Yearning to breathe in a toxic zone

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Yearning to breathe in a toxic zone

Four months on, WTC attacks still haunting

New Yorkers - and their health

Half of the occupants of Battery Park City have moved out. Its sprawling

playgrounds teem with debris, not children.

By Francesca Lyman

SPECIAL TO MSNBC

Jan. 11 - Four months ago, Sept. 11 marked the tragic loss of thousands of

lives in an unprecedented terrorist attack on U.S. soil. The event may also

be the biggest environmental disaster to ever hit New York City - or any

densely populated area in America, for that matter. Now, some experts are

calling for Ground Zero and surrounding neighborhoods to be designated a

federal toxic waste site.

STEVE SWANEY and his wife looked up to the World Trade Center towers

from their apartment balcony in Battery Park City, the development complex

skirting the Hudson River once advertised as " an oasis of green calm just

minutes away from the financial capital of the world. "

Today, half of its occupants have moved out, and its sprawling

playgrounds no longer teem with children.

Recently, Swaney watched workers in full " Haz-Mat " suits, attached by

hose to waste trucks, vacuuming dust, asbestos-contaminated debris and other

toxins from the complex's parks and landscaped paths. It was midnight.

" I'm wondering to myself, 'If they're all suited up, why is it safe

for us to move back in?' " Swaney says. " Why are they here so late at night -

is it that they don't want the dust stirred up, or they don't want people to

be alarmed to see them? It was all a great mystery - and rather disturbing. "

FOUR MONTHS LATER

'I'm wondering to myself, " If they're all suited up, why is it safe for us

to move back in? " '

- STEVE SWANEY

displaced New Yorker Today, gone are the smoldering fires where the

Twin Towers once stood, as well as most of the burning smells, except at the

site of the crater itself. Four months after the trade-center attacks,

thousands of people line up to get free tickets to ensure a place on a short

viewing platform to peer into the crater of Ground Zero, a place that still

haunts New Yorkers.

But look beyond the crater to the hundreds of apartments and offices

in the surrounding neighborhoods of the Financial District, Battery Park

City, Tribeca and Chinatown, and you'll find people still worried whether

their homes and workplaces have been adequately cleaned up from the

thousands of tons of dust thrown off by the buildings' collapse - and

wondering if it's safe to stay.

Although health and environmental officials continue to declare the

area around Ground Zero safe to live and work in, Swaney and other residents

are dubious. Two days after leaving the area, his wife was found to have 40

percent lung function, and since leaving the area, she's much better.

WTC-area workers to be tested for toxins

LUNG AILMENTS RISING

A number of New York physicians also worry about a surge in new

respiratory ailments and worsened asthma cases among lower Manhattan

residents. In response to concern from parents, schools and neighborhood

boards, several universities have launched new medical studies to monitor

their health.

" More people are showing up with respiratory ailments - coughing and

tightness of the chest, wheezing, " says Neil Schachter, a pulmonary

specialist at Mt. Sinai Medical Center in New York. He says he's seen a 10

percent increase in respiratory ills in his practice - asthma in previously

healthy people as well as cases of worsening disease. " People are disabled,

home sick with racking coughs, " he says.

Swaney now feels the city vastly downplayed the hazards of dust and

air pollution and that its standards for cleanup of dust may be inadequate

to ensure residents' safety.

GROWING CONCERNS

He's not alone in his concerns. A growing number of residents,

elected officials and health experts now feel that some mechanism needs to

be set up to ensure public health safety at Ground Zero and affected

downtown neighborhoods.

January 11 - Four months after the attacks, thousands of people line up for

a spot on a viewing platform to peer into the crater of Ground Zero, a place

that still - and perhaps forever will -- haunts New York. NBC's Pat Dawson

reports.

" There's certainly a high level of emotional discomfort and anxiety

expressed by our constituents, " says Dan Weiller, spokesman for New York

State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, whose district encompasses the lower

East Side, Chinatown and Battery Park City. " A lot of people wonder whether

there's been enough testing and monitoring to know if people's health is

being protected. "

To that end, Environmental Protection Agency ombudsman J.

on Thursday asked the agency to hand over documents on how well it

informed the public about testing it had done for hazardous materials, such

as asbestos and benzene, The Washington Post reported.

The agency also asked officials to show whether " the kind of asbestos

testing they did was flawed because it did not pick up finely pulverized

asbestos dust that seeped into nearby offices and apartment buildings. "

A SUPERFUND CALL

Cate , a chemist at the EPA in the office of solid waste,

agrees that the agencies may have ignored some potent health hazards. " I

think people really are at risk here, because unless there is thorough and

effective cleanup, people are at risk of breathing asbestos fibers, and once

they get in their lungs, they never go away. "

A neighborhood haunted by stress, illness

Interviews in late October with more than 400 people living near the World

Trade Center site found that many continue to suffer from stress and other

disorders.

Nearly 40 percent have had symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder,

including emotional numbness, depression, anxiety, feelings of intense

guilt, irritability or outbursts of intense anger and sleep loss, since the

Sept. 11 attack.

About half suffer physical ailments, such as nose, throat and eye

irritation.

The ailments, most likely short-term effects that are expected to

dissipate, were linked to the fires that burned for weeks at the site.

One in three felt they could benefit from additional counseling.

Because microscopic asbestos fibers are so small, they can hang in

the air and, when inhaled, penetrate and irritate the lung, she says. And

studies have shown that breathing in airborne asbestos fibers can lead to a

variety of ills - mesothelioma, or cancer of the lining of the lung, lung

cancer and asbestosis, a thickening and scarring of the lungs.

compared dust samples drawn from New York apartments in an

independent study done by the Ground Zero Task Force with similar samples

drawn from houses in Libby, Mont., a small town designated last December as

a Superfund site after a surrounding vermiculite mine released deadly

asbestos fibers into the air, allegedly killing hundreds. As a Superfund

site, Libby was automatically added to the EPA's National Priority List of

toxic sites to be monitored and cleaned.

Although there weren't many samples, says , these results

suggest that lower Manhattan could be eligible for listing as a Superfund

site, the criterion being that its contamination, like Libby's, poses " an

imminent and substantial endangerment to public health. "

UNSAFE ASBESTOS LEVELS

For example, one sample of dust from a windowsill in an apartment on

Warren Street, four blocks away from Ground Zero, had 79,000 fibers per

square centimeter of asbestos, some 22 times the highest level found in

house dust in the town of Libby, which has just 5,000 residents, she notes.

Considering that Manhattan is so densely populated, and other

pollutants are an added concern, its residents may be arguably at greater

risk than officials admit, believes.

Others agree. Kupferman, director of the New York Environmental

Law and Justice Project, is requesting that the EPA and state of New York

designate the World Trade Center site as well as neighborhoods within a five

to six block radius as a federal Superfund site " to enable federal dollars

to be spent on proper monitoring, inspection and cleanup. " The advantage of

this, Kupferman says, is to guarantee that regulations are enforced to

ensure thorough removal of toxic residues.

Workers set up vacuums to remove sand contaminated with asbestos in

Washington Market Park near Ground Zero.

Bartlett, an environmental scientist with the Center for the

Biology of Natural Systems, agrees that some sort of " emergency designation "

for the whole area could help ensure health and safety, and perhaps

institute an effective health-tracking system to follow the area's public

health. As it is now, he charges, " the kind of environmental monitoring we'

re getting from EPA and other agencies doesn't adequately measure

contaminants. "

NO FORMAL RESPONSE

EPA hasn't formally responded to proposals to re-designate the site.

But Joe Martyak, spokesman for EPA in Administrator Christie Whitman's

office, says that already " there's an enormous amount of money provided by

the Presidential disaster declaration. "

As to whether that money could be used to help in cleanup of homes

and offices, however, Martyak notes, " indoor air is beyond EPA's

jurisdiction. "

Opposed to the idea is Gerrard, an environmental lawyer for

Arnold and Porter, a law firm that represents real estate clients, among

others. " It would be a bad idea to list Ground Zero as a Superfund site, " he

says. " It would subject the site to a much longer and more drawn-out

bureaucratic process of deciding how best to clean it up, and it would

significantly impede the site's redevelopment. "

Better, suggests Gerrard, would be " imposing necessary health and

safety controls without listing the site this way. "

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According to Kupferman, there's a tension between those who want

the property values to stay high - and might object to the area labeled

hazardous - and those who don't have the luxury of moving out to a second

home or an apartment on loan. " To some people there's a stigma attached to

these neighborhoods already. These neighborhoods have been declared an

environmental disaster area in everything but name. "

TENANTS STILL CONCERNED

Back in Lower Manhattan, Swaney, a former president of his tenants'

association, believes many tenants are concerned and says at least half have

moved temporarily for health reasons.

He recalls that when his wife, Marisa de Arellano, fled their

building, to be evacuated with others by boat to Jersey City on Sept. 11,

she left the patio doors open. As a result, the apartment became covered in

dust from the falling debris.

To make sure that the building had undergone a thorough cleaning by

the landlords, the Swaneys waited several weeks before returning. But they

were shocked upon their return to find visible piles of dust. de

Arellano could barely breathe upon entering.

Swaney went down to the building superintendent to ask about it: " The

super told us, 'My wife did the cleaning.' He was insulted that I was

impugning his wife's cleaning skills, when we were worried that the

apartment wasn't fit to live in. "

But the couple wasn't angry with the supers, who thought they were

doing the right thing, even putting their own health in jeopardy, cleaning

the building with dustpan and broom.

Environmental authorities should have overseen the operation, Swaney

says. And a second cleaning done a month later, by immigrant workers with no

training or special equipment like vacuum cleaners or respirators, wasn't

much better. So the Swaneys followed with a third cleaning of their own,

using a HEPA vacuum cleaner, with special dust and allergen filters,

suggested by the city health department.

Even then, the couple ended up moving out, " on very clear, strong

orders of my wife's doctors, " Swaney says. " You can't tell me or people in

this neighborhood that there's nothing in the air. "

" Anybody with a kid still living down here is nuts, " he says. His

wife adds that so few children are left in the complex that the day care

center is on the verge of closing.

Diane , who up until recently lived in a co-op apartment two

blocks away from the disaster site, is another New Yorker who is delaying

returning to her home in the financial district. She considers herself one

of the fortunate, having friends who could loan her places to stay while the

dust settled.

'A LUCKY ONE'

An asthmatic and mother of an infant boy, she says, " I don't need to

have an official designation of whether it's safe or not. If I'm in a place

with bad air and I'm coughing all the time, I leave. "

Some don't care whether the area is designated a Superfund site or

not - just as long as it's given a clean bill of health. " I just want the

buildings properly tested and professionally cleaned according to EPA's own

guidelines, " says Swaney. " We have tests showing asbestos was present in the

dust in quantities over 1 percent - the level at which EPA requires cleaning

be done only by contractors certified to remove hazardous waste. Right now,

this is not being enforced. "

If the state of New York considered listing Lower Manhattan as a

Superfund site, there might be understandable reluctance from financial

interests, says Sgt. Duffy of the New York Police Department. " With

the whole idea of bringing business back to lower Manhattan, they might not

want to have it tainted that way. "

At the same time, he adds, " the city has an obligation to the tens of

thousands of emergency workers and hundreds of thousands of people who live

and work downtown. Financial obligation to the city is one thing. But the

higher obligation is moral and ethical. "

Duffy, who has been involved in the rescue effort since the

beginning, says that so much time was spent searching for any survivors and

combing through debris for remains of the dead, that less thought was given

to the living.

Now people are shocked to hear that some police officers have excess

mercury in their blood, possibly as a result of toxic exposures, and

hundreds of firemen have respiratory ailments.

" New York won the propaganda war in showing a brave face, " says

Duffy, " but it lost the war in terms of seeing to the needs of the public

and the workers. "

Francesca Lyman is an environmental and travel journalist, and editor

of the American Museum of Natural History book, " Inside the Dzanga-Sangha

Rain Forest " (Workman, 1998).

http://www.msnbc.com/news/686072.asp