False Assurances Put Public at Risk; An EPA Office of Inspector General report finds that the agency showed more concern for commerce than for health of people in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Oct 14, 2003 | by Sheila R. Cherry

Byline: Sheila R. Cherry, INSIGHT

Responding to the horror and devastation in Lower Manhattan after Sept. 11, 2001, were a myriad of city, state and federal agencies struggling with the unprecedented challenge while both protecting and reassuring the public. According to a recent report by the lead agency's inspector general, information necessary to protect the public came up short because of overemphasis on the need to prevent panic and reassure the business and trade giants still officed nearby as well as the essential workers of the city's great financial markets who live or pass through the neighborhood.

That lead agency was the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), assigned the task of overseeing the monitoring, collection and storage of data on environmental hazards resulting from the collapse of the World Trade Center (WTC) twin towers. Now the EPA is caught in a political firestorm. Congress and locals are furious that agency officials, who might readily have been forgiven for uncertainty at the time, refused to admit even temporarily that they didn't know what the environmental dangers were.

Instead, then-administrator of the EPA Christie Todd Whitman issued press releases, granted interviews and gave press conferences to issue blanket assurances to New Yorkers seeking to know what precautions they should take to protect their health and that of their families. "Sampling of ambient air quality found either no asbestos or very low levels of asbestos," Whitman proclaimed in a press release on Sept. 13, 2001. For weeks agency announcements reiterated that air and dust samples monitored in Lower Manhattan did not show cause for public concern. So residents and responders alike combed through the poisonous dust and debris in and around ground zero, all but ignoring protective breathing devices.

As Insight reported in May 2002, Whitman forced out the then-ombudsman for the EPA, Robert Martin, who launched a probe into Whitman's actions for alleged conflict of interest in declaring Lower Manhattan safe a declaration that may have benefited her husband's investments in the area [see "The Uproar at the EPA," May 27, 2002].

The EPA's Office of Inspector General (OIG) took the agency to task in its recent report, EPA's Response to the World Trade Center Collapse: Challenges, Successes and Areas for Improvement. The OIG found that the EPA "did not have sufficient data and analyses" to reassure the public that the air was safe to breathe without protection. Indeed, documents included in the report showed, the EPA had no basis for making unqualified claims about the safety of the air quality in Lower Manhattan.

In a memo responding to a draft of the OIG report, acting EPA Administrator Marianne Horinko admitted outright: "An immediate and continuing problem in measuring and communicating environmental risk associated with the WTC dust/debris cloud was the fact that for many of the contaminants of concern, there were no health-based standards." Even then, critics note, she attempted to duck responsibility by saying: "The need for such standards could not have ever been reasonably anticipated. Even for asbestos, the contaminant of greatest concern, there was no applicable standard covering the situation in Lower Manhattan."

But a December 2002 report from the inspector general of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) says, "EPA was aware, based on its work in the aftermath of the 1993 WTC terrorist bombing, that the WTC towers contained asbestos material. Neither FEMA nor New York City officials, however, initially requested that EPA test or clean inside buildings because neither EPA nor the New York City Department of Environmental Protection could identify any specific health or safety threat. EPA nevertheless advised rescue workers early after the terrorist attack on the WTC that materials from the collapsed buildings contained irritants [sic] and advised residents and building owners to use professional asbestos-abatement contractors to clean significantly affected spaces." By which they apparently meant the whole of Lower Manhattan.

The EPA, the OIG report showed, opted for concern about commerce rather than people. So did the New York City Department of Health (NYCDOH), which advised in information releases: "Based on the asbestos test results thus far, there are no significant health risks to occupants in the affected area or to the general public."

New York City, which took the lead on residential cleanup at the discretion of the EPA, used a criteria-based, mathematical formula for estimating the amount of airborne asbestos. Since there were no health-based testing standards, the OIG acknowledged the need for improvising. But city and EPA officials issued affirmative health assurances based on those formulaic calculations, says the report, "when environmental professionals clearly acknowledge that this standard is not protective of health."

One NYCDOH advisory declared, "Based on the asbestos air-test results so far, the risk for disease from asbestos exposure in the community near the WTC is very low. Asbestos exposure does not cause immediate symptoms and short-term exposure cannot be detected by routine medical tests, such as physical exams, blood work or chest X-rays. It takes 15 to 20 years to see any symptoms of disease-related asbestos exposure, but experts believe that the levels of exposure to asbestos are low enough that the likelihood of developing disease from the limited, short-term exposures associated with the WTC incident is small." The experts were not named.