THE EPA AND THE ENVIRONMENTAL CONSEQUENCES OF THE WORLD TRADE CENTER COLLAPSE

In any other scenario, the conduct of the federal Environmental Protection Agency, the New York State Department of Environment Protection and the New York City Department of Health in the days and weeks after 9/11 would have spurred numerous congressional investigations.

Given the unprecedented chaos that reigned for weeks and months in the wake of the attack, very few people outside the local environmental community, some reporters, and residents and employees of downtown Manhattan are aware of exactly what happened.

In August 2003, the EPA’s Office of Inspector General released an exhaustive report that evaluated the EPA’s actions in regards to 9/11 and it’s aftermath. The report found that the EPA “did not have sufficient data’’ to make the “blanket’’ statement on Sept. 18 that the air was “safe.’’

“A definitive answer to whether the air was safe to breathe may not be settled for years to come.’’

The report further found that the White House Council on Environmental Quality “influenced, through the collaboration process, the information that the EPA communicated to the public through it’s early press releases when it convinced the EPA to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones.’’

And there appears to have been even more influence from Washington than we yet know – ABC News has obtained a copy of an Executive Order, dated May 6, 2002, in which President Bush authorizes EPA Administrator Whitman to “classify information as ‘secret’’’ under the provision of Classfied National Security Information.

Below is a summary, compiled from dozens of books, documents, interviews, news stories and transcripts.

The bulk of the information, though, comes from discovery material, independent testing and research compiled by Joel Kupferman’s non-profit New York Environmental Law & Justice Project - which is leading a class action lawsuit against Whitman and the EPA for making materially misleading statements about the air quality in and around Ground Zero after the building collapse.

Everything he has claimed to me so far has been borne out in government documents, test results and public records.

I’m presenting this in a timeline, so that it’s clear exactly who said and did what, and when. Everything below is backed by documents, interviews, and public records.

Sept 11 – By 9:03 a.m., both tower’s had been hit, and both would fall.
Fifteen million square feet of office space was demolished when the twin towers fell. 200,000 tons of steel, 600,000 square feet of window glass, 5,000 tons of asbestos, 12,000 miles of electric cables and 425,000 cubic yards of concrete crashed down into lower Manhattan on Sept. 11, 2001.

The combustion produced a caustic cauldron of highly alkaline concrete dust, glass fibers and cancer-causing asbestos, as well as particles of lead, chlorine, antimony, aluminum, magnesium, iron, zinc and calcium. 24,000 gallons of jet fuel and burning plastics released carcinogens including dioxins, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, polychlorinated biphenyis and polychlorinated furans, according to a 2004 scientific analysis.

Formaldehyde from laminates, building supplies, plastics and synthetic fabrics; mercury from fluorescent lamps; di-electric fluids that encase electrical cables; about four pounds of lead for each computer; PCBs from capacitators, electrical cable insulation and transformers – all poured forth from the site for miles.

“The plume contained – at very least, toxic lead, asbestos, volatile organic compounds, dioxins, mercury, nickel, vanadium, sulphur, PAHs, PCBs, and furans,’’ according to Kupferman.
“And there was more. The WTC had housed…a Secret Service shooting range that kept millions of rounds of lead ammunition on hand. An array of hazardous chemicals was stored in a U.S. Customs lab, including thousands of pounds of arsenic, lead, mercury and chromium,’’ according to a study produced for the NYC Dept. of Design Construction, based on EPA and DEC’s own documents.

And “130,000 gallons of PCB-contaminated transformer oil at an electrical substation at 7 WTC likely contributed to its collapse and …the toxic residue later found in the area,’’ Kupferman writes in “Lost Liberties,’’ a new book.

While EPA testing – and reassurances – began almost immediately after 9/11, the first results were not made public until they were published on the EPA’s website on October 3.
Kupferman claims those original posted results “disingenuous and misleading’’ and says that the samples data posted was “selective and so few…they did not give an accurate picture of what people were exposed to.’’

For example, the website featured 27 out of 442 posted samples that were above the Asbestos Hazard Emergency Response Act standards - which require by law ‘immediate decontamination’ - but explained them as “spikes’’ in toxicity, and argued that they should be averaged into the rest of the data, such that the results would not exceed regulatory limits..”even though that is not how toxicity works: beyond certain levels, even short-term exposure to certain toxins is alarmingly dangerous,’’ according to Kupferman.

Despite the EPA’s citing that the majority of their selectively-posted samples were below the AHERA levels, the standard itself directly contradicts the EPA’s own rules.
The rules, established in 1986 pursuant to the Toxic Substances Control Act, state that “available evidence supports the conclusion that there is no safe level of exposure to asbestos.’’

Finally, the EPA misrepresented the AHERA standard in the first place, Kupferman writes, “which is intended for evaluating after a cleanup has taken place.” According to a roundup of EPA Daily Summaries that were only released on October 19 in response to Kupferman FOIAs, the EPA, had, in fact, found, for example, elevated levels of dioxins, chromium, carbon monoxide and benzene, among other toxins, between mid September and mid October.

In retrospect, scientists, federal investigators, investigative reporters and at least one federal judge have concluded that the EPA knew as early as Sept. 12, 2001 that the air around Ground Zero was dangerous at best and highly toxic at worst, but did nothing and said nothing about it.

The collapse was the "largest acute environmental disaster that has ever befallen New York City," according to a 2004 analysis by several dozen scientists in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.

“There’s enough evidence to demonstrate that Mrs. Whitman’s statements to the brave rescue workers and the people who live [in lower Manhattan] were false,’’ said Hugh Kaufman, investigator for EPA ombudsman Robert Martin, who investigated the EPA’s response to the WTC attack, according to NY Daily News columnist Juan Gonzalez’s book Fallout. “She certainly knew it was false by October [2001] but never corrected the record.’’

In a February, 2006 pre-trial ruling that allowed a class-action suit by residents and rescue workers against the EPA and others to go forward, U.S. District Judge Deborah Batts said Whitman's "deliberate and misleading'' statements about the air quality "shocks the conscience.'' Batts also said that the EPA knew as early as Sept 12, 2001 that one of the first air samples contained an asbestos level four times higher than the EPA threshold for danger, according to USA Today.

"Instead of admitting that they had no certainty as to what the danger these substances might cause, EPA risk experts at the NY regional headquarters devised ad hoc safety 'benchmarks' or 'removal action guidelines,'' Juan Gonzalez writes in 'Fallout: The Environmental Consequences of the WTC Collapse.'

"They then misled the public into believing that these were federally approved safety levels and reported that only a few of their test results were above these levels. Even so, EPA officials and fire-fighting experts were well aware, from previous studies of a handful of spectacular and tragic fires..that such blazes are capable of releasing a witch's brew of some of the most toxic substances known."

Finally, documents obtained by ABC News appear to directly contradict what Whitman was saying publicly. In an October 6 memo, city DOH associate commissioner Kelly McKinney raises “critical environmental issues’’ regarding the reopening of the areas around Ground Zero writes that there were serious disagreements between the city’s Office of Emergency Management and the EPA over whether the air was safe.


Sept. 13 – EPA chief Christie Todd Whitman reports in a presser that the EPA is “greatly relieved to have learned that there appear to be no significant levels of asbestos dust in the air in NYC.’’

Sept 14 – In a press release, Whitman said that "monitoring and sampling...[has] been very reassuring about potential exposure of rescue workers and the public to environmental contamination.''

Sept 15 – “There is no reason to concern,’’ Whitman told reporters, saying that the latest testing done around Ground Zero showed asbestos levels at or below the one percent level, meaning asbestos made up as much as or less than one percent of the sample. She acknowledged that the highest reading was 4.5%.

Sept. 16 – “The most immediate hazards to health and well-being are from unstable buildings, broken glass, jagged metals and other harmful things,’’ reported a U.S. Dept of Health and Human Services “fact’’ sheet on dust and debris. “We expect the materials that would be present would be at concentrations lower than those normally associated with health hazards.

Sept 17 – New York Stock Exchange and much of lower Manhattan’s financial district reopens, following EPA and other governmental assurances of safety, even though the EPA had delegated the cleaning and monitoring of the insides of affected buildings to the overburdened, under-resourced New York State Department of Environmental Protection.

On the same day, the city’s Dept. of Health issued protocols for cleaning apartments and homes near Ground Zero. “The best way to remove dust is to use a wet rag or mop…Where dust is thick, directly wet the dust with water and remove it in layers with wet rags and mops.’’ The protocols did not note that the dust may be laden with asbestos and other toxic chemicals, or that testing and potentially abatement, or removal, may be required before it was safe to return to the dwellings.

Sept 19 – “Results from our monitoring of air quality…show that the public…is not being exposed to excessive levels of asbestos or other harmful substances,’’ Whitman said. “Given the scope of the tragedy from last week, I am glad to reassure the people of NY and Washington DC that their air is safe to breathe and their water is safe to drink.’’

On the same day, the NYELJP took independent samples of dust at Vesey and Liberty Streets on the outer perimeter of Ground Zero, and sent the materials to a lab that had been used by the city and the NYC Board of Education. Four samples indicated asbestos levels between one and five percent – which is up to five times the level at which the law requires immediate decontamination and removal. Soon after these results were publicized, the NY State Dept. of Health threatened local labs with loss of their licenses if they processed any more “independent sampling’’ two lab directors who had received such warnings told Kupferman.

Sept. 21 - the NYELJP filed FOIAs for “all monitoring data studies, and reports of air, dust and bulk…taken in lower Manhattan and Staten Island landfills in response to the WTC collapse.’’
Meanwhile, in a press release entitled “NYC Monitoring Efforts Continue to Show Safe Drinking Water and Air,’’ Whitman stated that “a host of potential contaminants are either not detectable or are below the Agency’s concern levels…”

Oct 3 - The EPA posts first, selective data from air and water testing on its website, in which 27 of 442 samples were found to be above the federal safety level for asbestos.
In a press release, the EPA said it had “been evaluating samples of air against an extremely stringent standard, the AHERA standard’’ and that even “levels above the AHERA standard do not imply that there is an immediate health threat to the public.’’ The statement went on to say that “asbestos exposure becomes a health concern when high concentrations of asbestos fibers are inhaled over a long period of time.’’

Oct 12 – Despite repeated governmental assurances of the safety of the air around Ground Zero, residents were becoming agitated. Many had developed “WTC cough’’ and other ailments, and it was becoming clearer to scientists, engineers and other experts that the environmental fallout from the WTC collapse was worse than the government was leading everyone to believe.
Following a speech at an Asthma Summit at Mt. Sinai Medical Center, Whitman again sought to calm fears. “You would have to be there breathing in a lot of it for a long period of time to see long-term health effects,’’ she said. “Certainly at Ground Zero, we have said from the very beginning that it’s really important that people who are down there working on the site, or near Ground Zero, should take some precautions…the good news is that the air samples have all been at levels that cause us no concern.’’

October 19 - the NPELJP’s FOIA requests came back and the group began reviewing more than 600 pages of EPA documents that “revealed that, in spite of their assurances to the contrary, EPA, OSHA and the various other health and environmental agencies – which met weekly throughout the crisis – knew of the dangers present at Ground Zero and beyond, on the ground and in the air,’’ Kupferman writes in “Lost Liberties,’’ a new book on the Bush administration.

The EPA’s own data listed findings that were above regulated levels, but that information was not posted on their site. They later explained that this was an oversight.
November 26 – Dr. Stephen Levin of the Mt. Sinai-I.J. Selikoff Center for Occupational and Environmental Medicine testified before the NY State Assembly’s Standing Committees on Environmental Conservation, Health and Labor that conditions “seen in adults who have been at or near” the WTC site for “as little as 24 to 36 hours’’ included “reactive airways disease, new onset or exacerbation of pre-existing asthma, reactive airway dysfunction syndrome, sinisitus, irritant rhinitis, persistent cough and diffuse irrtitation of nasal mucosal surfaces.’’
For first responders, rescuers and “individuals who were hit by the cloud of dust and debris’’ Levin found “a dramatic increase in gastro-esophageal reflux symptoms, according to testimony.

By January, 2003, Levin had examined 3,500 rescue workers and volunteers, and found that half suffered either “serious respiratory disorders and/or psychological distress,’’ according to Kupferman, who interviewed Levin that month.

Dec. 3 – A certified industrial hygienist hired by residents at 105 Duane Street found 555,000 asbestos structures per square centimeter in the samples from an air supply vent (at least fifty times the recommended safety level, according to Kupferman. The EPA called the result an aberration, and criticized the testing method – even though they used the same testing method on their own headquarters at 290 Broadway.