Unique and Lethal Pollution From 911

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Unique and Lethal Pollution From 911

29-Oct-2002

A year after the collapse of the World Trade Center on September 11,

scientists and physicians in New York City are still trying to figure out

what tens of thousands of people inhaled that day. Christie Whitman, head of

the Environmental Protection Agency, says there is nothing to worry about,

but New York politicians Jerrold Nadler, Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer

don't agree.

911 was not only an air pollution disaster for lower Manhattan, it affected

Brooklyn too, in areas where half the 2.5 million residents there live. NASA

space photographs show that the black, toxic cloud of World Trade Center

debris blew for more than 30 hours directly from Ground Zero to the East

River, which separates Manhattan from Brooklyn and Queens. Until Ground Zero

fires finally burned out in early December, prevailing winds carried smoke

and fumes along the same path every day.

Despite this, all health and stress surveys conducted by the New York

Academy of Medicine, the EPA, the Occupational Safety and Health

Administration, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the

state and city health departments of New York have been limited to

Manhattan. The number of people who have been ruled eligible for federal

services as a result of exposure to the 9-11 pollution in Brooklyn is,

according to Dr. Marc Wilkenfeld of the Columbia University Health Sciences

Division, " exactly none. "

New York Rep. Nadler, who kept receiving complaints about the pollution

pouring across the East River, says, " In January I said, 'Get a satellite

photo. See where the plume went.' And the EPA said, 'There are no satellite

photos.' And when I saw the NASA photos in Newsday six months later, I was

livid because I was lied to. "

" That is not true, " EPA spokeswoman Bonnie Bellow says. " He was not told

that. We would have no reason to tell the congressman that they didn't exist

when they did. "

Lioy heads up a team of scientists who are trying to determine

precisely what was in the plume of debris and smoke, and where it all fell

day by day. They collected dust samples from three lower Manhattan locations

on September 12 and submitted them to a series of tests, from electron

microscope scrutiny to gas chromatography. " This was a very horrendous

air-pollution event, " Lioy says. " The tremendous crush of all this material

was horrific. You had dust, smoke, fires, fumes, the remnants of those

tragic planes. It was a very complex event, unlike anything we or anybody

else has ever seen. "

There were thousands of windows in the 110 stories of the twin towers that

exploded into invisible, microscopic projectiles. The dust samples contained

large amounts of microscopic glass fibers, most of them less than a micron

in diameter and more than 75 microns long-small enough to pierce human

lungs. " The glass fiber was a surprise to everybody, " Lioy says. " It was one

of those things that we never anticipated. "

The team was also surprised to find that the content of the pollution varied

based on the distance from the towers. Samples collected one block from the

World Trade Center on Cortlandt Street were composed of pulverized concrete,

glass, unburned or partially burned jet fuel, and construction materials.

Samples collected on Market Street, half mile from the site, contained less

concrete but three times more asbestos. Heavy metals like zinc, strontium,

lead and aluminum also increased with distance, as well as PCBs.

The area immediately around the World Trade Center got hit with the heaviest

substances, like pulverized concrete, steel, office equipment, cars and

construction material. But the tremendous heat produced by the jet-fueled

inferno created an updraft that lifted lighter pollutants and gases upward,

towards the East River. It was a sunny day, so the chemicals in the cloud

were affected by strong ultraviolet radiation. Most organic chemicals are

altered by UV light, and some are transformed into compounds that are more

toxic to human beings, so as the cloud drifted, it became more lethal.

Not much is known about the content of the debris that reached Brooklyn

because nobody ever collected samples there. However, Dr. Tucker Woods was

running the emergency room of Long Island College Hospital on September 11

when he got a huge influx of respiratory cases. " I personally this year have

seen a real increase in asthma complaints and chronic bronchitis, " Woods

says.

Dr. Walfred Leon conducted a study of police officers who worked at Ground

Zero and experienced respiratory problems. Although most of them had been

young, healthy adults, many got severe respiratory problems that required

hospitalization. " We've never encountered anything like this before in

medicine, " Leon says. He thinks World Trade Center Cough may be a new

disease.

WTC Cough is characterized by reduced lung capacity and a hyper-reactivity

of the airways to all particles, bacteria and viruses that are inhaled. The

patient has a dry, nonproductive cough that leaves him gasping for air.

Their airways recoil from microscopic foreign objects, becoming tightly

constricted.

At first, researchers feared there would be many future cases of asbestosis,

where exposure to asbestos causes incurable lung cancer decades later (the

actor Steve McQueen died from this). However, there was little asbestos in

the twin towers because the city health department stopped its use in the

World Trade Center construction during an early stage, and less toxic

substances were used for insulation on all the upper floors.

Dr. Buist, of Oregon Health Sciences, has spent years studying the

impact of the 1980 eruption of the Mt. St. Helens volcano on the lungs of

loggers who worked on the mountain for half a decade afterwards. The ash

they inhaled, like the World Trade Center debris, was very high in natural

volcanic ground glass about the same size as the WTC dust samples.

While the loggers Buist studied experienced lung irritation, most of them

eventually regained full health when the particles were finally cleared from

their lungs. The human lung has a mechanism called the " mucous escalator, "

in which irritating particles trigger an immune response, causing mucous to

surround the particles, which are then coughed up. But Buist says glass

fibers coated with chemicals are harder for the mucous escalator to clear

from the lungs. Lioy's electron microscope studies showed that all glass

fibers from Ground Zero were chemically coated with human cell fragments,

lead or fungi.

" There is no precedent for this, " says Wilkenfeld. " This is a new experience

for all of us, and we are learning as we go along. "

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