With Uncertainty Filling the Air, 9/11 Health Risks Are Debated

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February 8, 2002

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With Uncertainty Filling the Air, 9/11 Health Risks Are Debated

By KIRK JOHNSON

Five-year-old Phoebe Kaufman's room was once filled with her artwork. Now all

that remains is a single picture of a flower, which hangs by her bed. Her

parents threw out everything else because paper is porous and might have

absorbed dust from the collapsing World Trade Center towers that blasted into

their Lower Manhattan apartment through an open window.

No one knows whether Phoebe's artwork had become dangerous, and air tests

done in that apartment building, about a block from ground zero, have shown

the air to be safe. But decisions still had to be made, so everything

absorbent — stuffed animals, mattresses, coats — went into the trash.

It's the floor that has the family in a quandary now. The family's insurance

company said it would pay to have their old wooden floor refinished, but that

idea was shot down by their pediatrician, who said that the trade center

dust, perhaps containing asbestos or other hazardous materials, was deep in

the floor's cracks and that sanding would throw it back into the air.

" It's such a uniquely American thing to think that science can provide an

objective truth, but no one has an answer to these kinds of questions, " said

Phoebe's mother, Berger. " There's no one to turn to. "

Keating/The New York TimesIt is difficult to gauge the lingering

effects of dust and smoke that seeped into nearby residents' homes after the

attack on the World Trade Center, environmental experts say.

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Ting-Li Wang/The New York TimesAlan De Klerk and his wife plan to send their

daughter, Madison, 7, back to Public School 89 when it reopens.

Bob Rives for The New York TimesDr. Gavett, left, and Dr. Dan Costa,

working in an E.P.A. laboratory in North Carolina on Thursday, examined the

effects of dust from the trade center collapse on

mice..........................................

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