Toxic Haste: New York's media rush to judgment on New York's air

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http://www.prospect.org/print/V13/4/katz-a.html

Volume 13, Issue 4. February 25, 2002.

Toxic Haste: New York's media rush to judgment on New York's air.

Alyssa Katz

After the World Trade Center fell, many shaken New Yorkers took unexpected

comfort in numbers. As the mayor's initial order for 10,000 body bags was

gradually displaced by an increasingly verifiable estimated body count, the

calamity began, strangely, to feel almost fathomable.

But in recent months, new figures have come to define more enduring fears

for residents and workers in lower Manhattan. For instance, 180,000 gallons

of fuel burned or spilled as the towers collapsed, including 30,000 gallons

of electrical-transformer fluids that contain PCBs. And then there are the

hundreds of thousands of atomized fluorescent bulbs, each containing a few

dozen milligrams of mercury--possibly enough to help explain the high levels

of heavy metals that have kept the headquarters of the Legal Aid Society,

across the street from ground zero, sealed since September 11. A veteran

hazardous-waste chemist for the Environmental Protection Agency now reports

that independent testing of dust inside nearby apartments shows a density of

asbestos fibers nine times greater than had been officially reported--more,

even, than at the infamous W.R. Grace mine-turned-Superfund-site in Libby,

Montana.

Literally before the dust had cleared, the administration of New York's

then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani assured a terrified city that the air was safe.

On September 16, the city's health department issued a public statement

declaring that " the general public's risk for any short or long term adverse

health [effects is] extremely low. " The same day, EPA Administrator Christie

Todd Whitman volunteered her own bill of clean health: " There's no need for

the general public to be concerned. "

Many people who live or work in lower Manhattan are convinced that they have

not been told the truth. They say that they're sick--throats sore, lungs

hacking. Cleanup workers, local residents, and, most of all, firefighters at

ground zero attest to intense respiratory illnesses unlike anything they

recall experiencing before.

Posttraumatic stress in a psychically wounded quarter surely accounts for

some of these reactions; midtown's anthrax panics have already given New

York a powerful lesson in health hysteria. But a persistent trickle of new

information has made it embarrassingly clear that federal, state, and city

agencies responsible for protecting public health and the environment have

failed to admit publicly a very simple fact: No one can yet claim to know

the extent of the environmental fallout.

" Government pronouncements regarding air quality have emphasized the good

news, " says Goldstein, who as co-director of the Natural Resources

Defense Council's Urban Program is undertaking a yearlong study of the

environmental impact of the disaster. " There was an oversimplified message

sent that long-term health standards were being met, and that probably

didn't convey the extent of the situation. " The New York State Department of

Environmental Conservation has refused to release any information at all,

asserting that the World Trade Center environment is a matter of criminal

investigation. While the EPA made public its findings on asbestos levels

early on, the agency didn't supply data related to the many other substances

known to be on the site until the New York City Environmental Law and

Justice Project filed a Freedom of Information Act request demanding it.

If government officials hoped to minimize fears that lower Manhattan was no

longer a safe place to live or work, they had plenty of help from New York's

media. Virtually the only local source of investigative coverage on

environmental hazards has been , a columnist for the New York

Daily News. On October 26, he made the front page with " A Toxic Nightmare at

a Disaster Site, " which detailed the EPA tests' findings of notable

quantities of hazardous benzene, as well as dioxin levels discharged from a

sewer pipe into the Hudson River that were more than five times higher than

any previously recorded in New York Harbor.

That day, the mayor and EPA officials held a joint press conference to

refute the story; spokespeople claimed that " spikes " in toxin levels did not

indicate potential health hazards. Giuliani's views were more than

incidental to the Daily News, whose executive editor, Goodwin, is

married to a Giuliani appointee and whose editorial-page editor, J.

Schwartz, previously worked in City Hall, where he authored Giuliani's

welfare policies. One late-September editorial was adamant that officials in

charge of rebuilding at the site should minimize environmental reviews and

any other " red tape " obstructing redevelopment.

's subsequent stories gave New York its only insights into the

witches' brew that cooked, compressed, and dispersed at ground zero.

According to , asbestos-cleanup instructions were dangerously lax,

and the PCB content of transformer-oil spills has not been verified by

anyone outside of Con Edison, the utility that operated a substation behind

7 World Trade Center. But not all of 's reporting has seen print.

Since the initial piece, his twice-weekly column has failed to appear at

least seven times. Though he won't comment on why these columns have been

delayed, or exactly what they contained, acknowledges that this is

no ordinary story.

" In 25 years as a reporter, I've never faced as much scrutiny or as much

difficulty getting stories in the paper as I have had around this issue, " he

says. " There's been enormous concern expressed by some government officials

and some civic leaders about my reporting, that it's unnecessarily alarming

people, and I believe that some of these government officials are doing a

disservice by unnecessarily saying that things are okay when they really

don't know. "

The Daily News has been covering the story more aggressively than any paper

in New York, detailing the health problems of undocumented cleanup workers

and, in January, breaking the news that the EPA ombudsman has launched an

investigation into the agency's response to the disaster.

By contrast, The New York Times has run at least 13 stories emphasizing the

safety of the site, even using the headline " Workers and Residents Are Safe,

Officials Say " to characterize a city council hearing that included

extensive expert testimony emphasizing the lack of reliable information. An

extensive mid-October story titled " Dust and Its Effects " stressed that

significant health risks were limited to unprotected workers at ground zero.

According to that story, EPA officials reported " no signs " of dioxins or

other toxic organic compounds. A week and a half later, when the federal

agency finally released its data, the Times clarified that tests indeed

found such substances at the site, though not at levels high enough to

prompt health concerns.

Farther from ground zero, reporters have been less shy about seriously

investigating air quality in lower Manhattan. In January, Pulitzer Prize

winner Schneider published a story in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

assessing the asbestos hazard and detailing the inadequacy of the

instructions city health officials gave the public (these included the

advice to use a wet rag or mop to clean up fallout dust). A week earlier,

The Washington Post had focused on public-health complaints and the leading

independent findings; that day, the EPA ombudsman announced his

investigation.

With the backing of Democratic Congressman Jerrold Nadler of New York, whose

district includes ground zero, EPA ombudsman and his chief

investigator, Hugh Kaufman, are focusing on the environmental agency's

insistence that assessing and cleaning up dust from the disaster are the

responsibility of landlords of nearby apartment and office buildings. The

World Trade Center towers were public buildings, but neither their owner,

the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, nor the city's health

department has undertaken indoor testing or remediation of adjacent sites.

EPA officials contend that measurements taken at the perimeter of ground

zero are indicative of the safety of the surrounding neighborhoods. " People

living and working in the area should take comfort in the fact that EPA air

samples of pollutants such as benzene, dioxin and sulfur dioxide taken at

the perimeter of the work site are either very low or non-detectable, "

Kathleen Callahan, acting deputy regional administrator for the agency, told

the New York City Council's environmental committee in early November.

But Kaufman insists that any serious assessment has to focus on indoor dust

and soot, substances that get trapped in buildings' ventilation systems.

This course of inquiry, he asserts, is standard procedure for investigating

toxic hazards whose pervasiveness is unknown. " Asbestos is the least of our

concerns, " says Kaufman. " The EPA has found other substances, like mercury,

benzene, dioxins in the air. What's documented at certain [outdoor] sites

doesn't indicate what's going on in buildings and homes. "

Some available information appears to support Kaufman's contention. For

instance, EPA's tests indicated " nondetectable " levels of mercury in air and

dust samples at the perimeter of ground zero even while preliminary private

testing by the owner of Legal Aid's building " showed evidence of heavy

metals, " according to Legal Aid spokeswoman Pat Bath.

But the ombudsman may not be able to complete his investigation. In late

November, Whitman announced her intention to place the ombudsman's office

under the direct control of the EPA inspector general--a move that

says would effectively end his autonomy. and the Government

Accountability Project have convinced a federal judge to halt the

restructuring temporarily, arguing that Whitman's ties to Citigroup, whose

Travelers Insurance Center could havebeen liable for millions in cleanup

costs as the result of a investigation in Denver, spurred her to

retaliate. The next court hearing has been scheduled for late February.

In the meantime, and Kaufman have come upon an auspicious opportunity

to prove that they really are indispensable: On January 24, they launched an

inquiry into the chlorine dioxide fumigation of the Hart Senate Office

Building in Washington, D.C., where some returning staffers are complaining

of headaches, sore throats, and bad smells.