But in the meantime, the federal Environmental Protection Agency is beginning to enforce measures meant to keep the untold pollutants from spreading any further than they already have, says EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman, who maintains that the risks are negligible.
Late Friday, the agency ordered to the site 16 specially equipped, truck-mounted vacuums to begin removing the white dust, which in some places has swept into dunes several inches deep. And beginning this weekend, the caravans of brimming refuse trucks that have been removing debris to dumps must be sprayed down with water and enclosed with tarpaulins before they make their way through the city. “We’re getting in there and testing to make sure things are safe,” Whitman says. “Everything will be vacuumed that needs to be, air filters (in area buildings) will be cleaned, we’re not going to let anybody into a building that isn’t safe. And these buildings will be safe. The president has made it clear that we are to spare no expense on this one, and get this job done.”
Of the 24 dust samples the agency took in the first two days of the chaos, many contained asbestos, but only one registered levels above acceptable maximums, says EPA spokesperson Tina Kreisher. That sample, taken from very near the epicenter of the disaster in Manhattan’s financial district, contained 4.5 percent asbestos fibers. It was taken as agents fled the collapsing buildings on Tuesday. Dust samples from Thursday, she says, also showed elevated levels of 2.1 percent to 3.3 percent. A level of 1 percent or less is considered safe.
Nonetheless, the agency and outside medical experts stress that asbestos exposure is only dangerous when it is continuous over long periods of time. The elevated amounts of asbestos pose little danger to New Yorkers who are not working in the rescue effort, they say. The risks to those at the epicenter, who are up to their elbows in it, can be mitigated by special filtration masks, which few people are using. Because asbestos fibers are so small, the conventional surgical masks being used by some rescuers and journalists at the blast site provide no protection against them.
In addition, the agency has taken numerous air samples, all of which were in safe ranges, says Whitman, the former governor of New Jersey. “The way the plume has gone and the way it has dissipated, it is not a health problem,” she says. “We have found particulate matter in the air, but other than being an irritant to those people who are out there breathing it deeply-that’s why people are wearing protective gear and masks-it is not a problem for the general population.”
Given these assurances, officials have said they are considering reopening the New York Stock Exchange on Monday, though it is just a few blocks from the Twin Towers. EPA sources say the NYSE contracted with an outside environmental cleanup firm to scour the trading floor and adjoining offices and will resume business there as soon as they are given a green light from the firm and OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Whitman expects other financial firms will reopen in the coming days. Seventeen businesses have asked the EPA to assess the risks inside their buildings, she says; so far, seven have been tested.
Asbestos, made of small threadlike mineral fibers, was commonly used as a fire retardant until the early 1970s, when studies linked it to a lung-scarring disease called asbestosis and two varieties of lung cancer, says Dr. Phil Landrigan, chair of the Department of Community and Preventative Medicine at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. The risk is higher for smokers who inhale asbestos; they run about 55 times the normal risk of developing cancer, he says.
Reports have been conflicting about how much asbestos was installed in the twin towers, which were built between 1966 and 1973, or how much might have remained there at the time of the collapse. Henry H. Deutch, who worked at the time for the construction managers, Tishman Realty & Construction, says that asbestos fireproofing was sprayed on some of the steel and mixed in plaster in the building’s ceilings. Ed Ferrand, an assistant commissioner for the city’s Bureau for Science and Technology, remembers seeing asbestos fall-out from towers all over the city during installation. “I remember walking by and dusting asbestos off my shoulders. There were inches of asbestos on the ground in some places,” Ferrand says. The spectacle so outraged him that he helped convince the local city council to pass the first-ever ban on spray-on asbestos in 1971, a year before the federal government made a similar nationwide ruling.
He says that the ban was a “big hassle” for the builders of the World Trade Center. “They told us they wouldn’t know how to finish it if they couldn’t use asbestos. So we told them, just don’t finish it.” Eventually, the builders found a substitute and construction continued, he says.
But Guy F. Tozzoli, the physicist-engineer who headed overall development of the World Trade Center throughout its construction and remained there until 1987, says asbestos was only used in the first 39 floors of the Tower One, the first building struck Tuesday and the second one to fall. After that, other materials were used at an additional cost of over $400,000, he says. “There was no asbestos used anywhere else in the buildings,” says Tozzoli, who currently is president of the World Trade Center Association. Subsequently, the asbestos was encapsulated in a honeycomb of plastic, and in the early ’80s, after a “fastidious, painstaking process,” it was entirely removed, he says. “If they are finding asbestos in the ash, it is not coming from us.”
Other possible hazardous materials may have been released into the atmosphere, including freon from the towers’ massive air-conditioning units, PCBs, lead, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which are a byproduct of the fires which are still smoldering. But so far, none have been detected. On Friday, the EPA first deployed a specially designed truck called a Trace Atmospheric Gas Analyzer (TAGA) to drive through the area capturing samples and doing spot analyses. The TAGA truck is the same model used in Kuwait during the gulf war to measure toxins caused by the burning oil wells.
Also over the coming weekend, six permanent air-sampling posts will be established in a 10-block ring around the blast site. And by Saturday afternoon, the EPA expects there will be 16 truck-mounted high-pressure vacuums maneuvering through the streets, sucking up slurry and dust into immense 1,500-gallon tanks, says Andrew Confortini, the federal on-scene coordinator in charge of restoring business in the financial district. “These are like mega-shop vacs,” he says, “your basic canister vacuum on a truck scale.” They are equipped with 1,000-foot hoses to reach inside buildings.
For the thousands of New Yorkers who lived near the World Trade Center and have been evacuated, Whitman is offering similar advice: Vacuum everything, including air-conditioning filters, and wipe all surfaces with a damp cloth. But so far, there is no news on when they will be allowed back in their homes.
