Oct 1 -- "[P]ublic-health experts say this is no ordinary trip to the dump. The 16 acres now known as ground zero are considered the worst environmental disaster ever inside a major city -- 'the same scope as a Superfund site,' says New York University Hospital environmental-medicine specialist Max Costa. So far, nobody knows the exact extent of the public-health threat. 'ItÕs impossible to identify all of the repercussions, because none of us has ever been through anything like this,' says Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, who dispatched more than 700 experts to ground zero, including specialists in biohazards, epidemiology, public health and the environment...
     "The list of suspected contaminants continues to grow. Asbestos and other microscopic carcinogenic fibers are in the pulverized concrete dust that blanketed the financial district. Among New Yorkers only fleetingly exposed to it, health experts expect minor medical fallout, like emphysema and asthma cases among the very young and old. At greater risk: the frontline rescue workers, many of whom labored long hours without heavy protective masks.
     "Freon from the complexÕs central air-conditioning system has almost certainly seeped out of the seven massive compressors located under the plaza linking the buildings. Besides posing a slight risk to the ozone layer, burned freon may have converted to another toxin, phosgene, used by the Nazis as a chemical weapon. The fires that tore through the buildings may also have created toxic residue out of ordinary office materials: a full acre of carpeting, thousands of desks, radiation-filled medical equipment and cleaning fluids for polishing 7,000 toilets and 609,840 square feet of windows. Even desktop computers may become toxic if burned.
     "Perhaps the most potent threat is dioxin, a powerful carcinogen formed by burning PVC, found in cables and wall-covering, wastebaskets and conduits. Experts believe these toxins have not yet reached ground soil or the Hudson River, just a block west. During construction of the buildings, a watertight concrete retaining wall was erected, reaching down 70 feet to the bedrock beneath Manhattan. Believed to be still intact, this 'bathtub' seems to be containing the disaster. The Coast Guard is monitoring the river and marine habitat for signs of toxicity."

NYT: 20 Days Later, an Invisible Reminder Lingers

Oct 1 -- "It's the odor of a burning computer. Or a burning tire. Or burning paper. One person said it was the scent of unsettled souls. It's the smell, once overwhelming, now increasingly more ephemeral, that emanates from the tangled wreckage of the World Trade Center. It has become an elusive smell. The first days after the collapse of the towers, it was so pungent that shifting winds transported it for miles, all the way to the upper reaches of Manhattan. They carried it over into Brooklyn and Queens, deposited it in New Jersey. Everyone seemed to smell the horror of death. Nearly three weeks later, the smell is more localized, but still there, a stubborn reminder. Depending on the strength and direction of the wind, the odor might be evident three blocks east of the remains but not three blocks west. You might smell it north of the site but not south. On certain days, people as far away as Greenwich Village, if not farther, say they can sniff it.
     "On Friday, it was particularly potent in the crowded Wall Street area. 'As the days wear on, it's gotten better,' said Gus Albano, a clerk at the New York Stock Exchange. 'But it got worse today for some reason. It was almost like the early days, when my stomach turned from the smell.' What did it smell like? 'Like a rubber tire burning,' he said...The smell seeped inside the offices, even though the windows were shut and the air-conditioning vents had been cleaned. 'It's like burning plastic, or what a burning computer might smell like,' said a woman who works at the firm.
     "'It's very bad, golly, it's so bad,' said Rob Smith, 45, a telecommunications engineer from Virginia who was working in the financial district on Friday. Walking on the street, he had a handkerchief covering his nose and mouth. 'Some days it's better, some days it's worse,' he said. 'On a scale of 1 to 10, today is about 7. It smells like rubber burning. Some days it's like metal burning. Other days it's like paper burning. Today is rubber.'...John Quinn, a fund-raising director for an environmental business on Murray Street, a couple of blocks from the devastation, thought the odor, which smelled like burning paper to him, was steadily diminishing. 'You still notice it in the air,' he said. 'But it's sort of becoming normal. It's sad to say that.' Like many other people, he was not satisfied with the city's reassurances that the air was safe, even as he reoccupied the streets with his face unmasked. 'I don't want to say I don't believe them, but I don't,' he said. He said his company was having its own air tester come to its offices today.
     "A few blocks away, Ann Hoch, who lives in Battery Park City but has yet to resume life in her apartment, said the most revolting smell of all was last Sunday, the first day she was able to re-enter the area. 'It was the smell of rotting food in people's apartments and in the grocery stores,' she said. 'It was enough to make you gag.' Refrigerators and stores have since been cleaned of spoiled meat and produce, and that odor has vanished. She said the smell from the trade center residue came and went. 'When it was overcast, it was stronger,' she added. 'It was not quite a fire smell. It was something extra. How can I describe it? It made your lips tingle.'"

October 3:

MSNBC: U.S. finds no significant health hazards at World Trade Center

Oct 3 -- "Federal health officials who conducted hundreds of tests at the World Trade Center attack site say they discovered no significant public health hazards. In response to requests for more information, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration are making results available on their Web sites, http://www.epa.gov and http://www.osha.gov. The two agencies analyzed samples of air, dust, water, river sediments and drinking water in the area for pollutants such as asbestos, radiation, mercury and other metals, pesticides or bacteria that could have been health hazards. Of the 442 air samples EPA has taken at and around ground zero, 27 samples had levels of asbestos above the standard used by the EPA to determine if children can re-enter a school after asbestos has been removed. OSHA analyzed 67 air samples from the same area, and all were below the OSHA workplace standard for asbestos. Of 177 dust and debris samples taken, 48 had levels over 1 percent, the level used to define asbestos-containing material. Asbestos insulation now is banned as a cancer-causing substance. Early samples from water runoff into the Hudson and East rivers showed elevated levels of asbestos, metals, dioxin and polychlorinated biphenyls or PCBs. Recent results found nondetectable or low levels, the agencies said. 'Our data show that contaminant levels are low or nonexistent and are generally confined to the trade center site,' EPA Administrator Christie Whitman said. 'There is no need for concern among the general public.' OSHA Administrator John Henshaw said workers at the site should wear protective equipment, but there is no threat to public health."

NYDN: Air Near Ground Zero Is Rated Safe by Feds

Oct 3 -- "The levels of cancer-causing asbestos and other material still lingering in the air in lower Manhattan remain below limits considered a health risk, federal authorities said yesterday. But with hundreds of tons of hazardous material still buried among the rubble of the World Trade Center, experts cautioned workers at Ground Zero to keep wearing respirators. Air quality samples taken between Sept. 13-27 at the rubble pile's so-called hot zone detected airborne asbestos and fiberglass at levels that at one point topped .1 fibers per cubic centimeter -- the safety limit set by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration. But 90%-95% of those fibers were found to be fiberglass and not asbestos. And samples taken outside the hot zone have shown levels that OSHA considers well below permissible levels of exposure. The Environmental Protection Agency, which also is keeping tabs on air quality, released results of its own monitoring last week. Using methods different from OSHA, the EPA said asbestos levels at times spiked to nearly twice the permissible limit, but overall, cancer-causing asbestos found in the air and dust at Ground Zero and surrounding areas were mostly at low levels
"With prolonged exposure, asbestos fibers can scar lung tissue and eventually cause cancer. Though a few weeks is not considered enough to cause scarring, health experts warned that the government limits do not necessarily mean it is risk free. 'It's okay legally, but it's not necessarily okay medically because there's no known safe level of exposure to asbestos,' said David Newman, an industrial hygienist for the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health. The committee has been conducting independent tests on behalf of union members working near Ground Zero. And asbestos is not the only hazard, he said. 'Even in the absence of toxic components, the dust poses respiratory hazards, particularly to people with pre-existing respiratory conditions such as asthma or bronchitis,' Newman said. Meanwhile, the EPA conducted a whirlwind cleanup of Washington Market Park at Chambers and Greenwich Sts. after a local community group conducted asbestos testing and found levels at times twice the permissible limit. The EPA hauled away all the sand in the playground and even some top soil from surrounding area, said Parks Commissioner Henry Stern. 'It's more as a precaution that the sand was removed,' Stern said. 'When something like this happens, you want people to be comfortable.'"

October 5:

PA: Environment risks seen low at New York attack sites

Oct 5 -- "Extensive tests of air, dust and water in and around the site where New York's World Trade Center once stood have uncovered no major risks to people's health, government agencies said this week. 'Our data show that contaminant levels are low or nonexistent and are generally confined to the Trade Center site,' Christine Todd Whitman, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, said in a statement. 'There is no need for concern among the general public, but residents and business owners should follow recommended procedures for cleaning up homes and businesses if dust has entered.' A statement from the EPA and a Labor Department division dealing with health and safety said metals levels were slightly higher than normal in run-off water from the site, but this was not a cause for concern. Levels of deadly dioxin were also somewhat higher than normal, but the agencies said this would die down once the last fires were extinguished at the site, where hijackers rammed commercial planes into the World Trade Center's twin towers...The EPA said it had tested 835 air samples in New York, including 442 in or near the ground zero center of the attack. Some 27 samples near ground zero, where workers are using protective masks, showed asbestos exceeding government standards, but the statement noted that this was 'a stringent standard based on long-term exposure.' The two hijacked planes, loaded with enough fuel for coast-to-coast flights, caused intense fires at the towers, with smoke billowing across lower Manhattan and other parts of New York City."

NYT: Levy Tries to Calm Fears About Air Quality Near Ruins

Oct 5 -- "Trying to relieve parents' environmental concerns about schools near the World Trade Center, Schools Chancellor Harold O. Levy said yesterday that he would move his office to one of the schools, Stuyvesant High School, when it reopened to students on Tuesday. Mr. Levy's gesture is largely symbolic; he plans to stay only four days and is taking only a secretary with him. He is responding to a growing outcry from parents at seven schools who are worried about air quality and the trucks carrying debris from the disaster site. His effort apparently is not enough to allay fears of parents at at least one of the other shuttered schools, Public School 234, at the corner of Greenwich and Chambers Streets, one block east of Stuyvesant. That school was to reopen around Oct. 15, but so many parents raised objections regarding problems with air quality that the Board of Education decided yesterday to delay the return for at least another month...The permanent home for P.S. and I.S. 89 at Warren and West Streets, just three blocks from ground zero, will be used by the city's Office of Emergency Management for at least another month...Under pressure from parents, the Board of Education promised to reopen P.S. 234 around Oct. 15. But after learning this week that traces of asbestos had been detected in dust samples at nearby Stuyvesant High, many parents changed their minds. After several emotional meetings with parents and teachers this week, Ms. Switzer decided to delay the return. Instead, she said yesterday, the school would move into St. Bernard on Tuesday and stay there for at least a month. 'We want to go back to our school more than anything,' Ms. Switzer said. 'But we can't go back until the adults have confidence that it's a completely safe move.' Stuyvesant High, which was used as a staging area for rescue and recovery workers until last week, is being tested for the presence of asbestos and other environmental hazards after an intense cleaning over the last several days. Last month, before the cleaning, tests showed elevated levels of asbestos in dust on surfaces in the school. But air samples taken after the cleaning showed only traces of asbestos, well below the levels deemed dangerous by the federal Environmental Protection Agency."

MSNBC: Is Ground Zero Safe? New study suggests more asbestos at disaster site than previously revealed

Oct 5 -- "[A] new study by independent researchers suggests even more asbestos was released than...EPA tests have revealed--and in a potentially more dangerous form...The study, by the Virginia firm HP Environmental, found that the force of the explosions apparently shattered the asbestos into fibers so small that they evade the EPAÕs ordinary testing methods. The EPA tests for asbestos particles greater than a half micron in size, a spokeswoman says. But the study concluded that there is such an overwhelming concentration of those ultrasmall particles that many are being missed by standard microscopy techniques. 'This stuff was just crushed, just pulverized,' says lead author Hugh Granger. 'As it turns out, when we now measure and look for these very small fibers in the air and buildings, we find them, and we find them in uniquely elevated concentrations.'
     "'I find this very troublesome,' says Dr. Philip Landrigan, director of environmental and occupational medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in Manhattan and a leading expert on asbestos toxicity. 'The smaller the particle, the more easily it can be aerosolized. And the easier job that it has penetrating right down into the very depths of the lungs.' Granger, an HP Environmental principal, says he found asbestos within several blocks of ground zero, including inside closed and undamaged offices nearby and as high up as 36 stories...The smaller fibers pose a greater challenge for abatement, he says, because they are easily kicked up into the air. 'ItÕs hard to control them, hard to eliminate them. Once they get airborne they want to stay airborne....'
     "The EPA hasnÕt seen the report and wouldnÕt comment, and calls to city and state health officials were not immediately answered...It is generally accepted that short-term exposure is not enough to cause the worst asbestos-related diseases, including asbestosis (chronic lung scarring), lung cancer, or mesotheloma, a rare cancer of the lung lining. In addition, experts say, it is the size and shape of asbestos fibers--not any chemical compound found in them--that causes disease. Their long, pine-needle shape allows them to lodge in lung pockets, causing scarring that eventually destroys the tissue. The crushed fibers Granger and his team found have this same needle-shape. But there is some dispute about whether the smaller fibers are more or less dangerous. A study of workers in South Carolina who were exposed to broken and fragmented asbestos fibers, perhaps like those at the World Trade Center, showed that 'gram for gram, the risk for cancer was many times greater than any other asbestos exposure circumstance ever seen,' says Landrigan. But other experts contend just the opposite, what researchers call 'the Stanton hypothesis,' which posits that shorter fibers are less irritating and more easily coughed out of lungs, says Max Costa, chairman of environmental medicine at New York University School of Medicine...
     "According to the EPA, air samples taken from the southwest perimeter of ground zero continue to show asbestos in the air. This may be owing to a secondary exposure problem: landlords sweeping off their windowsills and roofs. 'We are trying to figure out where this is coming from,' says the spokeswoman. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of workers have returned to their offices in the Financial District and 12,000 of the 20,000 displaced residents are now back in their homes, community leaders have said. This has occupational-health experts increasingly worried. Dr. Alan Fein, chief of pulmonary and critical-care medicine at North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System, has already treated five patients with what he calls 'World Trade Center syndrome,' respiratory distress stemming from relatively brief exposures of a day or two near the collapsed buildings. And he expects there will be more."

October 9:

NYT: Students Set to Return to Stuyvesant Near Disaster

Oct 9 -- "When 3,000 students return to Stuyvesant High School in Lower Manhattan today for the first time since Sept. 11, any hope of avoiding tangible reminders of the World Trade Center disaster is likely to fade as they cross the Tribeca Bridge, which spans the West Side Highway and empties into the school's second floor. To the south, a half-dozen cranes tower over the still-smoking rubble of the trade center, their mechanical arms picking gingerly at mountains of twisted steel and depositing the wreckage in enormous dust-coated trucks. To the north, near a small plaza from which students watched and, in some cases, photographed the collapse of the twin towers, those same trucks dump their loads into the street. Two massive platform-mounted cranes scoop up the remnants and drop them with a ringing crash into barges for transfer to Fresh Kills landfill in Staten Island. In the Chambers Street subway stations used by most of the students, the air is still thick with concrete dust...
"'I'm confused and scared about how our children will be safe in this environment,' Rochelle Kalish, the mother of a Stuyvesant freshman, said yesterday. 'They've turned the school into a construction site.'...How easily the transition proceeds is likely to influence how soon students return to the six other public schools in Lower Manhattan that have been closed since Sept. 11. Five of those are in the 'frozen zone,' the area below Chambers Street and west of Broadway that is off limits to all but residents and those working on the cleanup. After a scrubbing of the interior of Stuyvesant High School was completed Thursday, four days of environmental tests were conducted inside and outside the school, which was used as a preparation area for rescue and recovery workers for nearly three weeks. Although asbestos was found in dust samples taken shortly after the disaster, the recent tests have shown no traces of airborne hazards, including asbestos, said Bernard Orlan, director of environmental health and safety for the Board of Education. Yet some parents say they remain worried. The noise created by the trucks dumping debris on the street near the school and by the cranes loading it onto the barges is considerable. Although sprinkler trucks have been wetting the streets near the high school to control the dust, the dumping and moving of steel near the school created a noticeable haze outside the school's northern entrance on Monday morning...
"In an effort to control dust, mats on the Tribeca Bridge, the only entrance students and visitors will be allowed to use, will be kept wet. But some parents, including Marilena Christodoulou, president of the Stuyvesant High School Parents Association, said they were more worried than reassured when school officials asked for written notification from students with a record or asthma or other respiratory problems. School officials also announced that a Department of Health nurse would be at the school, which, like most high schools, does not normally have a full-time nurse."

PA: Removal of Trade Center rubble a monumental task

Oct 9 -- "More than three weeks after two airborne attacks destroyed the World Trade Center, some 195,000 tonnes of debris have already been removed, as everything from plastic buckets to towering cranes is used to load the rubble onto a convoy of trucks and barges bound for landfill. That might sound like a lot, but it represents just over 15 percent of the total to be carted away in a monumental effort that construction professionals characterize as the largest single-site debris removal project in history. Expected to take anywhere from 10 to 14 months, the task of clearing the devastated site where once loomed New York's largest buildings, brought down by the Sept. 11 attacks, will likely cost more than $1 billion...Martin Bellew, director of waste disposal for the New York City Department of Sanitation...said his department is moving about 10,000 tonnes of debris from the site each day - nearly as much as its total daily residential trash collection for the entire city...The presence of toxic materials such as asbestos and biomedical waste, as well as critical evidence at what is still a crime scene compound the sheer scope of the task. And the buried human remains require a sensitivity many in the construction industry do not typically deal with.
"The work is being shared by a host of federal, municipal and private entities including the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the city's Office of Emergency Management, Department of Design and Construction and fire and sanitation departments, the Army Corps of Engineers and four major construction firms. 'It is massive beyond imagination,' said Lee Benish, vice president and corporate spokesman for AMEC, the global engineering and services company managing one of the four construction teams handling the recovery and debris removal...'There is just a massive amount of material: steel,' of which Bellew said there was 300,000 tonnes alone, 10 percent of which had been removed. 'Pulverized concrete and building materials of the building itself. There is the furniture and fixtures that were within the building.... It's a very nontraditional environment,' Benish said of the site...
"Another complicating factor is the continual flare-up of fires, which can burn in excess of 1,000 degrees (550 Celsius). And attention must be paid to the integrity of the excavation site's basement structure and slurry wall which holds the Hudson River at bay. The process begins with search and rescue teams led by the Fire Department combing areas of rubble. If there are no human remains, clearance is given to the crews to remove the debris...Front end loaders scoop up loose matter, and all of the equipment deposits the rubble in trucks or on barges for transport to the Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island. The barges, which can carry 150 truckloads of debris, dump some steel offshore to create artificial reefs; other steel is being used for slurry wall stabilization or recycled. Security had to be tightened when some drivers were found selling steel to private scrap dealers. At Fresh Kills, the debris is raked over, sorted and searched as crime evidence for a second time by law enforcement officials and more metal is sorted for recycling. On Oct. 1 FEMA assigned a $125 million mission to the Army Corps of Engineers for operation of Fresh Kills for the debris disposal, a job it said was expected to run through next June."

October 10:

ENN: Some still fear environmental hazards near World Trade Center site

Oct 10 -- (AP) "Four weeks after the collapse of the World Trade Center, New Yorkers are wearing dust masks on the streets downtown and hiring industrial cleanup crews to remove asbestos from their offices and apartments. Despite government assurances that the air is safe near the site of the devastated Trade Center, many are still worried about the environmental effects. Harriet Grimm was evacuated from her apartment six blocks north of the Trade Center for 10 days. When she returned, she feared that the dust contained asbestos; she used a damp rag and a vacuum cleaner outfitted with a high-efficiency air filter to remove it. Then she spent more than $1,000 on three air purifiers and an air conditioner -- needed because she decided to keep the windows closed...The twin towers spouted immense plumes of smoke when they were attacked and scattered debris for miles when they fell. Depending on the wind direction, the air is still dusty. Smoke still curls from the ruins. And an acrid odor still hangs over the area. Many pedestrians still wear masks or use scarves to cover their mouths. Government officials have said from the beginning that the air is safe for everyone except rescue workers at the Trade Center site, who should wear respirators. 'I know subjectively it looks bad, and there's odor, and there will be until the fire subsides and the cleanup is done,' said John Henshaw, administrator of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. OSHA and the federal Environmental Protection Agency have taken hundreds of air samples and posted the results on their Web sites...No other pollutants -- such as volatile organics, heavy metals, and dioxin -- have been detected at unsafe levels...One company, Virginia-based HP Environmental, said its tests have found surprisingly large numbers of tiny asbestos fibers less than 5 microns in length, which it said the EPA may not be picking up."

PA: WTC cleanup triggers safety, cost allegations

Oct 10 -- "The cleaning contracts are eventually likely to be worth millions of dollars and provide jobs for thousands of workers - some of them displaced by the attacks...but the effort is being hampered by differing views on how hazardous the debris materials are and whether specialist firms must be contracted...While the authorities say the levels of asbestos in the air around the World Trade Center site is not dangerous, companies which handle hazardous materials say the dust that has settled in and on surrounding buildings still needs to be handled with great care. They allege that workers who until a few weeks ago were janitors are unqualified, unprotected, and uninsured to handle this kind of cleanup. 'What looks clean is not clean. What remains are the small pieces that are the real risk,' said Michael O'Reilly, chief executive of Trade-Winds Environmental Restoration, Inc., the division of Windswept Environmental Systems Inc. that has sent over 400 trained and certified hazardous material specialists to work for 'Fortune 100 firms' at more than a dozen sites. Trade-Winds workers say they have seen janitors handling potentially toxic dust, O'Reilly said. 'We'll be cleaning up after them for maybe six months,' O'Reilly said.
"The criticism represents a dilemma for ABM Industries Inc., the nation's No. 1 public building maintenance firm...One Source, the No. 2 public janitorial services company and a unit of the Carlisle Group Plc...has been sending some of its displaced janitors into New York's financial district - previously home to up to 30,000 people and thousands of businesses. One Source janitors are equipped with Occupational Safety and Health Administration-approved respirators and 30 brand new $500 high-efficiency particle vacuum cleaners. 'We don't need the money - we (provide for) our clients the service where and when it's safe,' Marquesano said, adding that One Source workers have seen companies that jumped the gun to get work doing decontamination for which they had questionable training. 'I've seen guys who are normally doing computer dusting trying to do decontamination,' Marquesano said. 'Their guys are even less qualified than ours.'
"The dispute has also led to threats of legal action by labor unions against some of the building owners and the New York City government. They claim the real estate companies are skimping on costs and exposing lower-paid workers to hazards. 'It is up to the building owners to recognize the dust material as hazardous, and that is where the problem lies, particularly if the building owner is hoping to save a couple of bucks,' said Salvatore Speziale, president of Asbestos, Lead and Hazardous Materials workers Local 78, whose workers are trained and licensed by the state and the city. 'The New York City regulations are unclear about mandating dust tests,' Speziale said. 'I believe everyone down there was contaminated, but the city doesn't want to have a big scare right now. They're not letting us finish the job.'"

October 11:

NYT: THE AIR QUALITY: Contaminants Below Levels for Long-Term Concerns

Oct 11 -- "The quality of the air has become a matter of widespread anxiety among people who live or work in Lower Manhattan -- anxiety compounded in many cases by open disbelief in assurances from government and public health officials that the air, while acrid and sometimes smelly, is generally safe to breathe. Local residents and workers in downtown buildings say they fear that burning eyes, runny noses and scratchy throats -- common maladies below 14th Street, especially at night -- could be an indicator of something worse that is not being measured at all. For many people, the plume of dust and smoke that continues to be a presence downtown has become part of the nightmare itself: in an altered New York, even the air, it seems, is no longer what it was. But independent testing by a company hired by The New York Times has concluded that the outdoor street level air in the vicinity of the trade center site does not contain poisons or toxic substances, especially lead and asbestos, in levels sufficient to raise long-term public health concern. The results, according to the report by Adelaide Associates of Brewster, N.Y., essentially mirrored the findings that have been reached and widely reported by the federal Environmental Protection Agency...Adelaide sampled air for asbestos and lead and fine particle dust and found that, in all three categories, levels were below the federal government's health standards. One of the company's four monitoring stations, at the corner of Rector and Greenwich, exceeded the E.P.A.'s safety standard for asbestos, but was below the standards set by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration...
"Health experts stress that the risks to workers directly at the ground zero cleanup site are genuine. Respiratory protection for cleanup crews, physicians say, remains essential. Volatile organic compounds like benzene, for example, have been measured directly in the smoke plume itself, but disperse so quickly into the environment that sensors a block or two away show no measurement at all...And government tests that turn up negative do not seem to explain everything, either. Why, for example, does the air these days make a person's throat feel so raw and ragged? Health experts say there are also many unknowns about the exact mixture of elements that people were exposed to in the early days after the attacks, when the smoke and dust were at their worst. Some predict that there could be more cases of asthma in the city over time, though most say that one-time exposures, even if severe, are generally shrugged off by the body...
"'There's little risk to the general public of any ongoing air pollution related to the World Trade Center,' said Patrick L. Kinney, an associate professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia University, who has monitored air testing results and was briefed about Adelaide's findings. Professor Kinney and other experts say that the raw throats and sinuses that many residents and workers complain about are in fact mostly evidence of the body's defensive systems. Large particles of dust that get trapped in nasal and throat passages trigger irritation, but that also means that most of the particles are not making it all the way to the lungs. Smaller particles, called respirable dust, which can penetrate deeply into the lungs and are a greater health concern, were not found in significant quantities at street level by Adelaide, which also confirms recent government tests. Other concerns have been raised about supersmall particles of asbestos. Recent news reports have suggested, for example, that the smallest asbestos fibers, smashed into tiny pieces by the cataclysm when the twin towers collapsed, could be more dangerous than the 0.5 micron-and- larger size that are measured by the E.P.A. and most testing organizations, including Adelaide. Scientists say that there is genuine debate on that point, but that by an overwhelming number, studies on asbestos exposure have found the larger particles to be far more dangerous because they tend to embed themselves in lung issue. Smaller fibers, though they can penetrate more deeply into lungs, can also be more readily attacked and removed by the body's internal defenses, most studies say. Other impressions by residents do have a basis in science, environmental experts said. For example, there appears to be a tendency for the smell and air quality to worsen at night, and this is consistent with the way air circulates in the city, said Dr. George D. Thurston, an associate professor of environmental medicine at the New York University School of Medicine, who is involved in a study analyzing the constituents in dust and soot...[Dr. Thurston] agreed with the authorities that there was no sign of a clear health risk to residents, but he quickly added that 'prudent avoidance remains the best approach for any resident or worker downtown.' 'It's a basic public health principal,' Dr. Thurston said. 'If you can avoid an exposure, you do so.'"

NYT: Under the Grit and Ash, a Garden Endures

Oct 11 -- "There are still bits of ash on the leaves of the Japanese anemones in Battery Park, but their pink buds are swelling. And last week, as gardeners with respirators donned heavy rubber gloves and knelt among the Siberian irises to scrape up gray dust and bits of paper -- vestiges of the lives that were blasted out of the twin towers on Sept. 11 -- it seemed a bit of a miracle to see the blue salvia blooming. 'At first it was overwhelming,' said Eric T. Fleisher, 43, the director of horticulture at the Battery Park City Parks Conservancy. 'Everything was covered with ash and debris. But once we found the earthworms, and sprinkled the plants and saw the flowers. . . .' He gestured toward the vigorous viburnums, the graceful anemones about to bloom, and let the plants finish the sentence. A few blocks north, the charred ruins of the World Trade Center looked like the ribs of some cathedral or coliseum of fallen greatness against the evening sky. People stood behind the police lines, breathing the smoke, trying to fathom the enormity of all that had been lost in the space of one morning...He and about 25 gardeners and maintenance workers used vacuum cleaners, hoses, rakes and shovels to clean up the gray ash and debris that had enveloped the park. Some areas, like the lawns and playgrounds to the north, had only a light dusting; places south of the World Trade Center, like Rector Park, were buried under a foot of dust. 'We started at the Police Memorial first, shoveling up two, three feet of ash that had drifted against the wall like snow,' Mr. Fleisher said...'The whole wall was covered with dust, paper and bits of metal from the buildings.'...'This landscape is so resilient," he said. "And I'm firmly convinced it's because of the organic amendments we've used all these years.' The soil in Battery Park City was mostly sandy landfill taken from the excavation for the World Trade Center. Over the years, he and his crew have built it up with compost made on the spot and organic fertilizers teeming with beneficial bacteria and fungi. Several gardeners were raking gray ash from beneath the yews, and cutting ivy too crusted with ash to save. "But it'll grow back," said Bill Mick, a gardener who saw the first plane go right through the tower...Mr. Fleisher has sent soil samples to a laboratory, to make sure nothing toxic has leached into the ground. 'I'm concerned about my critters,' he said. 'The good guys that make this sustainable.'...'Taking care of Mother Earth is not something we can lose sight of,' Mr. Fleisher said. 'It's more important than ever, now.'"

October 12:

NYT: The One-Month Anniversary of Sept. 11 Is Framed by Everyday Reminders

Oct 12 -- "Indeed, on a day marked by various observances, the sobering reminders of Sept. 11 were everywhere and impossible to ignore. A postal worker on Chambers Street made his rounds wearing a dust mask, Battery Park remained encircled by National Guardsmen in fatigues, and out-of-towners flocked to ground zero...'The fire is still burning, but from it has emerged a stronger spirit,' the mayor said, standing in front of the scorched facade of the Dow Jones building...But after several days of relief, the air below Canal Street was once again filled with dust and the acrid smell of smoke. Sitting at a sidewalk cafe on West Broadway, Ingo Gunther tried to eat a prosciutto and mozzarella sandwich as the fine ash settled around him."

October 13:

NYT: Slowed by Site's Fragility, the Heavy Lifting Has Only Begun

Oct 13 -- " As work progresses, fires still burn deep within the debris, and an acrid smell, with a distinctly metallic flavor, rises from the ground. It mixes with the cacophony emanating from the site Ñ the beeping of vehicles backing up, the whining of saws cutting steel, the roar of crane engines, the echoing boom of debris being dumped into trucks. And it continues this way, day and night."

October 15:

PA: Ultra-fine asbestos a concern for WTC work crews
(also published Oct 12, 2001)

Oct 15 -- "A month after fiery suicide plane attacks pulverized the concrete, steel and glass 110-story twin towers, fires were still burning and gray dust billowed into the acrid-smelling air, creating concern about air quality despite frequent government tests concluding it was safe. 'There absolutely is an asbestos hazard for the workers and I think everyone who's involved agrees,' said asbestos expert Dr. Philip Landrigan, chairman of the department of community and preventive medicine at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in Manhattan. When the center was built in the early 1970s, asbestos was applied as insulation to steel beams up to the 39th floor of Tower One before a ban on the use of the mineral took effect in 1971. 'It's quite different for the people who are in offices or in the community. There is no question those folks are being exposed to dust but so far as I can tell, the asbestos exposures are very low. I won't say zero, but very low,' Landrigan said.
"Examination of the dust by a private company found ultra-thin fibers, 10,000 times thinner than a human hair, inside buildings up to three blocks away from the site where the towers crumbled and more than 5,000 people killed in the attack by hijacked civilian aircraft. A report by toxicologists at the company, HP Environmental Inc. of Herndon, Virginia, said laboratory tests from samples collected Sept. 21-28 showed the destruction of the buildings 'created an asbestos fiber size distribution not previously encountered.'...Landrigan said 'small fibers are more dangerous for the simple reason that they go deeper down into the lungs.'...The particles found measured as little as 0.25 microns in width...Construction and engineering companies and government agencies with recovery workers at the disaster site known as 'ground zero' have emphasized safety for the crews. Workers digging and sifting through the debris wear respiratory masks and protective clothing. 'This is a very unusual circumstance, this is a site that requires very serious safety procedures. It's a very nontraditional environment,' said Lee Benish, vice president and corporate spokesman for AMEC, an engineering and services company among those handling the debris and its removal. At a meeting for residents this week of the nearby high-rise Battery Park City apartments, Dr. Marc Wilckenfeld of Columbia University Hospital warned people "not to succumb to panic or hysteria" about the dust and air quality. He said irritants in the dust may cause unpleasant symptoms but that did not mean they would cause long-term health problems. Among the tens of thousands of people who live or work in the area, there have been reports of sore throats, tongue lesions, burning eyes and ears and skin rashes. Government officials have tested not only for asbestos but metals such as copper, beryllium, lead and iron oxide found in building materials. None were found to exceed safety limits."

NYT: Attacks Expose Telephone's Soft Underbelly

Oct 15 -- "It was not an easy meeting," recalled [Lawrence T. Babbio Jr., Verizon's vice chairman], who spoke with the group immediately after visiting the disaster site, where his clothes had picked up the odor of smoke and ash. 'I smelled awful after coming back from downtown. No one wanted to sit next to me.'"

October 16:

WP: Cleanup Hazards At Ground Zero An Ongoing Worry: Union Provides Hazmat Training on Site

Oct 16 -- "A month after the twin towers vanished from the Manhattan skyline in blinding clouds of dust, what's left at ground zero still smokes. Thick plumes rise from the twisted heaps of ruined steel. The smell remains difficult to describe but impossible to forget: Faintly sweet, it tickles the nose and irritates the throat. Workers at the site compare it to a giant foundry with untold tons of metal burning under the torch. This smoke is of deep concern to federal, state and city health officials worried about workers cleaning up the site. The World Trade Center towers had served as cities unto themselves with all the attendant fuels, paints, insulating materials and other substances that when incinerated and released into the air may pose long-term health risks. Add to the mix exploded jet fuel and organic material from the nearly 5,100 people presumed killed and you have what Don Carson calls a gigantic, uncontrolled demolition site, a place whose acrid exhalations can change in composition by the minute based on the direction of the wind and the depth of the digging.
     "Carson runs the National Hazardous Materials Training Program for the International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE). Carson's union, assisted by funding from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) has been on the scene in Lower Manhattan since Sept. 15, distributing respirators and training workers on the spot in the safest methods to deal with potentially lethal materials...In addition to training, workers must be monitored over time -- ill effects from inhaled contaminants may not show up for years. So Philip Landrigan, director of environmental and occupational medicine at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, is working with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and NIEHS to create a database of ground zero workers, particularly those at high risk for toxin exposure...
     "Carson, a native Tennessean now living in West Virginia, patrols ground zero in a motorized cart, handing out respirators and gently browbeating anyone not wearing one, particularly if they are anywhere near the debris piles. 'That won't do a damn thing for you,' Carson told one young police officer wearing a surgical mask last week. 'Try this,' he said, tossing the officer a respirator...But too often, according to Carson and others, the high-risk frontline personnel resist the respirators and other precautions...[Says] Bruce Lippy, an IUOE industrial hygienist working on the World Trade Center site[:] 'It's a very dangerous place and this is not normally how these people operate. There are a lot of people not wearing respirators. We've been hammering on the guys to wear them.' In addition to wearing masks, IUOE and other groups training personnel at ground zero urge workers to change after leaving the site and put work clothes in a plastic bag to avoid bringing asbestos or other dangerous materials home. All vehicles coming in and out of the site are hosed off. Operators are told to keep the cabs of their cranes closed.
     "Lippy said he has taken some 60 samples from around the site, looking in particular for traces of lead and asbestos. His samples have not shown dangerous levels so far, backing up readings done by the Environmental Protection Agency. But Lippy is not certain these levels will remain safe. The North Tower, he said, had asbestos sprayed on the first 40 floors. The remains of these floors are likely pancaked at the bottom of a pit where fires still burn...Mount Sinai's Landrigan noted that most sampling for asbestos is done over an eight- to 10-hour period when the average amount of asbestos in the air may be low. But asbestos can be stirred up in quick bursts...You do not smell asbestos,' [Carson] said. 'You may smell body parts, you may smell Freon. But it's the things you can't smell that can really hurt you the most.'"

NYT: After Attacks, Studies of Dust and Its Effects

Oct 16 -- "Despite a steady stream of data from public agencies showing that the stubborn, eye-stinging plumes of dust from the wrecked World Trade Center pose few risks, thousands of people -- residents and workers in nearby neighborhoods, firefighters, demolition crews, those who fled the attacks -- say they still fear for their health...And an alphabet soup of federal, state and city agencies have issued confusing information on Web sites or in press releases -- particularly about asbestos, which was used in building one of the towers and whose fibers can cause cancer. Different agencies used different standards and measurements when describing the levels of this mineral in air and dust. Private testing firms, in a few samples, used yet another set of methods and, not surprisingly, produced different results. After the rush of emergency responses and hasty testing done in a crisis, dozens of scientists from universities, medical schools and private firms have begun an intensive search for any lingering medical effects from the attacks. Some laboratories are testing soot filtered from the air to see if it contains any unusually toxic ingredients, like metals or dioxins. Others are teasing out the microscopic contents of dust scooped from sills, floors and rubble heaps in downtown Manhattan. In the meantime, public health experts are drawing up plans to recruit some of the hundreds of pregnant women they estimate were among the tens of thousands of people at or near ground zero the morning of Sept. 11. Their goal is to closely monitor maternal, fetal and child health, looking for any hints of problems that may be related to exposure to the fumes and dust. And scientists are sifting through the environmental tests done by a host of public agencies to translate the flood of data into something less confusing to residents and workers.....
"The New Jersey program has created a Web site (www.eohsi.rutgers.edu/rc/response.shtml) to communicate findings, along with information on how to limit contact with dust, as a common-sense precaution. Along with the Web site, Ms. Hemminger and other environmental health experts in the New York region are organizing meetings for residents concerned about possible health problems related to the attack...
"Separately, tests commissioned by construction companies and building owners have begun to reveal the ingredients in the dust and smoke. Tests conducted by HP Environmental, MVA Inc. and other commercial laboratories have isolated fragments of ceiling tile, carpet fibers, paper, hair and concrete pounded so fine that embedded crystals, formed when it hardened, came unglued. 'That's something you rarely see on its own,' said Dr. James R. Millette, the executive director of MVA Inc., in Norcross, Ga. The private tests have produced new evidence that the extraordinary force of the building collapses pulverized materials into unusually fine motes -- including asbestos fibers. Dr. Millette said about 10 percent of a typical dust sample was the finest powderlike particles. In the samples from around the attack site, at least 30 percent of the dust was the finest material...At N.Y.U.'s laboratory, researchers are testing soot collected in filters on rooftops in Lower Manhattan. In one case, the sampling has been under way since November, providing a clear view of any changes in air quality. But the results of tests for organic compounds, including dioxins, will not be known for at least a few more weeks, university scientists said. Dr. Lioy says the New Jersey environmental institute is also studying dust samples, with some of the material sent to nine different laboratories for special tests. Any risk from exposure will eventually become clear, he said...Environmental Protection Agency has separately been testing the persistent smoke plumes rising from the smoldering wreckage, and has found no signs of dioxins, PCB's or other toxic organic compounds, agency officials said."

October 17:

NYDN: Stuyvesant Students Sickened: Parents cite headaches & breathing problems

Oct 17 -- "One week after resuming classes at the edge of Ground Zero, students and teachers at Stuyvesant High School are being plagued by severe headaches, rashes and burning eyes and lungs, school officials said last night. 'We do believe that there is something going on, but we can't identify what it is,' Principal Stanley Teitel told more than 500 anxious parents who gathered at the elite public school for a meeting on conditions at the building. Located on Chambers St. six blocks from the wreckage of the World Trade Center, Stuyvesant reopened to its 3,000 students last week after a $1 million cleanup and extensive environmental testing...
"Headaches -- particularly toward the end of the school day -- and difficulty breathing appeared to top the list of health problems, although school officials said they were aware only of cases brought to the attention of the school's medical staff. Depending on wind direction, smoke from the fires at the Trade Center site can waft over the school. When one parent asked how many other parents had children who were coming home with symptoms, more than 100 hands shot into the air. Some said their kids had suffered bloody noses...'Everyone seems to be telling us there is nothing here, but nothing would be happening if there was nothing here,' a frustrated Teitel told parents...
"Rachel Patterson, a parent of a freshman from Manhattan, said she was considering withdrawing her son from the school for a few months until conditions improve -- an idea mentioned by many parents last night. 'I'm looking at private schools or home-schooling, but the chancellor's office told my son if he left the school, there was no way he was coming back,' Patterson said. In what became a heated exchange between parents and the principal, Teitel told them it was Board of Education policy that removing a student from the attendance rolls would keep that student from the school permanently. 'We need a school leader, not someone who will tell us what the rules are,' one man yelled. Eugene Blaufarb, the school's guidance department administrator, told the parents he thought they needed to see counselors because they were hysterical. 'I heard all of you tonight,' Blaufarb said. 'I ask you, please, do not transfer your anxiety to your kids.'"

October 18:

NYDN: Stuyvesant Under Scrutiny: Levy sending experts to find cause of ailments

Oct 18 -- "Schools Chancellor Harold Levy said yesterday that he would send disease experts to Stuyvesant High School to find out why students there are getting sick. 'I've asked the Department of Health to have their epidemiological department take a look to make sure we aren't missing anything,' Levy said. Although Levy repeated assertions that the school six blocks from the World Trade Center wreckage is safe, scores of students have complained of headaches, nosebleeds, rashes, eye problems and coughs since they returned to the elite high school last week....
"'I've had bronchitis for the past two weeks. I went to my doctor, and he said he was seeing other Stuyvesant students. Everyone is coughing,' said 17-year-old senior Jessica Skolnick, who had a face mask firmly in place as she walked into the school yesterday. 'I don't really feel safe.' Of 21 students polled by the Daily News, nine said they had some kind of health complaint since returning to school on Oct. 9. Denise Marsalisi's 15-year-old son, Nick Perez, developed a rash on his right arm the day students were allowed back in the building since fleeing on Sept. 11 as the towers collapsed. Nick's rash grew into red, raised lesions more than an inch across and spread to the inside of his left arm and abdomen...Levy said the Health Department experts would try to track down the cause of the complaints. He noted that only 80 students and staffers out of nearly 3,200 had reported problems. Bernard Orlan, the Board of Education's environmental health and safety director, said Stuyvesant's air-circulation system could be to blame for some of the complaints. After parents protested they did not want their children breathing potentially hazardous air coming off the World Trade Center site, school officials adjusted the ventilation system to recirculate air inside the school instead of drawing air from outside. Orlan said recent tests had found elevated levels of carbon dioxide. The amount of gas was nowhere near dangerous levels but, with thousands of students producing it as they exhale, the levels were high enough to possibly cause drowsiness and headaches, he said."

October 19:

CNN: Students near ground zero worry about smoke

Oct 19 -- "Some students at Stuyvesant High School near the World Trade Center wreckage are worried that the still-smoldering debris has been making them and their teachers ill. About 80 of the school's 3,200 students and teachers have complained about headaches, nausea, sore throats and trouble breathing. Several students were wearing respirator masks at school Thursday. 'I've had really bad throat pains. I'll come home from school in the afternoon, and it'll be hurting all through the night,' said senior Daniel Khasidy, 17. 'Once in a while there's a headache, but most of all it's throat pain. It feels like a bitter, bitter taste.' Khasidy said his father wants him to change schools, but he'd rather to stay. 'I just think we should all be together, and things should be as normal as possible, as soon as possible,' he said...Classes have resumed at the school, close to where the rubble is loaded onto barges in the Hudson River to be taken to a landfill. 'In the school you don't feel anything different because it's the same inside. But when you come out, it's weird looking at the barges, moving debris from the centers,' said freshman Danny Yang, 13, who also wears a mask as he walks from the subway station to school each day. Megan Kelley, 16, has had a few minor headaches since returning to school, and said the air was thick with dust during the first few days. She said that during the first week she had to wipe dust off her lips. Tests at the school have indicated no asbestos and no toxins at any level that would be of concern, said Karen Finney, spokeswoman for Schools Chancellor Harold Levy. However, Levy has 'asked an epidemiology team to come in and look at the data and make sure we're not missing anything,' Finney said."

October 21:

NYT: THE LANDFILL: Sifting Mountains of Debris for Slivers of Solace

Oct 21 -- "It gets cold up here. When the wind shifts, it smells like what it is, a half- century's worth of trash. When it rains, the ground bubbles with methane gas rising to the surface. And every now and then, above the groan of dump trucks and backhoes, fireworks ring out to scare off the turkey vultures. The mind blurs from the monotony, while the muscles ache from raking, or digging, or standing still for hours at a time. Food and bathroom breaks require decontamination: rinse off the rubber boots; remove the gloves and hard hat; throw away the white protective suit; wash hands and face; check for cuts....It is the hunt for the solitary item or human fragment -- the possible key to an unknown family's peace -- that energizes the likes of Efram Negron, a narcotics detective. He normally works in the South Bronx, but on Friday he was sitting on a concrete block, waiting for a backhoe to lay out another pile of debris to be raked. Through a respirator that made his voice seem far away, he said, 'I'll come up here for a year, or two years, it doesn't matter.' Sitting nearby, Joseph Pirrello, a 68-year- old retired police lieutenant who would normally be playing golf on a Friday morning, agreed. Arrayed before him were rakes and shovels, and beyond them, tons of unexamined rubble: piping and plastic and cement and steel and paper, all improbably fused together and coated with the gray powder of pulverized concrete...On a 135- acre, waste-made plateau rising 180 feet in central Staten Island -- where there had been nothing but a foul wind and a glorious view -- they have built a village to sort the evidence of a singular crime...For more than a month, the world has focused on Lower Manhattan, where a terrorist attack on the World Trade Center killed more than 5,000 people and created more than 1.2 million tons of sorrowful rubble. Images of debris-laden trucks rumbling away from the site now define a city determined to dig out and move on. What is less known, but no less remarkable, is that as the collapse site shrinks, The Hill grows. So far, 300,000 tons of rubble -- about one-quarter of the disaster's total -- have been taken by barge and truck to the landfill. There, as many as 300 detectives at a time, working 12-hour shifts, have pored over nearly two-thirds of that amount...
"Five weeks ago, there was no conveyor belt; no sifting machines; no grapplers to separate cast-iron pipes from fragile remnants. When the first loads of trade center debris made their climb to the Fresh Kills plateau, there was only a team of detectives, lacking protective gear but still eager to attack daunting, 12-foot-high piles that would not yield to mere rakes and shovels. Gradually, though, Inspector Luongo and his counterpart from the F.B.I., Special Agent Richard Marx, and others patched together an approach for a task without template. They scoured the Internet for construction equipment and researched procedures that would fit their purpose. They enlisted other agencies, from the Army Corps of Engineers to the Department of Sanitation to the American Red Cross, to set up an operation that worked. In the first days, workers and trucks sank in mud like chocolate pudding, so gravel was poured. There were concerns about methane and other gases, so polyurethane and asphalt foundations were laid for the prefabricated buildings to come. Now, a fully formed base camp -- financed in part by $125 million in federal emergency money -- has been established, with only 18 inches of fill separating investigators from decades worth of city garbage. There are rows of office trailers and portable toilets; a decontamination center; a supply center; a satellite dish to improve cellphone reception...There is even a mess hall where, on Friday, a movie played on a wide-screen television and the aroma of sausage and peppers wafted through the air -- air constantly being tested for unhealthy gases by monitors in the ceiling. At long fold-out tables, weary investigators took 90-minute breaks -- eating or reading or napping. Among them was Scott Grainer, an Internal Affairs detective who drove 55 miles from Suffolk County to arrive for his shift at 4 a.m. Assigned to monitor the conveyor belt, he said he becomes so engrossed that he does not notice when the floodlights that illuminate The Hill at night give way to sunlight. If you watch the belt for too long -- more than 20 minutes without looking away -- you get motion sickness, he said, or 'you get entranced in it, and you miss stuff.' At the end of his 12-hour shift, he drives home, takes four Motrins and a hot shower, and goes to sleep."

October 22:

NYT: Dust Settles and Retailer Is Set to Face the Crisis

Oct 22 -- "Here comes Jason Friedman, flying in from Southern California with just one- eighth of a master's degree. The family business needs him early, he has decided. The six storefronts of J&R Music and Computer World, the company his parents built into an economic anchor and landmark on Park Row in Lower Manhattan, have been shut since Sept. 11. On the day of the World Trade Center attack, a thick cloud of hot, black soot blew through the doors and settled inside the DVD players and computer hard drives. Rescue workers also smashed some doors, to set up a triage center that got little use. So Mr. Friedman left the University of Southern California, and moved right back into the TriBeCa building where he lived before. (There were lots of suddenly open apartments there.) His immediate mission is to help his parents in the reopening, scheduled for today, of J&R's only substantial retail location -- just a few blocks from ground zero...Among downtown business owners, Jason's mother and father have been pretty lucky. None of their 650 employees were killed. The buildings, which they own, are standing. The sealed compact discs and software packages seem in good shape. And today, after throwing out electronics worth tens of millions of dollars, replacing about 3,000 square feet of carpet, slathering new paint on most walls, sucking the ash out of five escalators, cleaning credit card terminals and cash registers, revamping the heating, ventilation and air-conditioning system, and screwing in dozens of new light bulbs, the Friedmans have accomplished several things. While the air outside smells like Coke cans on fire, the record store smells like a record store. And as of today, all of J&R is open for business...The family has run this business in the same spot all this time, growing by seeping down the block rather than by opening stores in new locations. All 300,000 square feet of retailing space are less than a quarter- mile from the wreckage of the World Trade Center...Even the competition sympathizes. 'They're coming back to a neighborhood that's not there,' said Gary H. Richard, president of P. C. Richard & Son, the big chain with two Manhattan locations, at Union Square and on 86th Street. 'The location was a prime spot. I don't know if it's a prime spot right now.'...But Jason Friedman does not expect a crowd of shoppers today, at least not right away. For one thing, there is the smell. For another thing, there are traffic and transit restrictions. Beyond that, the retail climate in New York has been shaky since the attack, with locations closer to ground zero suffering more. On the positive side, there are people in the streets, especially near J&R, where sightseers gather for a sobering look at the nearby wreckage. On the down side, many people outside are wearing face masks, or they are police officers, or they are both."

SLT: Utah Company Sniffs Out Hazards in N.Y.

Oct 22 -- "New York health officials, determined the World Trade Center collapse will destroy no more lives, have been working with a Utah company to analyze environmental hazards to workers sifting through the debris. DataChem Laboratories Inc. in Salt Lake City has helped identify the best tests for measuring health-harming materials. It also has evaluated about 1,000 air and dust samples from Ground Zero for the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and the New York City Health Department. Company president Ken R. Olson said...'we are a piece of making sure those people [working on the cleanup] are safe.' 'It's really important for people to understand the hazards,' said James B. Perkins, executive vice president for the Salt Lake City company. More than five weeks after suicide hijackers crashed jetliners into the Twin Towers, the smoldering debris still emits faintly sweet-smelling, throat-stinging smoke. Hundreds of emergency workers breathe the sooty air throughout their eight-hour cleanup shifts. Footsteps and machinery stir up the thick dust left by the collapsed towers. When the workers breathe it, they risk inhaling a toxic brew of dangerous particles -- from cancer-causing silica and asbestos to caustic solvents, acids and heavy metals. Don Carson, a national hazardous materials trainer for the International Union of Operating Engineers, has cruised Ground Zero for 31 days, urging that respiratory masks be worn by everyone laboring there -- the heavy machinery operators, the police officers, firefighters and other cleanup workers. The masks filter out most of the pollutants. 'It's basically a hazardous-waste site,' Carson said. 'I'm very concerned about what people are breathing. That's why we preach protection.' Carson and DataChem's Perkins say many of the deadliest hazards facing Ground Zero cleanup workers have no odor and cannot be seen. Airborne dangers include toxic chemicals such as PCB's, created when certain plastics burn. Fine particles of asbestos might lodge in lungs and cause cancer. And, when the collapsing towers pulverized the cement they were made of, powdery silica hung in the air, possibly exposing workers to silicosis, another form of cancer...Carson finds that many police and firefighters who resisted using respirators because the masks are uncomfortable and make breathing more difficult, now see their necessity. 'I'm sure if you asked the people who were in the Trade Center,' Carson concluded, 'they would say it's not worth it to clean up this site, and then have another 2,000 or 3,000 people get sick and die from it.'"

October 23:

NYT: 1 LIBERTY PLAZA: Office Tower Near Rubble Can't Reopen on Deadline

Oct 23 -- "City officials canceled the reopening yesterday of 1 Liberty Plaza, a 54-story office building just east of the ruins of the World Trade Center, and declined to say when its tenants would be allowed back in. Frank McCarton, a spokesman for the city's Office of Emergency Management, said yesterday that a principal reason for the decision was logistics, which he said meant whether the area around the building was safe. Beyond that, Mr. McCarton gave no specific reason for the delay...The decision to postpone the reopening of 1 Liberty Plaza, a 1972 building that was substantially renovated in 1989, was made Friday. On Sunday, Richard Sheirer, the director of Office of Emergency Management, seemed to suggest that the city had found some deficiencies...Even though the reopening ceremony was scheduled for yesterday, only a handful of tenants at 1 Liberty Plaza had planned to return to the building immediately, Mr. Clark said. Many are conducting their own safety tests...The National Association of Securities Dealers had 429 employees in the building (including 129 working for Nasdaq, of which the association is the majority owner), and has no plans to seek an alternative site, said Michael D. Jones, an executive vice president. Mr. Jones, who had intended to be at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the reopening, said he had been assured that the delay had nothing to do with safety. 'I know from experience, that there can be a variety of things unrelated to safety that could happen to delay an opening,' he said."

October 25:

Newsday: Questions About Safety of Workers

Oct 25 -- "Hundreds of injuries to workers combing through the rubble at the World Trade Center might have been prevented had the city been faster to require proper training and equipment at what is still an 'extremely hazardous' work site, according to a sharply worded federal report. 'There is no excuse for what I saw,' John Moran, an engineer and industrial hygienist, said yesterday. Moran investigated working conditions at Ground Zero in the weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks as a consultant to the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. The report he coauthored was released this week by the institute, an arm of the federal National Institutes of Health... Moran said many of the violations - such as workers and visitors failing to wear respirators, eye protection or even hard hats - are still occurring...Moran also cautioned that some hazards may actually increase as the work continues. Workers will be at higher risk for respiratory disease the longer they stay at the site, and exposures to asbestos may increase as they dig into lower floors of the towers, where asbestos was used extensively...Moran said, however, that observers from the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration have identified 1,002 hazardous 'incidents' at the site from Sept. 21 to Oct. 14. The incidents range from failures to wear hard hats and respirators to hazardous falls and dangerously rigged cranes. Those violations continued long after the effort shifted from rescue to recovery, he noted...
"[S]everal officials familiar with the issue said [OSHA] is still operating under the assumption that because the site is still legally classified as an emergency rescue scene, OSHA cannot be anything more than an adviser to the city...Volunteer and professional emergency workers - many working 12-hour shifts day after day - worked amid swinging cranes, moving trucks, thick clouds of dust, chemical fumes, precarious piles of heavy rubble and the smell of decomposing bodies. As a result, 995 injuries - ranging from blisters and nausea to fractures and severe burns - were recorded at the site over just 11 days, from Sept. 14 to 25, the report said. 'That's the worst injury and illness rate from a site I've ever seen,' said Moran, who said he has inspected more than 250 major construction and hazardous waste sites in his 25-year career. While experts from more than a dozen agencies were on the site giving safety advice, the report said there was no centrally organized effort to make sure that workers were actually getting the training and wearing the protection they needed."

October 26:

NYDN: A Toxic Nightmare At Disaster Site: Air, water, soil contaminated

Oct 26 -- "Toxic chemicals and metals are being released into the environment around lower Manhattan by the collapse of the World Trade Center towers and by the fires still burning at Ground Zero, according to internal government reports obtained by the Daily News. Dioxins, PCBs, benzene, lead and chromium are among the toxic substances detected in the air and soil around the WTC site by Environmental Protection Agency equipment -- sometimes at levels far exceeding federal levels, the documents show. EPA monitoring devices also have found considerable contaminants in the Hudson River -- in the water and in the sediment -- especially after it rains.
     "Six weeks after the WTC attack, benzen...continues to be released into the air in plumes from the still-burning fires at relatively high levels. The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration's permissible exposure limits for workers handling benzene over an eight-hour day is 1 part per million. But the EPA documents reveal that the standard has been exceeded by considerable margins. On Oct. 2, for example, benzene levels from three spots around Ground Zero were measured at 42, 31 and 16 times higher than the OSHA standard. On Oct. 12, one reading measured 21 times higher. The highest benzene level was recorded Oct. 11 -- 58 times higher than OSHA's permissible exposure limit. The documents obtained by The News detail the presence of many hazardous substances -- many of them odorless -- in levels above or approaching EPA or OSHA safety standards...
     "The EPA documents, which include hundreds of pages of daily monitoring reports, were obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request by the New York Environmental Law and Justice Project and made available to The News...'What I've seen of the data is troubling,' said Paul Bartlett, an expert on PCBs and dioxins at the Queens College Center for the Biology of Natural Systems. He added that in his opinion, whatever monitoring the EPA has conducted has been inadequate. 'Their detection limits are aimed at threshold levels for occupational exposure,' Bartlett said. 'They aren't treating this as a disaster, so they're not asking what extent and how far are people being exposed or who is possibly being affected by the releases of chemicals. They're just checking what emissions are exceeding regulations.'...
     "Toxic Definitions: Benzene: A colorless liquid with sweet odor that evaporates into the air quickly, benzene is a highly flammable carcinogen. Breathing benzene can cause drowsiness, dizziness, confusion, headaches, rapid heart rate, vomiting, infection or tremors. Long-term exposure affects bone marrow and can cause anemia and leukemia. Breathing very high levels can cause death; Chlorinated dioxins: A group of 75 chemically related compounds that are crystals or colorless solids; chlorinated dioxins are odorless and carcinogenic. Health risks include several kinds of cancer, liver damage and severe skin disease, such as lesions. A single exposure to some dioxins can kill animals. Chlorinated dioxins can travel long distances in the air...PCBs: Polychlorinated biphenyls, a mixture of chemicals that have no smell or taste, cause cancer in animals and are considered a likely human carcinogen. Health risks include liver, stomach and thyroid damage, and anemia. PCBs also can cause acne in adults, and behavioral and immunological changes in children. They can travel long distances in the air...Sulfur Dioxide: A colorless gas with a pungent smell; breathing high levels can cause severe airway obstructions, and burn the nose and throat."

NYDN: Feds: Rescue Workers Not Protected

Oct 26 -- "A federal agency has slammed the city for not taking steps to protect rescue workers from injuries immediately after the World Trade Center catastrophe. In a sharply worded report, consultants for the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences said nearly 1,000 injuries -- ranging from blisters and nausea to severe burns and fractures -- could have been prevented if the city had made sure workers had basic safety training and equipment such as hardhats and respirators...Joel Shufro, executive director of the New York Committee on Occupational Safety and Health, said yesterday of the firefighters, paramedics, cops and ironworkers. 'But this is no longer a rescue operation,' he said. 'What needs to happen now is that workers need to be protected so they don't suffer illness or injury. What we don't want to see is a second national tragedy.' Giuliani did not have any immediate response to the report...Fire Department spokesman Frank Gribbon said worker safety has improved considerably since the chaotic days after Sept. 11...Federal consultant John Moran painted a far different picture in his report, which was released Wednesday in Atlanta. 'There is no excuse for what I saw,' said Moran. 'When I was up there, there was no evidence of any safety or health program or plan. It's the worst site I've ever seen, extremely hazardous. Very few of the workers were wearing even the most basic protective equipment.' Moran conceded that there have been improvements since then and that the city is crafting a comprehensive safety plan for Ground Zero. But he said many workers continue to work without respirators, safety glasses or even hardhats. Virtually all the Ground Zero workers were wearing hardhats, safety glasses, respirators or masks yesterday...The workers' increased efforts yesterday sent up clouds of smoke not seen since the days after the attacks and slowed the work of window installer James Healy, of Hicksville, L.I., a block away. 'They're putting out a lot of fires,' he said, 'and it's hard to see in spots.'"

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News Reports Discussing September 11th Toxins October 2001

October 1: