The Toxins of 9/11

On September 11, 2001, I was in lower Manhattan and watched the collapse of the World Trade Center towers with my own eyes. Americans saw this tragedy on television, also, over and over and over.

What you couldn’t see on television was the smell. For weeks after, lower Manhattan and Brooklyn were permeated with a sharp, bitter smell of burned plastic, metal, and who knows what else.

When the Stock Exchange got back to business on September 17 the dust had settled out of the air, and the city assured residents and workers that the air was safe to breathe. As people made their way back to homes and offices, they were told to go ahead and sweep away the white dust that covered everything.

What I know is that I made my way to the Financial District in mid-October, and after only an hour of walking around my eyes and throat were burning. This didn’t feel “safe.”

Just a few days after September 11, people who spent large amounts of time where the smell was strongest began to report skin and respiratory problems. Mayor Giuliani and EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman kept assuring the people of New York the air was safe. On September 30, Mayor Giuliani said,

“There is a lot of questions about the air quality because there are at times in downtown Manhattan and then sometimes even further beyond that, a very strong odor. The odor is really just from the fire and the smoke that continues to go on. It is monitored constantly and is not in any way dangerous. It is well below any level of problems and any number of ways in which you test it.”

A few days after 9/11, Congressman Jerrold Nadler set up the Ground Zero Elected Officials task force. The task force decided to conduct its own air quality tests. One of the task force members was a city council candidate, Alan Gerson, who had worked in a law firm representing victims of asbestos poisoning. Gerson contacted scientists with expertise in testing for asbestos.

One evening Gerson and City Councilwoman Kathryn Freed took the scientists to lower Manhattan and snuck them past the barricades. These scientists made the first independent measurements of both air quality in lower Manhattan and asbestos debris within residential apartments. The scientists found levels of asbestos that were more than double what government guidelines say are “safe.” Breathing asbestos fibers can cause the deadly cancer mesothelioma and a host of other diseases.

On October 26, the New York Daily News published a report by Juan Gonzales, “A Toxic Nightmare at a Disaster Site.” Gonzales reported that the EPA had found levels of benzene and dioxin in the air that were several times above the danger zone. Gonzales wrote more stories revealing that the city’s asbestos-cleanup instructions were dangerously lax.

Meanwhile, the dedicated firefighters, policemen, and others who worked daily at Ground Zero — the heroes of the hour — were given no special equipment or instructions to protect them from the fumes and toxic particles.

This year, Mike Hall of the AFL-CIO blog reported that the Ground Zero workers still have persistent lung problems. There doesn’t seem to be an official tally of 9/11 responders who have since died of diseases caused by exposure to toxins, although some news stories put the number at around 100. The damage from asbestos exposure will take many more years to develop.

Juan Gonzalez has a recent story in the Daily News about Joe Picurro, an ironworker who volunteered at Ground Zero. Today Picurro is dying, painfully. “The list of ailments ravaging his body is stunning,” Gonzales writes.

Officially, about 3,017 people died in the terrorist attacks of September 11. Because no one bothered to protect the health of Ground Zero workers and others exposed to toxins, more will die in the years ahead.

— Barbara O’Brien

This entry was posted on Friday, September 11th, 2009 at 10:20 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.