emissions, and I served on a National Academy of Sciences committee on Health Effects of Waste Incineration, co-authoring the NRC publication by that name.  I also served on the New Jersey Standard-Setting Task Force on Mercury emissions from incinerators in the early 1990s.  My graduate degrees are in geology, environmental sciences, and energy technology.  More details about my credentials can be gleaned from the above website.

 

I am glad that the Council environment, health and downtown committees are having this hearing on the health impacts on lower Manhattan due to the World Trade Center collapses and fires. .  I hope that, once you have fully investigated the statements and actions by EPA and other governmental agencies at all levels, investigated the precedents set by earlier EPA actions that have applied to similar situations elsewhere but not in lower Manhattan, that you will work hard to recommend legislation and other improvements in procedures, codes, standards, communications, and research, and to seek to have implemented the many good recommendations that were made at this and prior hearings and subsequent testimony.  It's vital to understand that not only are there immediate problems to remediate (clean-up, treatment of illness), but there are many more problems to solve so that the next time there is an environmental disaster of any kind, procedures are in place for every aspect of the myriad of issues that result.  We are simply not prepared.  It's clear that the agencies have not learned anything; in fact, they still say that everything they did was correct, even as the data continue to trickle out to the contrary. As important as remediating current problems and preventing new ones, I hope you will publicize everything that you find so that the public understands, and is therefore more likely to support all recommendations.

 

There are several issues of importance to and lessons to be learned by New York State in the way the environmental agencies have handled air quality issues in lower Manhattan since Sept. 11.  I describe the problems below, and list some recommended solutions.

 

Lack of Coordination

I concur with the Ground Zero Task Force, that there still needs to be a Cleanup Oversight Agency -- I'd go further and say that there needed/needs to be one agency responsible for monitoring health and providing health assistance, and another for environmental sampling, analysis and public dissemination of the results.  There was a long delay before all the environmental and health agencies even began to talk with one another about sampling of air quality and accumulated dust.  I heard from a high level policy official at City DEP that it took 2 weeks for discussions to start between the head of NYCDEP (Miele) and the local USEPA office. When did DEC begin to coordinate with these other agencies?  Why did it take five months for the USGS data about the caustic nature of the particulate matter to become public?  This could have explained the nosebleeds and some of the coughing. 

 

The fires burned and smoldered for at least 100 days; a decision was made on some level not to attempt to suffocate them (i.e., blocking off all the sources of air from above and below). 

Because the decision was made not to contain the site, every time we have a heavy wind, the dust that is still all over lower Manhattan is kicked up and spread around more.  The City's meager attempts to wet down the streets certainly resulted in some of the asbestos/fiberglass/toxic and carcinogenic dust to be washed out via the storm sewers into the harbor, where significant levels of contaminants have been measured in the sediments (doing unknown damage to ecosystems there).  But much of the dust has remained in place, just to become airborne again once the water evaporates.  The City should have been applying a "wet-vac" technology to collect the dust so that it could be brought to a hazardous waste disposal site.  It's not too late to start.

 

When the City made its decisions to evacuate and return residents and businesses to lower Manhattan, would the decision have been different if these data were public?  Is it possible that the City made a decision NOT BASED ON SCIENCE?  There seemed to be a rush to reopen the stock exchange at all costs, rather than explore ways to move it uptown.  Can we learn specific lessons from each breakdown in communications and preparedness and devise specific procedures for all to follow in the future?  Or are we destined to repeat history?

 

Unprecedented air pollution source (type and size)

The WTC collapses and fires actually constituted a brand new, combination type of air pollution source, with aspects of a (1) crematorium (most of the bodies will never be found because they were cremated, and their ashes scattered all over downtown and surrounding areas intermingled with the asbestos, fiberglass and concrete dusts), (2) a solid waste incinerator of unprecedented proportion (described below), (3) asbestos factory (but on a scale thousands of times the size and intensity of what would be found even in a badly operated factory) and (4) volcano (the initial cloud was similar to nuee ardente - hot gas and dust cloud - in some respects, depositing ash in a large area).

 

Since this is a new type of air pollution source, no emissions standards exist and therefore, none of the existing standards for other sources directly applied. Many of us remember the bitter battles between Brooklyn residents and the City over the Brooklyn Navy Yard plant.  The emissions from this plant would have been controlled well over 90% for most pollutants, and yet we had the equivalent of many badly designed downtown which burned totally uncontrolled.  New York State wrote a law banning the construction of the Brooklyn Navy Yard incinerator due to public pressure.  Backyard burn barrels have also been banned due to the uncontrolled dioxin emissions.  Yet the extent of environmental contamination by the Navy Yard incinerator would have paled in comparison to what people have been living with for months.  The emissions from the World Trade Center fires were equivalent to a large number of badly designed, totally uncontrolled incinerators operating with stacks at ground level.  The emissions were orders of magnitude more than any incinerator.  No attempt had been made to put out the fires (i.e. by cutting off the sources of oxygen from above and the tunnels below.)  Many months have passed, and no attempts were made to contain the emissions from the site either before the fires went out. No procedures have been established to require or do this should any similar situation arise in the future. I had recommended in November at the City Council hearing that a temporary structure (dome) over the site be erected, with installation of incinerator emissions controls to clean the air inside the dome so that the workers could do their work in safer conditions and the cleanup around the downtown be finished, once and for all.  Now every time there is a wind, the debris is picked up and dispersed, recontaminating those areas that have been cleaned.

 

Synergistic effects

There has been a toxic and carcinogenic "soup" of air pollutants in the downtown air, constantly being generated by fires, and worse, smoldering embers that incompletely combust thousands of tons of toxic precursors present in the form of fine particles and gases -- the perfect recipe formation of dioxins, furans, and similar products of incomplete combustion. 

 

It's hard to imagine a more perfect machine for generating toxic and carcinogenic air pollution in a form that is most easily inhaled to the deepest part of the lung..  First, there were thousands of tons of asbestos, fiberglass, silica, and very alkaline concrete which was pulverized into various size fractions, but much of which was extremely fine in size (less than 0.25 micron diameter).  Then there was a tremendous source of heavy metals, PCBs, and acids just from the building's contents (latex paints typically contain mercury - think of the number of gallons that had been applied to the walls).  Lead came from volatilization of lead from car batteries, leaded glass in computer screens, lead solder, and lead pigments among other sources.  Mercury would have come from batteries, fluorescent lighting, paints, thermostats and thermometers, mercury light switches, and other sources (see attachment 1 for a list).  The same is true of cadmium, chromium, arsenic, and other heavy metals.  Most of this was initially pulverized; much of that was then in a form easy to volatilize given a high enough temperature, and then easily able to condense onto fine particulate right there at the smoldering ruins, and subsequently carried from the site and deposited or inhaled.

 

In addition there were combustible products and packaging all over the buildings -- everything from products and packaging made of paper, cardboard, wood and plastic, including furniture, floor coverings, textile partitions just to name a very few.  Fire is easier to start when the combustible matter is a very fine size because the temperature and oxygen can get to all surfaces quickly (try to start a log burning vs. small scraps of paper).  The source of heat in the WTC came not only from burning of the jet fuel, but also from the cars underground, as well as from the combustible materials in the building (paper and plastic are highly combustible).

 

The paper and plastics are not only important because they fed the fires, which volatilized metals and other toxic gases, but also because under conditions of a few hundred degrees to 1800 degrees Fahrenheit, dioxins, furans, and similar compounds form, de novo, when paper and plastic smolder where insufficient oxygen and temperature is present to burn them thoroughly.  I understand that the temperature of the pile had been within the temperature range for generating but not destroying dioxins for much of the time since 9/1l, so the emissions from these fires could easily have been similar to a number of uncontrolled incinerators operating at ground level for that length of time.

 

In the 1970s, before it was known that municipal solid waste incinerators needed to be designed and operated very carefully to combust the waste thoroughly, some incinerators created tens of thousands of nanograms/cubic meter of dioxin emissions. The stack size of one of these incinerators was a tiny fraction of the equivalent stack size of the World Trade Center air pollution source. In the pile, there was certainly little oxygen, there was a great deal of dioxin precursors (paper and plastics), and the temperatures were perfect for incomplete combustion, so the smoldering would have permitted the generation of an enormous quantity of toxic and carcinogenic organics.

 

Dioxin is a family of 210 discrete man-made chemicals that are some of the most carcinogenic and toxic chemicals known.  Dioxin is the contaminant of Agent Orange that was responsible for birth defects across Vietnam after that war ended.  Dioxin adheres very tightly to particulate matter in incinerators, and is stored in fatty tissues in human beings for long periods of time.  Dioxins are created in large quantities in poorly designed, uncontrolled incinerators, when products such as paper, cardboard, wood are incompletely burned with such substances as PVC plastic, benzene, and other chlorinated ring structures.  The Trade Center was full of fuel for such incomplete combustion.  The optimal temperatures for formation of dioxin are roughly between 400 to 1800 degrees Fahrenheit.  European dioxin emission standards from an incinerator with a small stack (as compared with the area of Ground Zero) are 0.1 nanograms (billionths of a gram) Toxic Equivalents per cubic meter of emission.  

 

Potential for Serious Long-Term Health Effects

It is important to understand that once toxic and carcinogenic substances are in a gaseous state in an incinerator (which would roughly correlate with the pile here), they would naturally condense onto the surfaces of any fine particulate nearby as they moved out of the hot zone (towards ambient air temperatures).  We now know that much of the concrete, asbestos and fiberglass of the trade center structure and much of its contents were pulverized into very fine particulate.  The finer the particulate matter, the greater the surface area per unit volume.  Therefore, it is likely that much of the particulate matter has heavy metals, dioxins and other chlorinated organic compounds, and other pollutants adsorbed onto the surfaces. The finer sizes of particulate matter, laden with toxic and carcinogenic substances, can evade the body's coughing mechanism - the cilia - all the way down to the alveoli (air sacs) where they can reside for the long-term. The longer the fires burned, the greater was the source of volatilized metals, organics, and acids.  Research has shown that diesel emissions, asbestos, cigarette smoke, and even air pollution can cause lung cancer.  Is it such a stretch to think that this combination of asbestos, fiberglass, dioxins, and heavy metals will do the same?

 

Inadequate Air Quality Standards

Most air quality standards were created in the 1970s to protect the public health from air pollution.  But the science of air pollution has been evolving slowly since then, and we do not know all there is to know about the health consequences of air pollution. 

 

There are a few types of air quality standards --

1.     ambient air quality - mostly irritants (SO2, NOx, CO, O3, particulates) from cars,

2.     occupational exposures (a wide range of pollutants, 8-hour/day exposure), and

3.     emissions from point and non-point sources (as measured in the stack or tailpipe).

4.     There are just a few standards for hazardous air pollutants, which cause health effects with far lower doses (ppm, ppb) than the criteria air pollutants for which there are ambient air quality standards.  Most toxic and carcinogenic air pollutants are not regulated under "NESHAPS", and there has been decades of delays in standard-writing for other pollutants.  This needs to be rectified soon, before we face something like this again.

 

The shortcoming of ALL these types of standards is that they were calculated by considering the effect on human health and the environment (i.e., the health of ecosystems) of only one pollutant at a time.  If the air contains two, or five, or five hundred discrete organics, heavy metals, acids, each of which has its own toxic and carcinogenic properties, but every pollutant is below the individual standard levels, then the government points to that and says that the air is safe.  But is it?  The government hasn't written standards for combinations of pollutants, so it considers the air to be safe if all standards, as currently written, are met. 

 

It's common sense that elevated levels of five pollutants is worse than one.  It's also common sense that when there are widespread complaints of symptoms ranging from headaches and coughing to new onset asthma in marathon runners, and when everyone who entered into areas a half mile away and more from Ground Zero could smell the pollution, the air has not been "safe" for everyone.  The additive effects of multiple pollutants need to be considered in assessing evacuation zones, public and health measures.  Furthermore, two or more pollutants can interact with one another and produce impacts that are significantly more than the additive effects.  Research has shown that inhalation of both asbestos and cigarette smoke produces several times the effect of either one alone.  When 1 + 1 + 1 does not equal three, but equals 30, this is called synergy.  The Mt. Sinai Environmental Sciences Laboratory, which pioneered research into the health effects of asbestos, has found that those exposed to asbestos and who smoke, have not twice but 80 to 90 times the probability of suffering from asbestos-related diseases such as lung cancer, mesothelioma and asbestosis. 

 

Despite the fact that the air was still so full of contaminants that everyone could smell "it" many blocks from Ground Zero until the end of November, all three environmental agencies stated that nothing was wrong with the air at the City Club's forum on October 26.  Their basis has been that each individual pollutant is below action or standard levels "most" of the time.  But it is clear that a large number of pollutants are significantly elevated above background levels.  I received an email from Dr. David Cleverly, dioxin expert at USEPA, that dioxin had been 50 times normal background levels, but not as high as actionable levels most of the time. Since there were many toxic, carcinogenic and irritating pollutants, and this is not the only scenario where tall buildings could collapse and burn (consider earthquakes, further terror attacks), standards need to be rewritten to assess the impacts of synergy - to protect the public health.

 

But EPA's website says that "most of the air samples taken in areas surrounding the work zone and analyzed for dioxin have been below EPA's screening level, which is set to protect against significantly increased risks of cancer and other adverse health effects. The screening level is based on an assumption of continuous exposure for a year to an average concentration of 0.16 nanograms per cubic meter (ng/m3)", which is 60% higher than incinerator emission standards at the stack exit in several European countries.  My understanding, from what I have heard, is that the screening level was hastily put together so that EPA could say something (explaining why it is higher than a European STACK LEVEL emission standard).  Twelve days after the attack, ambient concentrations of dioxin were 0.139 ng/m3 at Church and Dey just east of the site, 0.16 and 0.18 ng/m3 at Barclay and W. Broadway just north of the site, and at Broadway and Liberty, levels were at the 0.1ng/m3 level.  No measurements were taken northeast of the site, which would be downwind most often.  The temperatures of the debris have also continued to be sufficient to vaporize many toxic heavy metals, such as lead, cadmium, chromium, arsenic, mercury, to mention just a few of the many that have surely been emitted in large quantities from this uncontrolled incinerator.  I, myself, could smell the metals in the air while I was at the Municipal Building for a meeting in early October.  My colleague, and medical waste incinerator expert who wrote the City’s Medical waste management plan in 1991, Wally Jordan of Waste Tech, remarked that he smelled chlorinated organics when he went to the site around that time.

 

Cate Jenkins, a scientist at USEPA, has written a number of informational memos since 9/11 indicating instances where EPA has ignored its own precedents, and where the NYC DOH has developed standards in conflict with EPA policy, among other important topics.  These can be viewed at http://www.nyenvirolaw.org/#CateJenkins  We have learned, for example, that EPA has cleaned up building interiors and has considered entire towns as superfund sites.  Libby, Montana was contaminated with an asbestos material that is reported to be the same or similar to what lower Manhattan is covered with.  Its governor asked that it become a superfund site, and it was a couple of months ago.

 

What can we learn from this?  Background levels refer to what is loosely considered to be "normal" levels of any given pollutant in the atmosphere.  But what does it mean if dioxin plus hundreds of discrete substances including asbestos and several other toxic and/or carcinogenic organic compounds, heavy metals, silica, acids and other gases and particulate matter are elevated, or even many times background levels, and are borderline actionable?  Doesn't it seem likely that breathing air in which many toxic or carcinogenic pollutants are borderline actionable is worse for public health than breathing air in which only one pollutant is borderline?  Yet standards assume the impact on human health is from only one pollutant.  Is it protective of public health to look at each pollutant one at a time, ignoring the additive effects of inhaling each of several pollutants?  Can we assume that the impacts on human health is only the additive effect of the concentrations of each pollutant, or might there be synergistic interactions between some of these compounds that increase the impacts further?  Since ambient air standards are for individual pollutants, it is imperative that research be done to assess the impacts on public health of combinations of pollutants.  Standards need to be rewritten as well to assess the impacts of synergy.  The environmental agencies at all levels need to become more expert in evaluating the health and environmental effects of various mixtures of pollutants.  Based on this information EPA should rewrite its air quality standards to assess the impacts of various combinations of pollutants so that we will be ready next time to know how to protect the public health.

 

Standards Needed for Different types of exposure

Various governmental agencies have applied occupational safety exposure levels for specific pollutants to those exposed to WTC air.  But there are several distinct groups of those exposed, and each group has had distinctly different exposures:

·       Those working on the pile (Variables: the level of emissions have decreased over time as the fires decreased in extent, degree of protective respirator/masks used, amount of time spent)

·       Those who were caught in the initial horrendous dust cloud, covered in dust, running away, breathing intense quantities of dust deeply into the lungs and ingesting dust particles.

·       Those living in the area (Variables: level of emissions varies depending on specific location, on weather, and length of time since 9/11; degree of protective respirator/masks used)

·       Those who cleaned apartments (level of exposure varying with amount of dust in apartment, method of cleaning, degree of protective respirator/masks used, amount of time spent in cleaning)

·       Those working in the area - 8 hours a day five days a week; (Variables: degree of protective respirator/masks used)

·       Those at risk:  Children, Elderly, Compromised Immune systems, those with pulmonary problems are more likely to suffer more adverse affects than others for all the above categories.

·       Handlers of disposed debris:  shipments to India, S. Korea - no protection for workers offloading (no knowledge of contents).

 

Most of these groups of exposed cannot be compared with occupational exposure.  Studies of occupational exposure assume 5 days a week, 8 hours a day exposure to adults (healthy males?)  What about those who live there, those at risk, those caught in the initial cloud?  This requires considerable investigation, and many new standards need to be created to address these different categories of exposure.

 

Trucks and Barges

Entrainment of pollutant-laden fine dust is also occurring, as we heard, by loading debris into trucks and barges.  There are standards for reducing entrainment of incinerator ash.  These involve spraying water and containment in leak-proof, covered trucks.  Why aren't we enforcing those standards?  Is it because this is not an incinerator?  Shouldn't common sense dictate that the closest standards that exist be the ones to be followed in such a case?  We heard that “guys with guns” enforce covering of trucks – Now.  But I had heard from people who lived in the area, that the military had been enforcing the opposite in the first weeks, when pollutant levels were highest, so that they could check the trucks’ contents.  That the trucks might be covered by leaky tarps now does not negate the exposure to residents and workers of pollutants that were emitted earlier.

 

Government Secretiveness (or worse?)

Air quality data has been selectively shared with the public, leaving the public mistrustful.  Further, the agencies waited far too long to begin adding monitors to the area.  We can only imagine the levels of dioxin, asbestos, heavy metals, acids, other organics, silica, etc. that was in the air while people were running from the area.  We shouldn’t ignore this impact on their health.  On EPA’s website, it initially listed only asbestos in air, asbestos in dust and a gross measure of particulate matter in air.  After several weeks passed, EPA added PCB and lead.  After another few weeks, a few days' individual samples of dioxin were presented.  All told, this is maybe 20 pages of information. But in a televised public forum (City Club forum held October 26 and subsequently televised on CUNY TV), EPA said that all of its data was online.  EPA repeated this at City Council hearings on November 1 and at State Assembly hearings later in November.  Early on, I learned that EPA had 900 pages of data, including a list of heavy metals, dioxins and furans, acid gases, as well as those items listed.  But EPA has demanded that the Manhattan Borough President and City Council must file Freedom of Information requests for it or else come to the repository and look at it.  I asked for an electronic copy.  I was told I was the first one to ask for it, and was told that it would not be possible to email me the data.  How could this be, since the data surely exist on someone's computer?  The Borough President's office never filed the FOI request (since their policy is not to do so).  It is just this kind of secretive behavior that invites journalists or others without scientific training, who do go down to view the full datasets, to quote data selectively.  If the data were freely available in a spreadsheet, then academic, environmental, and community institutions could have already started studies.  Those who want to conduct analyses are still unable to do so.  Considering what is available online, the datasets appear to be thin, with many pollutants missing from the database and with only a few dates sampled for some pollutants.  The first date that dioxin data are available are 12 days after the event.  Most data are not available daily.   EPA's dioxin data were not put up for months.  I recently had a phone call from the Daily News journalist who broke the "toxic air" front page story last fall, and it's clear that he has managed to get much more dioxin data from EPA than they have put on their website.  In fact, there is a long list of probable air pollutants (organics, heavy metals) from this event that have not been listed on any of the government websites. 

 

Where was EPA while thousands of New York City residents were exposed to air pollutants from the WTC collapses?  The EPA website shows only summaries of data, when they could have made data from 9/11 onwards available for lower Manhattan. If more or earlier data is available online, it's not easy for the public to find.  EPA should make its entire air quality archives easily available on its website as well as those from all other sources.

 

Not only was EPA's secretiveness reprehensible this time, but procedures should be put in place NOW to ensure that should anything like this ever happen again, the environmental agencies would immediately be meeting to coordinate comprehensive sampling and analysis, AND prompt disclosure to the public via the internet of ALL data along with all current and applicable standards as well as background levels for each pollutant. 

 

We also need to conduct research to understand toxic and carcinogenic impacts of multiple, unknown pollutants.  One method of doing this is by conducting assays using surrogate organisms, to observe the impacts on their health of different pollutant combinations.  Tetramitus flagellate is one such single-celled organism that has been shown to indicate toxicity of unknown mixtures.  Dr. Robert Jaffe, of the Environmental Toxicology Laboratory, http://www.envirolab.com/  has been pioneering work in this area.  This technology has the potential for and needs to be used as a screening measure to watch for new attacks of unknown substances or mixtures of substances so that we can react in time to protect public health.

 

Building codes and operations

Very little has been spoken about building codes, and how the composition, structure, and operation of buildings contributed to the death toll, and how revision of these regulations is needed to prevent future deaths.  When I worked on the 83rd floor of WTC 1 for a couple of years around 1980, we didn't have fire drills very often (I can only remember one, maybe two).  When we did have drills, we were told to walk down the stairs to the 78th floor at which point we were told to stay put.  That was the total extent of the fire drill.  Is that protective of public health?  The truth is, the WTC buildings were so tall that they were not readily evacuable.  The stairways were not designed to evacuate everyone in a reasonable amount of time.  To complicate this further, the Port Authority made announcements to go back to their offices.  They did not immediately send announcements to everyone in both buildings to evacuate to the ground floor and leave.  Some people who had gone to the first floor returned to their offices and lost their lives.  A last point:  Firefighters were coming up the same stairwells that the thousands of office workers were using to evacuate.  This effectively halved the capacity of the stairwells for evacuation purposes.  How many people might have gotten out if they didn't have to wait to enter a stairwell that was reduced to half its original capacity (remembering that some of the stairwells became impassable due to the fires themselves)?  How many other tall buildings in NYC have insufficient number of narrow stairwells?  How many are not totally evacuated during fire drills?  What about those in wheelchairs on high floors?  All these questions point to the need to limit the number of floors of new buildings to a size that can easily and routinely be evacuated quickly, assuming that firefighters will need space in the stairwells. 

 

Insofar as construction of future buildings is concerned, attention must be paid to the safety factor chosen for retarding the effect of fire on the building's structural members.  The WTC was designed to withstand the impact of a 707 aircraft.  But why wasn't it also assumed that the 707 would be carrying thousands of gallons of jet fuel, and that this jet fuel would cause a fire of sufficient temperature and duration to melt the steel members?  This is not a difficult mental exercise, and structural engineers figured this out within a day or so of having watched the floors compact.  There is no room for error.  If just one floor gives way, because the steel has partially melted, the weight of floors above comes crashing down, and the entire building will collapse, immediately, as we saw.  Note that WTC building #7 was not even hit by an aircraft, but it also collapsed due to the duration of fire.  The structural engineers interviewed said that it would have been possible to put a thicker layer of protective coating on the structural members of the WTC, but it would have cost a little more.  How many people would have been saved if the buildings held together for another half hour?  We should learn from this disaster.  Building codes should be revisited to address all these issues and correct all deficiencies. 

 

Are we ostriches or will we face the future?

I'll close by drawing an analogy with the way the environmental agencies are dealing with the public health hazard downtown.  In south Florida, where I grew up, in the 1940s, as tourism was quickly growing, the government kept information about hurricanes secret for fear that too much information would hurt business, particularly the tourist trade.  Predictably, south Florida got walloped a couple of times, and then the government, wisely, decided to make an about-face and become the world's experts on hurricane tracking, prediction, alerts, mitigation and standards for evacuation of the population to protect the public health.  They established a world-class center in Coral Gables to serve as the source of information and research.  Later, by the time I was six, I was tracking every hurricane's progress on a chart I got for free at the 7-11 store by listening to the radio for coordinates.

 

We have exactly the same situation here.  There is a lot we don't know.  The government wants to protect business and the tourist trade.  The government has kept a great deal of information off limits to anyone for the first several weeks, and lately it has made it difficult to obtain in any usable form.  Even worse than this is that we don't know the long-lasting impacts of the initial huge, dense cloud of finely pulverized asbestos and silica-laden dust on those running and inhaling deeply in its midst.  We don't know the additive and synergistic effects of combinations of many toxic and carcinogenic pollutants that continue to be emitted from the fires or entrained from the dust as it blows off the rooftops and ledges.  Will this exposure to air pollution compromise immune systems, making people more vulnerable to future illnesses or terrorist attacks?  On what basis did the government choose a perimeter for evacuation?  On what basis did they rush to reopen the area?  Have we learned anything from this experience?  Now is a time for the environmental agencies to pull their heads from the sand, make an about-face, coordinate and release all data and interpretive guidelines on the Web.  We need to err on the side of caution rather than seeking to go "back to normal" at the cost of the public health.

 

The federal government should assist the City by committing its funds and encouraging the Governor to seek additional federal 9/11 grants on an accelerated basis to conduct ongoing, comprehensive surveillance of symptoms in affected populations, buy room filters for residents, pay for proper indoor and building cleanup, research the acute and long-term impacts on health of highly concentrated combinations of pollutants acting for a short time, as well as elevated levels of combinations acting for longer periods of time. 

 

The federal government should write new standards to reflect short-term exposure to high concentrations, as in the initial cloud, as well as synergistic effects of many toxic, carcinogenic pollutants.

 

We also need to have contingency planning for different types of environmental disasters as this new war against terrorism progresses.  We need to actively examine worst case scenarios and plan for them.  We need to understand how far to evacuate and for how long.  This is the only way to regain public trust. Recalling the hurricane example, and realizing that we may not be finished with terrorism, becoming the world's experts in environmental health disasters and being truly open with the public is the best course of action in the long term.

 

 

 

 

Recommendations:

 

1.     to investigate, quantify, substantiate, and publicize any lies, misstatements, unpreparedness, lack of coordination, ineptitude, lack of attention to redirecting staff, or worse that did occur in the days and months since the World Trade Center attack on 9/11/2001.  The Council should investigate all apparent or actual conflicts of interest that might have motivated agency and elected officials to make statements or make decisions.

 

2.     To investigate and come to conclusions on

(a)   the Bases for EPA's, DEP, DOH and other elected and appointed officials' statements as to the safety of the downtown area for reoccupancy, (i.e., what did they know, when did they know it, who did they ask, what agencies did they coordinate with, and on what topics -- example:  when did EPA and DEP first learn about the caustic nature of the dusts from USGS)?

(b)  the instructions and protective equipment tenants and landlords were given for cleaning indoors, by which agencies, and the agency procedures on which this was based,

(c)   the lack of attention or decisions regarding to indoor air quality and recommended cleanup measures, made by EPA and the agencies for months after the attacks despite precedents of EPA having made other, more health-protective decisions in other similar instances (e.g. Libby, Montana's superfund site).  Knowing this information should help in designing

(1)    improved procedures for intra- and inter-agency communications in the event of environmental disasters,

(2)    criteria for evaluating whether an incident, be it a natural or man-made disaster is an Environmental disaster, and procedures for their use,

(3)    procedures for immediate, multi-pronged, and continual communications of all information with the affected public

(4)    the standards that should be used to protect public health.  Per Cate Jenkins memo, the NYC DOH chose a standard many orders of magnitude less protective than the one in one million standard that EPA typically chooses.

 

3.     To issue recommendations on EPA emergency actions in the case of suspected environmental accidents, disasters, releases.  Which federal agency takes the lead in protecting public health in such a circumstance?  How do they coordinate, on what topics, and in what time frame?  How fast should they communicate and coordinate with the state and local agencies?  How is the responsibility and work to be divided? 

 

4.     To issue, publicize and widely disseminate a report combining measures and procedures used to measure all specific pollutants from ALL air quality and dust measurements that have been taken by EPA, other agencies, and private companies since 9/11.  It would be helpful if this, and other reports you issue, were available for download, and that data be available in database or excel format that can be used in research (PDF format cannot).

 

5.     To characterize and quantify the extent to which the public's health has been adversely affected (those working on the pile, those living/working in the area, children, elderly, immune-depressed, short- and long-term) by the air pollution from the WTC attacks, or at least make detailed recommendations of who should research this. 

 

6.     To seek to make the overall results of extensive medical tests (baseline and continuing) being done on the entire group NYC fire-fighters to become public.

 

7.     To make determine and make recommendations on how much money is necessary to examine and conduct long-term follow-up on all those exposed to air pollution and dusts from the 9/11 attacks, and from where the source of funding might come, and seek increased federal funding to cover these costs.

 

8.     To recommend that the National Academy of Sciences conduct a risk assessment of the public health impacts due to the air pollution caused by the 9/11 attacks.

 

9.     To ensure that guidance is disseminated to all physicians and hospitals in the area to look for and properly treat those exposed to WTC air.  According to Mt Sinai 2/4/02 memo to help physicians determine whether pulmonary symptoms are related to WTC, some symptoms from exposure can begin as late as 3 weeks after exposure or cessation of exposure.   If physicians had to be given guidance on these issues, many of those exposed are likely not to realize their symptoms are WTC-related.  Why didn't the City, State or Federal government issue this memo in September?  Efforts are not being made to locate all those who were exposed and to characterize their exposures and register their symptoms over time.

 

10.  To recommend and publicize specific measures that need to be taken immediately to clean up the downtown area of dangerous dusts and to prevent the continuous reentrainment and spread of these dusts from the ground zero area into surrounding areas.

 

11.  To investigate existing EPA, DEP, DOH standards and procedures to see whether standards required to prevent, control, or remediate environmental contamination in environmental disasters, accidents, or releases were not used to prevent, control or remediate pollution in this case (and why).  Example:  to prevent the spread of incinerator ash when it is transported from its source to a landfill, federal regulations requires that the generating (and intermediate handling) facility be enclosed and operated with negative air pressure, that the ash is totally wetted, that trucks transporting ash be entirely containerized and sealed to prevent entrainment or leaking onto the ground, and that receiving facilities operate under similar constraints.  Despite the fact that the debris from the WTC has the consistency and many properties of incinerator ash, leaky, imperfectly covered trucks are continuously scattering the debris between Ground Zero and the barge at Pier 25.  Why aren't existing protective procedures being used?  Steps need to be taken (i.e., legislation) to ensure that in all future environmental disasters, the entire array of existing procedures be canvassed and that the most protective procedures appropriate to the situation be utilized.

 

12.  To develop and recommend what measurements need to be taken in the event of an environmental release, accident or disaster, and how the measuring stations should be deployed and operated.  It is unconscionable that data taken early on is still dribbling out from the federal government -- e.g., Two samples that were taken inside a high-rise apartment and in a gymnasium across from the wreckage of the World Trade Center had a pH of 11.8 to 12.1 -  equivalent to what would be found in liquid drain cleaner. It is clear that stations were not deployed in concentric rings around ground zero were not done, and few of the measuring stations were in the predominant downwind areas.  It is clear that many measurements were "grab" samples, only for five or six minutes.  Since the wind direction and speed varies, it is necessary to have continuous, long-term samples looking both for long-term averages and for short-term spikes.

 

13.  To recommend measures that need to be taken immediately to remediate the public health impacts resulting from inhalation and ingestion of polluted air.  First we need to identify Everyone who was in the area at the time of the attacks, including the pile and enforcement workers, those who have lived or worked in the area, those who have been hired to clean up apartments and businesses.  Then we need to get medical histories to construct a baseline (a Registry).  The exposure should be quantified, first by location during each day of the pollution period, and then by the type of activities performed -- those breathing heavily due to working on the pile, running for one's life, etc. involves an increased exposure due to more forceful inhalation (more air and particles brought deeper into the lungs, allowing the possibility for more to be retained long-term in the lung.  This study and ongoing medical examinations and treatments, for all diseases that should arise, should be performed, at federal expense, for a period of 20 or 30 years.

 

14.  To investigate the procedures underway at Fresh Kills landfill -- are they protective of workers, what is the airborne dispersion of dangerous materials.  Videos on C-SPAN3 online show that not only were many workers not wearing protective respirators on the pile, but they are not at Fresh Kills, with operations proceeding out in the open air.  Procedures at the barge should also be investigated; are workers wearing protective gear?  Are materials being well-contained?

 

15.  To investigate the disposal and marketing of WTC debris and recyclable steel -- has testing been done to quantify whether this is a hazardous waste, and should be transported and handled under those rules?  If it is hazardous waste, is the facility that has been selected for the debris, consistent with federal or state rules?  To the extent that scrap steel or other materials are exported to other countries (e.g. steel that has already gone to India and S. Korea), has EPA or any other federal or other agency advised those on the receiving end about the composition of the materials, or protective handling procedures?  This isn't the first time a company or municipality in the US has exported toxic waste to another country without proper advice or precautions, and it won't be the last.  There should be a law.

 

16.  To encourage research into and adoption of more protective building codes  (less toxic materials, evacuable buildings, better fire drill and practice evacuations, better, more well-thought out announcement systems during emergencies.  It is arguable that many people died in stairwells too small to evacuate everyone, especially since their capacity was reduced by half due to firefighters climbing them at the same time.  It is arguable that some died when they heard Port Authority announcements to go back to their offices.  Could the buildings be built with fewer toxics? 

 

17.  If the US Attorney General's statements can be taken at face value, we can expect worse terrorist attacks in the future.  It is not unlikely that any future attacks will involve some degree of environmental contamination.  Many scenarios for future attacks would involve some of the same issues as are being dealt with here (indoor contamination, removal, not just wetting of outdoor contamination).  In addition to terrorist attacks, environmental disasters can and have occurred in other ways:  industrial accidents, natural disasters (e.g., major earthquakes in urban areas, tornadoes, fires, hurricanes).  Utilizing my knowledge of geology, it is a 100% certainty that major west coast cities will suffer even greater destruction (collapses, fires) than they have already due to larger earthquakes in the future.  We just can't reliably predict when.  Therefore, many of these recommendations will be useful in protecting public health after future disasters.

 

18.  There are no uniform, justifiable procedures for determining the evacuation of nearby populations after an environmental disaster, therefore, we are woefully unprepared for any environmental disasters in the future.  This time, the "frozen zone" was not based on specific scientific principles, and neither was the timing of allowing people to return.  We should learn from the experience with establishing hurricane evacuation routes, and the procedures taken to order evacuations for approaching hurricanes.  As important, it is necessary to develop justifiable procedures for repopulation after an environmental disaster (i.e., the testing that needs to be done, the verification that safe conditions exist).

 

19.  For these reasons, and similar to the decision to establish a National Hurricane Research Center in Coral Gables (when it was realized that we didn't know how to track, predict, evacuate or minimize impacts of hurricanes), we need to establish a permanent Environmental Disaster Research center dedicated to conducting all the research that was needed prior to now to determine and address the synergistic and other impacts on human health of various types of environmental disasters.  Examples of research would include investigating the impacts of combinations of pollutants that we have observed in this case.  Other areas for research, development, and demonstration would be the measurement technologies for screening for unknown combinations of pollutants, as Dr. Robert Jaffe has developed. This research should then be used to develop new air quality standards to address impacts from combinations of pollutants.  Results of the research conducted at this facility would be invaluable to the Congress and those writing air quality, emissions, occupational safety, and NESHAP standards at EPA.

 


Attachment 1

 

 

 

 

   Mercury in Discarded Consumer Products in

the New Jersey MSW Stream[1]

 

Product                                                                   Tons                                               Percent

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Consumer Batteries (subtotal)                                14.25                                              83.6

            Alkaline                                                      8.23                                               48.3

            Mercury Oxide                                           5.86                                               34.4

            Others                                                           .16                                                            .9

 

Electric Lighting (subtotal)                                     1.08                                                         6.3

            Fluorescent Lamps                                     1.05                                                         6.1

            High Intensity Lamps                                    .03                                                            .2

 

Paint Residues                                                          .37                                                          2.2

Fever Thermometers                                                .59                                                          3.5

Thermostats                                                              .35                                                          2.0

Pigment                                                                     .23                                                          1.4

Dental Uses                                                              .13                                                          0.7

Special Paper Coating                                              .02                                                          0.1

Mercury Light Switches                                           .04                                                          0.3

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TOTAL                                                                      17.05                                                   100.0

 

 

Note:  Recognize that this is the discarded waste stream.  A building could easily have more or less of each of these (consider that paint could exist in large quantity on the walls, where in a waste stream there would be only the nearly empty can)
Attachment 2

 

http://www.corpwatch.org/issues/PID.jsp?articleid=1608

 

Trading in Disaster

 

World Trade Center Scrap Lands in India

 

By Nityanand Jayaraman and Kenny Bruno

Special to CorpWatch

February 6, 2002

 

RELATED CHART

Indian Citizens Group Protests WTC Scrap

 

Potential Contaminants in World Trade Center Debris

 

CHENNAI and NEW YORK -- It might seem like a tangent to the tragedy of the Sept 11th attacks: the fate of the thousands of tons of steel that formed the twin towers. As with so many other unwanted materials from the US, more than 30,000 tons of steel scrap -- possibly contaminated with asbestos, PCBs, cadmium, mercury and dioxins -- has been exported to India and other parts of Asia. Though the risks from the scrap are probably not on the order of the health threats at Ground Zero, the U.S. nevertheless has the obligation to ensure that toxic contamination from the World Trade Center is not exported to other nations.

 

Mysterious Shipments

 

At least one shipload, onboard a vessel named Brozna, landed in the South Indian port city of Chennai in early January. The scrap was unloaded, as any routine consignment would be, by port workers with absolutely no protection. Two other ships, Shen Quan Hai and Pindos, also reported to be carrying World Trade Center scrap berthed and offloaded their cargo in Chennai. But preliminary investigations failed to reveal documentation linking the cargo to the Trade Center. Reports are vague about another shipment making its way into Northern India through the Western port city of Kandla.

 

Similar shipments have reportedly reached China, where Baosteel Group purchased 50,000 tons of the potentially toxic scrap. Malaysia and South Korea are also reported to have received shipments. Eventually, most of the 1.5 millions tons of scrap from the cleanup may end up dirtying Asian ports

and threatening Asian workers.

 

Few details are known about who purchased the scrap, but an unidentified Indian trader reportedly bought an undisclosed amount of the World Trade Center debris, and the 33,000 ton shipment onboard the Brozna was collected by Chennai-based Sabari Exim Pvt. Ltd. and removed to the company's

facilities outside the city.

 

Nor are the names of US-based traders who may have exported the shipments to India known. However, two New Jersey companies were among the bidders that won the contract for removing more than 60,000 tons of Trade Center scrap. New Jersey-based Metal Management Northeast, bought 40, 000 tons and Hugo Neu Schnitzer, based outside Jersey City, bought 25,000 tons. Schnitzer was reportedly eyeing the Southeast Asian markets, possibly Malaysia, where prices are higher.

 

Public Health Concerns From Tribeca to Chennai

 

In this case, it is hard to accuse the US of double standards because US safety regulations were trampled in the chaos over Ground Zero. In lower Manhattan, thousands of rescue workers and residents have been exposed daily to unknown but significant dangers from air contamination. Hundreds of New York firefighters are filing to go on permanent disability, while serious respiratory infections and other chronic health problems afflict area residents, especially children. A few days after the attacks, even President Bush stood on the rubble without protective gear, joining the rest of a city too shocked and too busy to take proper precautions against the toxic cloud over Manhattan.

 

The steel scrap imported by India and China may not represent the same level of health threat as Ground Zero. But given the amount of material involved, and the short time frame for any decontamination process, it is indeed possible that the steel is contaminated with toxic materials.

 

In the months after the bombing reports surfaced about the presence of toxic contamination at Ground Zero, including poisons such as dioxins, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB), cadmium, mercury, asbestos and lead in the debris. What remains in question is whether toxic chemicals have attached themselves to the steel scrap.

 

There are no safe levels of exposure to cancer-causing substances like asbestos, PCBs and dioxins, and toxic metals like cadmium, mercury and lead. Asbestos, PCBs and dioxins may cause harm even in miniscule doses. Also, like cadmium and mercury, once ingested or inhaled, they resist degradation or excretion and tend to build up to dangerous levels in the body over the long run.

 

Insurance companies like American International Group and Liberty Mutual have refused coverage to the demolition contractors charged with the clean-up. The contractors fear that without insurance they will be driven into bankruptcy by an anticipated flood of lawsuits over asbestos, mercury and other toxins released into the air by the collapse of the twin towers and clean up efforts, according to the New York Times.

 

Not Enough Information

 

Contamination of steel scrap is a common concern in the scrap industry. As far as CorpWatch has been able to determine, US authorities have not studied the levels of contaminants in the Trade Center scrap that was exported. If they have, the information has not reached Indian authorities

or port workers.

 

Trade union groups swiftly moved into action when the exports were reported last month, but were hamstrung by the lack of information. "The Port Authorities tell us that steel scrap is legal. And unless we find evidence of contamination, we can't stop the shipment," said S.R. Kulkarni, secretary of the Mumbai-based All India Port & Dock Workers Union.

 

Nor has the information been forthcoming in the United States. The New York Environmental Law and Justice Project recently filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the USEPA after US public health activists suspected regulatory officials were downplaying the toxic contamination in

and around Ground Zero.

 

However, Chennai-based lawyer T. Mohan says there's enough doubt raised about the safety of the debris to warrant precautionary steps. "There were talks to declare Ground Zero a Superfund site. That's proof enough for us to be concerned that this consignment may be contaminated," he noted.

 

Who's Responsible?

 

Under the Basel Convention on the Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Waste, it falls to the Indian Government to prevent the import of wastes if they are found hazardous. That's because the US refuses to sign the Basel Convention and is therefore not bound by the treaty. This includes an amendment know as the Basel Ban prohibiting developed countries from exporting hazardous material to industrializing nations like India. But Mohan believes that morally, "the burden of proving [the waste] is not hazardous rests with the US exporters and US government."

 

Despite a Indian Supreme Court order prohibiting the imports of hazardous waste into India, US shipments top the list of hazardous waste exports to India. Everything from zinc ash, toxic ships-for-scrap and lead-bearing wastes are routinely sent to unscrupulous importers in India. The Indian regulatory agencies, notably the port and customs authorities and the Indian Ministry of Environment and Forests, have maintained their habitual silence on matters such as this that pertain to human health and environment.

 

"They seem more intent on passing the buck to each other rather than dealing with the problem and hauling in the US Government for negligence," says attorney Mohan.

 

Steel reprocessing is a dirty business, especially when the steel contains plastic, chemical and heavy metal contaminants. In fact, secondary steel almost always contains some toxic materials. Lower wages and laxer environmental regulations in Asian countries mean that Asian traders and reprocessors can offer better prices for the steel scrap than their European or North American counterparts. That is one of the reasons why scrap metal is exported to Asia in the first place.

 

The export of contaminated scrap and hazardous wastes to industrializing countries fits a long-standing pattern of environmental discrimination by the United States. An infamous example is the shipload of toxic incinerator ash from Philadelphia that traveled the oceans for two years before ending up on a beach in Haiti in 1988.

 

In a February 4th letter to the US embassy in New Delhi, three major Indian trade unions, Greenpeace and People's Union for Civil Liberties blasted the US Government for its "continued inaction" in stemming the export of wastes and scrap to industrializing countries. They called it "a consistent pattern in keeping with USA's tacit, if not active, support for toxic trade."

 

"We're totally opposed to the US and other rich countries using India as a dumping ground for all kinds of wastes and rejects. Such dumping of steel scrap is adversely affecting the major steel plants in our country, apart from causing environment and health problems," says P.K. Ganguly, the New Delhi-based Secretary of Centre of Indian Trade Unions.

 

The way out of the current bind over the World Trade Center scrap is simple, say environmentalists. United States authorities should provide evidence that the scrap lying in India is free of poisonous contaminants. If the it is found to be contaminated, then immediate steps should be taken

to return the consignment to the US.

 

If, on the other hand, the shipment is found clean, there may be no immediate threat of exposure to toxic chemicals. Even if the scrap turns out not to be dangerous, the question remains: who profits --and who suffers -- from shipping valuable steel scrap to be recycled half-way across the globe in India before it returns to the US in its new incarnation as soup cans or luxury cars?

 

Nityanand Jayaraman is an independent, investigative reporter based in India.

 

Kenny Bruno coordinates CorpWatch's Corporate-Free UN Campaign.

 

CorpWatch

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[1].       Report of the Task Force on Mercury Emissions Standard Setting; Volume III, Technical and Regulatory Issues, NJ DEPE. Trenton, NJ  January, 1993. Table 2.6