http//www.downtownexpress.com/de_64/epaplanstoexpand.html
Special ReportCommunity members and scientific experts applauded an Environmental Protection Agency proposal to expand testing for 9/11 contaminants to residences and workplaces north of Canal St.
At a July 26 public meeting, E.P.A. officials outlined a testing program that would sample apartments, offices, firehouses and schools south of Houston St. to determine whether any contaminants remain from the collapse of the World Trade Center and subsequent fires. The new testing program would nearly double the area of the E.P.A.’s previous efforts to test and clean Lower Manhattan, which were limited to residences south of Canal St.
"I’m happy the wall of Canal St. has been buried forever," said Paul Lioy, a professor of environmental and occupational medicine at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and a member of the expert panel reviewing the E.P.A. response to 9/11.
Since its formation in March, the E.P.A.-led panel of 18 government and independent experts has grappled with the best way to gauge lingering contamination from the World Trade Center collapse while bolstering public confidence in the E.P.A. Public trust in the agency plummeted after its independent inspector general wrote last August that the E.P.A. acted without sufficient evidence when it declared the air Downtown safe to breathe one week after the trade center disaster. Also, in 2002, the agency instituted a residential cleanup program that many Downtowners found to be poorly designed and run.
While concerns remain over the geographic and chemical scope of the proposed new program, observers and panelists said the plan had promise.
"It appears the E.P.A. is taking a step in the right direction, and finally doing its job at ground zero," said U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, in a statement. Nadler has been one of the harshest critics of the E.P.A. response to 9/11.
"I think this is an outstanding design, and I think this has moved us past where we started," said David Prezant, a panel member who is also deputy chief medical officer with the New York Fire Department.
The proposal involves sampling 600 to 800 units that are volunteered by their owners. A unit is defined as an apartment, a classroom, or equivalent space within an office building or firehouse. Apartments that participated in the E.P.A.’s initial cleaning and sampling program are eligible for inclusion in the new program; registration procedures have not yet been established for this phase.
Workers would collect 10 samples per unit and test them for four known World Trade Center contaminants asbestos, man-made insulation materials, silica and PAHs (polyaromatic hydrocarbons).
The cost of the sampling and analysis would be about $12,000 per unit, Paul Gilman, chairperson of the panel and assistant administrator for research and development at the E.P.A., told Downtown Express during a break in Monday’s meeting. If the agency tests 800 apartments, the sampling and analysis would cost $9.6 million.
In compiling the list of contaminants, officials chose toxins not commonly found in urban environments, whose origins could be traced more definitively to 9/11. But some questioned the decision to exclude lead, which is common in cities and also in World Trade Center dust.
"I strongly urge you to put lead back into your protocol," said Suzanne Mattei of the Sierra Club.
Mattei argued that Lower Manhattan is not part of New York City’s "lead belt," where the metal is more prevalent, and therefore the trade center could be considered a possible source of lead found in Lower Manhattan. Since children under age seven are particularly susceptible to the effects of lead poisoning, the E.P.A. could test for lead in only those apartments with young children, suggested Catherine McVay Hughes, a Lower Manhattan resident who serves as the panel’s community liaison.
Within the next two weeks, the E.P.A. will issue a revised proposal that will incorporate feedback from Monday’s meeting, said Michael Brown, an agency spokesperson. Brown said the community would present its comments on the revisions at the panel’s next meeting in September, and the program is to begin shortly thereafter with a competitive bidding process for the sampling and analysis contracts.
Whatever form it takes, the final program design will represent a big departure from the panel’s original charge to revisit some of the 4,200 apartments that participated in the E.P.A.’s first testing and cleaning program. This would have gauged whether any recontamination occurred since the initial cleanup, but panelists quickly dismissed that plan and called for a broader approach.
In a further sign that the panel has embraced an expansive mandate, members agreed on Monday to monitor the dismantling of the Deutsche Bank building across from ground zero. Testing by Deutsche Bank contractors found very high levels of asbestos in the building at 130 Liberty St., and community members fear harmful exposure when it is taken apart.
Mary Perillo, a resident of 125 Cedar St. next to the Deutsche Bank building, appealed to the panel during a public comment period of Monday’s meeting.
"I know you’re doing a lot of work for us already, but we have nowhere else to go," Perillo said. "Can you be our advocates?"
"As a panel member, I think it’s clearly within our mandate to help you," Prezant said. His comments were echoed by other members.
Jeanne Stellman, a panelist and professor at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, said the E.P.A. must consider the Deutsche Bank building in the context of its own sampling program. Monday’s proposal called for a free cleanup of units found to have elevated levels of contaminants.
But Stellman said it may not make sense for the E.P.A. to invest time and money cleaning apartments and workplaces with the 14-month dismantling process looming as a potential source of recontamination "It’s like washing your kitchen floor and going out to do the gardening afterwards."
Elizabeth@DowntownExpress.com
Back to TopBush Administration Pushes Weaker Cleanup Standards for Toxic Sites, by Lenny Siegel, Director of the Center for Public Environmental Oversight, The Loma Prietan, July-August 2004 http//lomaprieta.sierraclub.org/lp0407_ToxicSites.html
In January 2003, the U.S. EPA began a new approach to public health protection in Mountain View, where groundwater is contaminated with trichloroethylene (TCE), a cancer-causing solvent used widely in the past. EPA officials told the public that TCE was 5 to 65 times as toxic as previously believed, and warned that TCE in groundwater could vaporize into overlying homes and other buildings. Long-term exposure to low levels of TCE is believed to cause cancer, liver disease, and neurological problems, plus a host of other ailments. The companies and federal agencies responsible for cleanup initiated comprehensive new air sampling programs, and the results are cause for concern. However, the Bush Administration reportedly plans to reverse the EPA's recent toxicity assessment. When that happens, it will undermine the studies and remediation, not only in Mountain View, but throughout Silicon Valley and the nation.
In the early 1980s, TCE pollution was found at dozens of Silicon Valley sites. One of the largest chemical plumes was found in the Mountain View industrial area that was the birthplace of the commercial semiconductor industry. Today it's known as the Middlefield-Ellis-Whisman (MEW) Study Area. Led by the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, the local community campaigned successfully to add it to the EPA "Superfund" National Priorities List.
The regulatory agencies and responsible parties (polluters) gradually undertook a thorough surface and groundwater cleanup program. In addition, the city of Mountain View relocated a drinking water supply well and undertook routine water testing to ensure that the public would not be exposed to TCE and other contaminants. The community-based Restoration Advisory Board established to oversee cleanup efforts at Moffett Field became the model for similar boards at hundreds of contamination sites in the United States.
In Mountain View, in contrast to many other polluted communities, the system seemed to be working. However, following the Navy's October 2000 discovery of TCE contamination just 10 feet below the Orion Park military family housing complex, there was concern that contamination might be entering homes. We called for indoor air sampling. As the issue gained prominence in other regions of the nation, EPA began a national effort to understand and respond to what became known as "vapor intrusion."
Volatile compounds in shallow groundwater vaporize and rise. They move up through the soil or gaps in foundations into buildings and outdoor air. The original cleanup programs did not consider this potentially hazardous pathway.
In August 2001, EPA released its draft toxicity assessment for TCE. In summary, it found that children were more susceptible to TCE exposure than adults, and that TCE was 5 to 65 times more toxic than previously believed. EPA's Science Advisory Board peer review praised the "ground-breaking" assessment and urged moving quickly to implement the stronger standard. In 2002, EPA Region 9 adopted new, more stringent screening levels for TCE in both water and air, and with public input it began a new air sampling program. To oversee responses, the community formed the Northeast Mountain View Advisory Council (NMAC). For more information, see www.whisman.net/nmac/.
Relatively high levels of TCE vapors have been found in a number of buildings, including some homes. Low levels of TCE have been found outdoors, inconsistently, throughout the area, including at Slater Elementary School. Since TCE in the air dissipates quickly, there must be persistent sources in the northeast Mountain View area.
The local community appreciates the extent to which the responsible parties, property owners, and regulatory agencies are studying this problem. Some of the work is cutting edge, but there's room for improvement. Air contamination above shallow groundwater plumes seems high enough and consistent enough to merit an additional response. If continuing studies bear this out, more cleanup may be necessary.
This is the direction where the local EPA's program in Mountain View is headed, but it could grind to a halt. The Air Force, on behalf of the entire Defense Department, has challenged the EPA's TCE toxicity assessment. It is challenging the science, but it's no secret that Bush appointees consider the cost of investigation and cleanup to be prohibitive. Reportedly, EPA will delay the new standards and instruct its regional offices not to use the more protective levels.
This is similar to what has happened with EPA's health assessment for perchlorate, a principal component of solid rocket fuel. Perchlorate pollution has been found at many facilities through the Southwest, and locally at a former highway-flare plant in southern Santa Clara County. In fact, perchlorate-producer Kerr McGee dumped so much perchlorate into Lake Mead that the Colorado River, which delivers water to 20 million people, is contaminated. At the Bush Administration's behest, EPA has deferred establishing a federal perchlorate health standard.
If the reports about EPA's plans for TCE are true, public health in Mountain View, and probably hundreds of other sites, will be sacrificed to the concerns of polluters and the Bush Administration.
After months of requests by one of the NMAC board members, EPA sampled the air in her home. The results announced in May showed that in her 11-year-old son's bedroom, where he has apparently lived above a TCE plume during his entire life, TCE was found at levels well above the new health screening level. If that screening standard is weakened, then he would supposedly be "safe," even though EPA's Science Advisory Board commended EPA for coming up with health-based exposure levels designed to be protective for children.
Local communities are more empowered than most. For the past quarter century we have been able to get the government and private parties to address TCE and other pollution in our community in an effective, open fashion. However, if national standards are rolled back, we'll become guinea pigs, exposed to unhealthy levels of contaminants until national policy-makers decide that the key purpose of environmental protection is to safeguard public health.
For more on the Center for Public Environmental Oversight, visit www.cpeo.org
Back to Top
White House to Allow $2 Billion in 9/11 Aid to Be Used for Airport Link,
by Raymond Hernandez,New York Times, July 30, 2004http//www.nytimes.com/2004/07/30/nyregion/30link.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1091193350-+u3nDFRXYR7jF4lrkqw0pQ
The White House has agreed to let New York use $2 billion in Sept. 11 aid to help build a $6 billion rail link connecting the World Trade Center site to the Long Island Rail Road and Kennedy International Airport.
The decision by the Bush administration is a huge boost for Gov. George E. Pataki's efforts to get a direct rail connection from Manhattan to the airport. Such a link, common in most other large cities, has been a dream of urban planners for decades.
And advocates for downtown say putting the link at the World Trade Center site would significantly enhance Lower Manhattan's efforts to attract new business and recover economically from the terror attack.
The money for the rail project would come from unused portions of a multibillion-dollar tax-incentive package that Washington allocated in 2001 to help spur redevelopment of Lower Manhattan after the Sept. 11 attack, according to city, state and federal officials. The rail plan must still be approved by Congress.
Governor Pataki and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg had pushed the White House in recent weeks to redirect the funds, from the so-called Liberty Bond program, to the planned rail link.
The project is expected to be completed in 2013. It would allow travelers heading to Manhattan from Kennedy Airport to travel aboard new trains on existing AirTrain tracks that loop around the central terminal area and then run along a viaduct in the middle of the Van Wyck Expressway to Jamaica, Queens. There, a new 1,500-foot elevated connector would carry the trains from the AirTrain tracks to the Long Island Rail Road tracks heading toward Brooklyn.
Just before Atlantic Terminal in Brooklyn, and joined to it by a new underground station, a three-mile tunnel would begin, burrowing under Brooklyn and the East River into Lower Manhattan.
The tunnel would come close to Hanover Square, the intended terminus of the Second Avenue subway, and the World Trade Center, the existing terminus of the E train.
Once completed, officials say, the link would greatly expand the ability of businesses in the financial district to attract workers from Long Island, who now have to take both trains and subways to get downtown. It would accommodate up to 100,000 Long Island commuters a day, according to the governor's office.
The White House's decision to provide the money was detailed in a document prepared by the Office of Management and Budget as part of the midyear budget review that the Bush administration plans to submit to Congress today.
The document itself does not specify how the $2 billion is to be spent, other than noting that it is being set aside for "transportation infrastructure" in New York. But both the governor and the mayor have said that they will use the money to pay for the rail link.
The aid request must still go to Congress, where the Bush administration's support could go a long way toward quieting protests from Republican budget hawks who are increasingly concerned about the growing federal deficit, particularly in an election year.
In a statement, Mr. Pataki said the decision brought the rail project one step closer to reality.
"President Bush's support is a tremendous boost for the rail link project," he said. "Now, it is up to Congress and our state's Congressional delegation to ensure this proposal becomes law. I look forward to working with them to make the rail link a reality."
Mr. Bloomberg also praised the decision. "By improving regional access to Lower Manhattan," he said, "we can continue the area's dramatic rebirth from the attacks of Sept. 11 and ensure its future as an economic engine for the entire city."
The decision by the White House comes a few weeks after Mr. Pataki made an unusually direct appeal to President Bush, a fellow Republican, asking him to provide cash for the rail project in lieu of unused parts of the multibillion-dollar Liberty Zone tax-incentive package for Lower Manhattan.
Those tax breaks have been controversial from their inception, with some New York politicians, economists and real estate experts questioning their value and arguing that Lower Manhattan has been in desperate need of a large infusion of actual money from the federal government.
The Bush administration and New York officials are trying to figure out how the $2 billion will be doled out. The federal government could give the city and state hard cash, though that option would probably meet resistance in Congress, given the federal government's budgetary predicament.
But another approach is apparently being considered by all sides permitting the city and state to raise the money needed for the rail project by selling tax credits on the open market that allow businesses to reduce their federal tax liability.
Charles E. Schumer, New York's senior senator, said allowing the city and state to sell federal tax credits was "an elegant solution" given the opposition that might arise in Congress to providing $2 billion in hard cash to the city and state. "There's more than one way to skin this cat," said Mr. Schumer, a Democrat.
Some New York City Democrats, while describing themselves as pleased with the news, said they would be keeping a close eye on how much political capital the White House was willing to expend in getting the $2 billion aid package approved in Congress.
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, suggested that the test of the Bush administration's commitment to the project would be its willingness to persuade Republicans to adopt the $2 billion aid package. "We have to be sure it's real," she said. "We need the administration to work very hard."
Mr. Pataki's office says that financing for the $6 billion project will include at least $560 million from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and unspecified amounts from the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and other sources.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
Back to TopEPA Awards Largest-Ever Grant To Study Health Effects of Air Pollution, EPA Press Release, July 29, 2004
http//www.epa.gov/pmresearch/pm_grant/
Contact Bill Dunbar 206-553-1203/dunbar.bill@epa.gov(Seattle, WA. - July 29, 2004) Administrator Mike Leavitt today awarded the University of Washington a $30 million grant to study the connection between air pollution and cardiovascular disease. The grant is the largest ever awarded by the EPA for scientific research, and will contribute to a better understanding of the long-term health effects of breathing air contaminated by particulate matter and other pollutants.
"The President is pursuing a national strategy to dramatically improve America’s air quality," said Administrator Leavitt. "An important component of this strategy is to improve our understanding of the health risks from long-term exposure to particulate pollution, particularly as it relates to heart disease, the leading cause of death in our country."
In a recent evaluation of the EPA’s research on particulate matter (PM), the National Research Council highlighted the need for a prospective epidemiology study to extend the government’s knowledge of long-term PM exposure. This grant responds to this need by examining the association between ambient air pollution, including fine particles and other pollutants, and the progression of cardiovascular disease in 8,700 people ages 50 to 89.
The study will track people who are from varied ethnic groups who live in cities across the country. The researchers will evaluate whether long-term exposure to fine particles is associated with specific changes in atherosclerosis (buildup of plaque in the arteries) and other factors associated with heart disease. The University of Washington will provide EPA with an annual scientific report of data and findings which will be used to inform EPA research and regulatory decisions.
Particulates come from a variety of sources including coal-burning power plants, factories, construction sites, cars, trucks, buses, tilled fields, unpaved roads, stone crushing, and the burning of wood. Other particles may be formed in the air when gases emitted from burning fuels react with sunlight and water vapor.
Premature death and other health problems are strongly related to sulfates in the air and ambient concentrations of fine particles less than 2.5 micrograms. Long-term exposure to ambient, airborne particulate matter is associated with increased mortality, largely due to cardiovascular causes and serious respiratory problems. In addition, chronic exposure to particulates can cause decreased development of lung function among school-age children.
Reducing emissions of PM is a crucial component of the Bush Administration’s strategy for cleaner air and healthier Americans. The Administration’s new Clean Air Rules include a suite of actions that will dramatically improve air quality, people’s health and quality of life. This strategy includes EPA’s recent rule to reduce pollution from nonroad diesel engines, new more-protective ozone and fine particle standards and proposed Clean Air Interstate Rule to reduce pollution from power plants in the eastern U.S. Together these rules will make the next 15 years one of the most productive periods of air quality improvement in America's history.
The grant announced today is funded through the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Science to Achieve Results (STAR) competitive grants program. For more information about this grant, visit http//www.epa.gov/pmresearch/pm_grant. For more information on EPA’s STAR program, see http//www.epa.gov/ncer/.
WTC Air Quality Stirs Controversy, by Heather Moyer, Disaster News Network, July 28, 2004
http//www.disasternews.net/news/news.php?articleid=2313
Lack of Funds Delaying Toxic Waste Cleanups, by Juliet Eilperin, Staff Writer, Washington Post, July 28, 2004 http//www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19679-2004Jul27.html?referrer%3Demail
Number of Superfund Sites Growing While Federal Resources Drained by Other Needs
The federal government's toxic waste cleanup program is delaying projects across the country because funding is decreasing at a time when the number of sites and other demands are increasing, according to state and federal officials.A slew of new Superfund waste sites, coupled with such needs as funding emergency responders to terrorist attacks, has drained federal resources in the past few years. As a result, officials in a number of states, including Illinois and Texas, are putting cleanup plans on hold, to the dismay of some local residents.
A top adviser to the Environmental Protection Agency said yesterday that these slowdowns do not pose a threat to public health, though he acknowledged that the program has expanded beyond what lawmakers envisioned 25 years ago when they started it.
The Superfund program requires polluters to pay for the toxic waste problems they create. But when companies go bankrupt, the federal government takes on the cost.
"It's under a lot of stress, given the changing nature of what we're asked to do," said Philip Angell, senior adviser to EPA Administrator Mike Leavitt. He added "That doesn't mean sites are sitting out there posing a risk to public health. . . . All of them have been stabilized."
In the past few years, Angell noted, the EPA has had to contend with mining contamination in such places as Libby, Mont., which could cost as much $100 million to restore. Of the approximately 100 contaminated sites being cleaned up, 10 account for half of Superfund's long-term budget.
"These are hugely expensive sites," he said.
With cleanup costs rising -- according to a recent EPA inspector general report, restoring 156 hardrock mining sites alone could cost between $7 billion and $24 billion with as much as $15 billion coming from the EPA -- other projects rank lower in terms of priority. In Granite City, Ill., for example, state officials are still seeking money to remove carcinogens and other contaminants left in the soil and groundwater by Jennison-Wright Corp., a wood treatment manufacturer that went bankrupt in 1989.
Illinois requested $12 million two years ago to address the problem, according to state project manager Fred Nika, and EPA officials have said they will provide $3.6 million by the end of September. But the money has yet to materialize.
"It delays the cleanup. It just sits there, a continuing source of contamination, and it's an eyesore," Nika said. When asked if the site posed an environmental health risk, he responded, "If it wasn't, it wouldn't be on Superfund list."
In Jasper, Tex., the EPA has stabilized contamination from another wood treatment producer, but officials hope to remove additional waste. Robert Sullivan, the federal site manager, said officials are still awaiting federal money.
"Funding is just not as great as the amount of work that continues to escalate on the other side," Sullivan said.
These delays have alarmed residents, including Rebecca Jim, who lives and works near Tar Creek, Okla., where mining companies left pilings of lead and zinc reaching 200 feet high. The government has spent 15 years and nearly $132 million restoring residents' front yards and playgrounds with uncontaminated soil. But studies over the past decade have shown that as much as 38 percent of the children living there have elevated levels of lead in their blood.
"We still have a creek that runs orange," Jim said. "Our people are sicker. We want things better, to clean up all the waste so it won't continue to harm us for the next four to five generations."
Part of the problem stems from the fact that two taxes that contributed to the Superfund trust fund -- one on crude oil and certain chemicals, another one on larger corporations -- expired in 1995 and have not been renewed. As a result, all the money for cleanups this fiscal year has come from funds appropriated by Congress, instead of from the trust fund. The EPA has asked for $150 million in cleanup funds for the past two years but received just $23 million last year. Superfund's current budget is lower than at any time since 1988.
"This shows the need for a long term stable source of funding," said Ed Hopkins, director of the Sierra Club's environmental quality program. "The Bush administration is not responsible for sites being on the list, but they are underfunding the program. That means these communities are exposed to contaminants."
Hopkins wrote a report, released yesterday, showing that the EPA says people may be vulnerable to health-threatening chemicals at 111 Superfund sites, and that groundwater is vulnerable to contamination at 251 Superfund sites.
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who is on the Environment and Public Works Committee, said the Sierra Club's report "shows that by emasculating the Superfund program, lives are in danger."
But Angell of the EPA called the Sierra Club's report "dishonest; both the words 'possibility' and 'may' say it all. EPA would never let that happen."
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
Scant Sign-Ups Hinder World Trade Center Health Registry, by Betsy McKay, and Christopher Windham, Staff Reporters, Wall Street Journal, July 27, 2004
http//online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB109087360927874151,00.html
Study Shows Air From 9/11 Didn't Inflate Cancer Risk, by Andrew C. Revkin, New York Times, July 27, 2004
http//www.nytimes.com/2004/07/27/nyregion/27cancer.html
After the World Trade Center collapsed, air samples collected nearby showed that levels of some cancer-causing chemicals had soared but had fallen so quickly that the pollution spike was unlikely to increase cancer risks in nearby communities, researchers reported yesterday.
The chemicals, called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, are often found in sooty particles generated when fire consumes anything from tobacco to jet fuel. They have been linked to lung, skin and bladder cancers as well as other health problems.
Earlier studies had estimated that between 100 and 1,000 tons of the chemicals spewed into the air after the attacks, both from the smoldering fires and from the exhausts of diesel-powered construction vehicles that flooded into the area.
But this is the first study to track trends in these chemicals in samples of the most harmful particles of sooty pollution, those smaller than 2.5 microns across.
Motes that minuscule can travel deep into the lungs and enter the bloodstream. Larger particles tend to drop out of the air quickly and also are expelled from the lungs by coughing and other defenses.
The researchers found that P.A.H. concentrations in the samples captured shortly after the attacks soared to some 65 times the average levels measured in city air, and the types detected tended to be those most likely to come from a source like burning wreckage.
Within 100 days, however, those chemicals were largely gone, as were the fires. From then until spring 2002, the samples contained declining amounts of the varieties associated with diesel exhaust, the researchers said, and by May of that year returned to amounts typical for New York City air.
At least for these hydrocarbons, the duration of potential exposure was so short, compared with a typical lifetime, that "cancers from these chemicals is not something to worry about," said Dr. Stephen M. Rappaport, an author of the study and professor of environmental health at the University of North Carolina.
The study, published yesterday in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was conducted by scientists at the university and the National Exposure Research Laboratory of the Environmental Protection Agency, in Research Triangle Park, N.C. The paper can be found online at pnas.org.
Dr. Rappaport cautioned that the analysis had involved only polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and not the many other potentially harmful substances, including asbestos, that drifted in the wind after 9/11.
While cancer rates are unlikely to rise as a result of the exposure, the paper said, other effects, including harm to fetuses, could not be ruled out.
The paper also said that workers toiling in the smoldering rubble could easily have inhaled air with much higher concentrations of the hydrocarbons. The samples were collected at three sites around the perimeter of ground zero, and on the 16th floor of 290 Broadway, where Environmental Protection Agency offices are located.
But generally, according to the researchers and some pollution experts not associated with the study, the findings should provide at least a bit of relief to residents of the area, many of whom have remained worried about the effects that pollution from the disaster could have on their health.
"There should be some reassurance here for the general public," said Dr. Jonathan M. Samet, the chairman of the department of epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health. But he quickly added that cancer was only one of many health problems that could result from pollution spawned after the attacks.
Dr. Frederica P. Perera, the director of the Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health, agreed with Dr. Samet, calling the new study "excellent," but warning that some people appear to be far more sensitive to P.A.H.'s than others, and that fetuses, particularly, can be harmed from exposure to this kind of pollution.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
WTC dust is cleared of one danger, by Liz Szabo, USA Today, July 27, 2004
http//www.usatoday.com/news/health/2004-07-26-wtc-dust_x.htm
The average New Yorker faces little risk of cancer from a class of carcinogens found in the dust and smoke kicked up by the collapsed World Trade Center, according to a study published online Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Researchers from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and the Environmental Protection Agency measured cancer-causing chemicals called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, in four places around lower Manhattan. The study didn't gauge the threat from other carcinogens or the danger to emergency workers and cleanup crews, who may have been exposed to higher levels.
Scientists examined air samples taken in the six months after the terrorist attacks using a test developed recently by researchers at UNC, said Stephen Rappaport, a professor of environmental health and an author of the article. In the days after 9/11, air concentrations of PAHs were about 65 times greater than normal among the highest levels ever recorded. The chemicals were produced by the fires that burned for three months at Ground Zero, by diesel trucks involved in the cleanup and by other cars in the city, Rappaport said.
PAH levels gradually returned to normal. For most people, such brief exposure to high levels of PAH should not increase the lifetime risk of cancer, which generally takes 10 to 20 years to develop. PAHs have been associated with cancers of the skin, lungs and bladder.
Many rescuers and laborers developed other health problems right away, however, including "World Trade Center cough," believed to be caused by dust containing pulverized glass, cement and other irritants.
Doctors have screened nearly 12,000 cleanup and emergency workers for 9/11-related ailments, said Robin Herbert, co-director of Mount Sinai Medical Center's World Trade Center Worker & Volunteer Medical Screening Program.
About 75% of workers treated report persistent upper-respiratory ailments, such as sinus infections; 44% have lung complaints; and 40% have problems with mental health.
Herbert said she is glad that the overall cancer risk appears to be low. But she cautioned that more research is needed to confirm the results.
Rappaport noted that the air particles posed a greater threat to the babies of women pregnant at the time. A study published last year found that pregnant women exposed to the smoke and soot had twice the risk of a complication called intrauterine growth restriction, in which babies are born small.
Though the levels of PAH in outdoor air no longer pose a threat, scientists remain concerned that tiny particles may still be circulating in indoor heating and cooling systems. Rappaport said government researchers continue to monitor the problem.
© Copyright 2004 USA TODAY
Dr. Clinton Versus the Ground Zero Cough, by Christine Lagorio, The Village Voice, July 27, 2004
http//www.villagevoice.com/print/issues/0430/lagorio.php
Joseph Lebretti and David O'Neal discovered that they lived on the same Pennsylvania country road while working the night shift together in the fall of 2001, digging through the wreckage at Ground Zero. Their lives ran parallel courses for three months with Lebretti, a Local 580 ironworker, and O'Neal, a day laborer in Local 79, consumed by the toxic life of the pile.
Since then, both men have been diagnosed with chronic lung disease. O'Neal is on the waiting list at Mount Sinai Medical Center for a lung transplant. Lebretti has visited the occupational safety specialists at Mount Sinai more than 30 times. He was first sent to the East Harlem clinic by his union, which encouraged its members to be examined there as patients of the World Trade Center Worker and Volunteer Medical Screening Program. He got a four-hour exam, consisting of an exposure interview, a psychological examination, and a comprehensive physical exam including a full chest X-ray, breathing tests, and a bronchodilator. He was luckier than O'Nealdiagnosed with an upper-respiratory infection, chronic lung disease, sleep apnea, and metal in his blood. Scottie Hill, Mount Sinai's social worker, also convinced him to join the program's group therapy sessions for post-traumatic stress disorder. "The folks up there made all the difference," says Lebretti.
Drs. Stephen Levin and Robin Herbert, who run the screening program, help workers like Lebretti and O'Neal every day. They see ironworkers, transit-union workers, EMTs, carpenters, and more. The FDNY has its own Clinton-initiated $25 million screening program, but most other workers, and even volunteers, who labored at Ground Zero may sign up for screeningan estimated 30,000 people.
More than 9,200 World Trade Center responders have entered the program since it received a $12 million FEMA grant two years ago. Part of a second $90 million package is arriving at Mount Sinai this fall, including $21 million for screenings and $16 million for a comprehensive data analysis of five years of results.
Mount Sinai, in a preliminary analysis, found that more than half of those screenedfirst responders at the WTC or the Staten Island landfill who reported within three days after 9-11 and spent more than a week therewere diagnosable for a mental health problem. Eighty-eight percent experienced at least one World Trade Center-related ear, nose, or throat symptom, and half sustained upper-respiratory symptoms for months. When the screening program ends in September, Mount Sinai staff will have evaluations from nearly 12,000 laborers, and will be able to calculate the percentage that have symptoms or illnesses three years later.
Patients like O'Neal and Lebretti thank the doctors. Who do the doctors thank? Who do the unions thank? Hillary Clinton. She's won the more than $100 million that runs the network of New York-area responder screenings Mount Sinai leads. The aid originated in two Clinton-drafted appropriations amendments, the first ($12.4 million) of which breezed through Congress in a post-9-11 aid package. The second $90 million, however, took eight months to pass before overcoming a threatened Bush veto. In January 2003, with partisan tension over the stalled funding rising to a tipping point, Clinton ally Carolyn Maloney, the Eastside congresswoman, filled congressional guest seats for Bush's State of the Union speech with NYPD detectives, transit workers, firefighters, and others, even winning over New York Republicans for the funding. They got Bush to sign off on the appropriation within weeks.
Police detectives treated at Mount Sinai such as Cecil Martinez are so appreciative they recently got their union, the Detectives Endowment Association, to organize a huge thank-you party for clinic staff. At the March ceremony, DEA president Tom Scotto gave the union's highest award for service to Clinton. Martinez says, "She's been at the point of all this, I mean, I can say that this program wouldn't be here for the workers without her fighting for it."
The funding will run out in five years. Dr. Levin, one of the occupational-health co-directors at Mount Sinai, says that's problematic, because symptoms aren't easing up, and "this population has been exposed to a real brew of cancer-causing agents" that could take 15 to 20 years to affect exposed workers. He expects Clinton to follow up next year and secure a future revenue stream. Martinez is betting on it.
U.S. Agency to Expand Air Tests at NYC's Ground Zero (Update1), by Patrick Cole, Bloomberg News, July 26, 2004
July 26 (Bloomberg) -- A U.S. government-led committee of experts studying air quality after the Sept. 11 World Trade Center attack said it would expand testing for toxins and contaminants north of Canal Street in lower Manhattan.
The 18-member panel, formed in March by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, also said it would broaden its investigation to include public and private buildings such as firehouses and schools, with testing to begin as early as year-end, said Paul Gilman, the chairman of the group. The committee initially offered testing and cleaning only to 35,000 residents living south of Canal Street, of which about 4,100 enrolled.
"We want to be able to gather information on commercial buildings as well as residential -- the full range including public buildings -- to ultimately determine the geographical extent of contamination,'' Gilman, the EPA's science adviser and
assistant administrator for research and development, said at a public meeting at St. John's University Campus in Manhattan.
The decision to expand its testing area as far north as Houston Street in Manhattan and include more buildings comes amid entreaties by lower Manhattan residents to speed air testing in the area. Since its formation, the group has been
determining which chemicals and particles make up the "signature'' of the dust caused by the collapse of the trade center's twin towers and subsequent fires.
Preliminary Findings
Preliminary EPA studies have already found hazardous chemicals in the air. Samples taken two years ago in neighborhoods near Ground Zero found more than 20 dioxins and
minerals in the area, including mercury, copper and aluminum.
Another study released today in the latest issue of the "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences'' showed that cancer-causing substances known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons were 65 times higher than normal within six months after the trade center attack. Since the compounds' levels were high for a short time, the study concluded that there was "little increase in lifetime cancer risk'' in people living
near the trade center.
While the levels decreased as the fires were contained at Ground Zero, there is concern that the chemicals in the air might have affected the offspring of women living near the site who were or became pregnant at the time the substances were present, the study said. The hydrocarbons have been associated with intrauterine growth restriction, which results in babies being born smaller than normal, the study said.
Deutsche Bank Building
The panel also said it will investigate potential environmental and health risks at the Deutsche Bank building across the street from Ground Zero, which is to be demolished by the state agency overseeing development at the trade center site. A study of the 40-story tower, commissioned as part of a law suit against two of Deutsche Bank's insurers showed the building had levels of asbestos, lead, mercury and other
substances a thousand times higher than Environmental Protection Agency standards.
"It is definitely within our mission statement to help with this,'' said David Prezant, the New York Fire Department's chief medical officer and a member of the EPA panel of experts.
Mary Perillo, a resident of 125 Cedar Street next to the Deutsche Bank building, said she was "thrilled and floored'' by the panel's decision to take a closer look at contamination of the Deutsche Bank building.
Revised Plan
Under its revised proposal, the EPA would ask owners and managers of private and public buildings including firehouses and police stations for access to the properties for testing.
Buildings as far north as Houston Street in Manhattan would be eligible for EPA screening, said Matthew Lorber, a senior scientist at the EPA's office of research and development.
"The intent is to characterize the entire building, not just a single unit,'' Lorber said.
Gilman said the panel couldn't provide details about its plans to study the Deutsche Bank building. Irene Chang, the general counsel for the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., which is in charge of redeveloping the trade center site, said it has hired consultants to assess the level of contaminants in the building before it is dismantled.
"The building is not going to be imploded,'' Chang said at the meeting. The development agency agreed earlier this year agreed to purchase the Deutsche Bank building for $90 million and take over a $45 million contract to take it down. It has
said it intends to take building apart piece by piece to minimize the release of contaminants, and awarded the demolition contract to Gilbane Building Co.
Brooklyn?
Gilman also said the EPA may look for evidence of contamination in Brooklyn. Residents have said that dust and debris from the trade center attack spread from Ground Zero across the East River to neighborhoods there.
"We know there was dust in Brooklyn, the question has been at what levels, and the thinking has always been not nearly the levels as seen in Manhattan,'' Gilman said. "This is a phase one proposal and we want to look and see what are the extremes,
what the contamination levels look like and then we will ask ourselves, ' Should we be going to Brooklyn as well?'''
--Editor Williams.
Story illustration For more New York region news, see {TNYC <GO>}. For a tour of news functions on the Bloomberg, see {CNP 08377340102 <GO>}. For an overview of Deutsche Bank's performance, see {DBK GR <Equity> CNP0094090108 <GO>}. For the
Web site of Lower Manhattan Development Corp., click on http//renewnyc.com. For details about the Environmental Protection Agency's study of pollution in Lower Manhattan and the Technical Expert Review Panel, see http//www.epa.gov/wtc.
Silverstein and air quality, Downtown Local in Downtown Express, Volume 17 • Issue 9 / July 23 - 29, 2004
http//downtownexpress.com/de_63/downtownlocal.html
World Trade Center site developer Larry Silverstein will be sensitive to Downtown residents’ environmental concerns about rebuilding the office towers because he has asthma, a Silverstein executive said Monday.
"Larry is an asthma sufferer and one of those who gets it in terms of air quality," said Janno Lieber, executive vice president of Silverstein Properties, which is building the Freedom Tower at the site and 7 W.T.C. across the street.
Lieber spoke about environmentally-friendly design at a July 19 panel discussion organized by the Regional Plan Association at the Downtown Information Center.
Residents and environmentalists have raised concerns about the high pollution levels during the planned construction of five office buildings at the site as well as the impacts after the complex is rebuilt. Many Lower Manhattan residents with respiratory ailments such as asthma experienced difficulties in the months that followed the destruction of the Twin Towers.
Deutsche demo raises concerns, by Elizabeth O'Brien, Downtown Express, Volume 17 • Issue 9 / July 23 - 29, 2004
http//downtownexpress.com/de_63/deutschedemoraises.html
Officials must take action to protect Downtowners from high levels of toxins in the Deutsche Bank building when the 40-story tower is dismantled across from ground zero, U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler said this week.
The vacant building at 130 Liberty St., shrouded in black netting since 9/11, contains concentrations of asbestos in certain places that are nearly 150,000 times the acceptable level, according to court documents released by Nadler at a July 19 news conference.
Officials at the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, the city-state agency that has agreed to buy the building for $90 million, said they did not trust that data because it was collected by Deutsche Bank as the company prepared to sue its insurers.
"We could not rely on those results we had to do our own testing," said Amy Peterson, vice president for development programs and economics for the L.M.D.C., at a July 21 meeting of Community Board 1.
Peterson said that L.M.D.C. contractors were currently testing 130 Liberty St. for mold, asbestos in the building materials, asbestos in the dust and other World Trade Center contaminants. These contaminants include silica, PAHs (polyaromatic hydrocarbons), dioxin, PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls), barium, beryllium, cadmium, chromium, copper, lead, manganese, nickel, zinc, and mercury, according to L.M.D.C. spokesperson Joanna Rose.
Nadler said Deutsche Bank’s environmental data shows that the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation is ill equipped to handle its planned demolition of the building.
"The L.M.D.C. has been ignoring the concerns of residents and workers, and the real threat of contamination present in the Deutsche Bank building," Nadler said.
L.M.D.C. officials dismissed Nadler’s remarks as "political grandstanding."
Peterson said that the L.M.D.C. did not have a plan to remediate the building because its own environmental testing was not complete. Those results will help officials create a plan to take down the building in the most environmentally sound manner possible, Peterson said. The test results will be made public, she added.
L.M.D.C. officials have said previously that the Deutsche takedown would begin this fall.
The building site is needed to expand the World Trade Center site to build a park, a new St. Nicholas Church, an office building and to provide space for a tour bus garage.
At the July 21 meeting, an L.M.D.C. contractor detailed how the building would be dismantled. A representative from the Gilbane Building Company, which was awarded a $45 million contract to handle what officials are calling the Deutsche Bank "deconstruction," said the process would begin with a crane removing the water tower and the heating and cooling system from the roof.
After that, the ceilings, lights, carpets and other "soft" materials will be taken from the interior, said Philip Zezulinski of Gilbane. Then, interior gutting will take place, Zezulinski said, and the building will start "coming into itself."
Workers will cut the concrete and metal holding up each floor, and slide the concrete onto the floor below after folding the metal supports, Zezulinski said. All this work will take place inside the building’s netting, which will muffle the sound somewhat, he added.
At the end of the process, a tower crane will take down the steel frame of the building, Zezulinski said. Each floor will be brought by the crane onto the floor below in what he described as a reverse of the construction of 7 World Trade Center. The entire process is expected to take 14 months, Zezulinski said.
About 25 trucks a day will transport materials away from the site, Zezulinski said. The trucks will be covered, Peterson said, noting that officials would not decide on the type of cover until they knew what kind of potentially hazardous materials were in the building. Peterson said that officials did not anticipate needing to use any surrounding streets as a staging area for the trucks, since the Deutsche Bank property could accommodate them.
Community board members and other residents voiced fears about the potential environmental impact of the deconstruction.
"Those contaminants better stay within that perimeter," said Catherine Hughes, a Community Board 1 member who lives near the site. "Once it’s out, it’s hard to clean up."
After the meeting, residents gathered around L.M.D.C. president Kevin Rampe and peppered him with questions and concerns about the procedure.
"I think you’re not being productive," Rampe responded to one resident.
Andy Jurinko, the resident, said the next day, "I don’t think this is an easy situation for anyone, but I think his remarks were insensitive."
Jurinko, who lives just blocks from the site at 125 Cedar St., said he was particularly concerned about the safety of the huge crane that will be used, especially since winds in the area can gust up to 75 miles per hour.
Some residents echoed Nadler’s demand that the Environmental Protection Agency take charge of the Deutsche Bank deconstruction. While he has been highly critical of the E.P.A. response to 9/11, Nadler said the federal agency has the expertise and the mandate to handle the project.
Peterson said the L.M.D.C. would consult with the city Department of Environmental Protection and the E.P.A. She said the building would be dismantled according to all applicable regulations on hazardous material removal.
Elizabeth@DowntownExpress.com
The Great EPA Crackdown Fantasy, by Amanda Griscom, Grist Magazine, July 22, 2004
http//www.truthout.org/docs_04/072504G.shtml
What's this on the wires? The U.S. EPA is gearing up to prosecute a new batch of new-source review (NSR) cases against polluting power plants? Could it be that the Bushies have suddenly taken a keen interest in enforcing a Clean Air Act rule that they have gone to great lengths to weaken?
Not really.
The story goes like this Greenwire reporter Darren Samuelsohn recently got ahold of an EPA document containing a list of 22 electric utilities that in the last five years have allegedly run afoul of NSR by making upgrades to their facilities without installing the required pollution controls. Greenwire published a story saying the utilities could face enforcement actions, and other news outlets followed suit.
According to Eric Schaeffer, a former top enforcement official at the EPA who left in protest over air-enforcement lapses under Bush, the publicity was not welcome news to EPA Administrator Mike Leavitt "The word inside the agency is that Leavitt is apparently furious that this news is out. It's not likely that this indicates that the agency is doing some kind of election-year crackdown on utilities. In fact, it's a political embarrassment - it just shows how the administration is holding up prosecutions recommended by its own staff."
Between 1999 and 2001, the Clinton EPA filed cases over alleged NSR violations at 51 power plants owned by nine utilities. Though several of these cases have been settled, most are still hanging in limbo, having stalled out under the Bush administration.
Bush's assistant administrator of air and radiation at EPA, Jeffrey Holmstead, made it his top priority to scrap the NSR rule at the behest of the electricity industry (which just happened to contribute $4.8 million to Bush, the Republican National Committee, and Bush's inaugural committee during the 2000 campaign, according to Public Citizen). So far Holmstead has been successful in his efforts to significantly loosen the way smokestack industries measure their baseline emissions under the rule.
But his higher-priority initiative to exempt power plants from a provision requiring them to install state-of-the-art pollution controls in all expanded and upgraded facilities - which the administration issued as a rule change in August 2003 - was blocked by a D.C. circuit court in December after a group of state attorneys general asked for a stay.
Despite this kink in his plans, Holmstead has not only allowed enforcement of the Clinton-era cases to lapse, he has filed only one new NSR case, against a utility in Kentucky - one whose violations were so severe that it would have been culpable even under the relaxed rules that the administration is pushing for.
The new list of 22 potential culprits includes some of the largest power producers in America, including Reliant (now Centerpoint Energy), Allegheny, and subsidiaries of Southern Company. So it's no surprise that the utility industry has already got its propaganda machine in high gear to gird against the possibility of new lawsuits. Frank Maisano, a spokesperson for the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, a utility group, said the news of potential new enforcement cases has created "widespread industry uncertainty that could cause utilities to put off needed facility upgrades ... [and] perhaps hurt the stock performance of those companies down the line."
Leavitt in the past has publicly promised that the EPA would move forward with any NSR cases that would bring about substantial pollution savings. But after news spread about the document last week, Leavitt's spokesperson, Cynthia Bergman, refused to address the matter with the press. "I won't comment on ongoing enforcement investigations," she said.
Leavitt's proactive message doesn't gel with insider accounts from EPA enforcement employees. "We've known about these cases for a while," Schaeffer said. "A lot of them have been sitting for years because there's been a mandate from the White House to keep them from happening. Basically, Bush appointees have been trying to decide what kind of political consequences would occur if the cases were prosecuted."
According to Chris Miller, a minority staffer at the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, insufficient political will isn't the only thing keeping these cases from happening - financial and human resources are also in short supply. No new lawsuits will go forward unless the Department of Justice decides to take them on, and currently the agency simply doesn't have the funds or people to handle new cases.
"We've talked to Justice at length about this and they've said that they simply don't have the funds to do more than 15 environment-related cases a year," Miller said. "Already they are in the process of suing eight large companies over NSR issues alone, and overall there's a backlog of environmental lawsuits for them to work on. The continuing shortfall of funds for environmental enforcement at the Department of Justice is very unfortunate."
DOJ has requested a 39 percent increase in its fiscal year 2005 budget for the Environment and Natural Resources Division, which is responsible for enforcing and defending environmental laws. Sen. Jim Jeffords (I-Vt.), ranking member of the Senate Committee on Environment, is planning to file a request to the Senate Judiciary Committee to press for these funds.
For now, however, the Bush administration is surely aware that as long as the DOJ lacks the resources to press forward on NSR cases, all the talk of crackdowns and enforcement is just that - election-year talk. It may fool voters, but Bush's big campaign contributors won't lose any sleep.
City Joins Suit Against 5 Power Companies, by Julia Preston and Andrew C. Revkin, New York Times, July 22, 2004
http//www.nytimes.com/2004/07/22/nyregion/22lawsuit.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1090501505-U1T36Fgf0zy2NzrDb+lzpw
New York City officials, evoking an apocalyptic vision of Manhattan's tunnels flooded and Kennedy Airport under water, joined a federal suit brought yesterday by New York and seven other states against five of the country's largest power companies in an effort to curb global warming.
New York was the only city to join the suit, which was brought by states dissatisfied with the Bush administration's policies on controlling emissions of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that has been linked to the significant warming of the earth in recent decades.
Painting a scenario that could have come from "The Day After Tomorrow," the city's top lawyer, Michael A. Cardozo, detailed the "extraordinary impact" he said global warming could one day have on New York. It could bring a sharp increases in asthma cases, he said, as well as erosion of beaches in Queens and the Bronx and flooding of Staten Island wetlands.
"And it can mean, to put this most dramatically, flooding of the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels and on the landing strips at La Guardia and Kennedy Airports," Mr. Cardozo said.
While city officials did not suggest that any of those calamities were imminent, they accepted Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's view that the scientific evidence was "rock solid" that carbon dioxide concentrations contributed to global warming.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg decided to participate in the suit - a clear challenge to President Bush's approach to pollution control - because he believes that the city should not delay action on the issue, Mr. Cardozo said.
The companies named in the suit, which was filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, are the American Electric Power Company, the Southern Company, the Tennessee Valley Authority, Xcel Energy and the Cinergy Corporation. The other states participating are Connecticut, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Vermont, Wisconsin, Iowa and California. The companies, the largest emitters of carbon dioxide in the United States, do not, for the most part, operate in the Northeast. The suit is the first by local governments to try to force companies outside their jurisdictions to curb carbon dioxide emissions.
The companies condemned the suit yesterday, accusing the attorneys general of the eight states of trying to dictate federal pollution policy and punish a small group of utilities for a worldwide problem.
"We view this simply as an effort to legislate through litigation rather than pursuing standards through Congress," said Steven Brash, a spokesman for Cinergy, which is based in Cincinnati.
The lawsuit divided environmental groups, dismaying some who had been working with big power companies, including several of the defendants, to get them to reduce emissions. Representatives of several groups said the suit erred by lumping the companies together, regardless of whether they had made efforts to curb carbon dioxide.
American Electric Power, while long criticized for its sooty pollution, has gained praise from environmentalists for its commitments to cut emissions. Eileen Claussen, the president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, which has worked with the company, called the suit "slightly perverse."
"Of course we need a national program and of course we need some legislation," she said. "The real question is, does this help you get there? It's not clear to me that this lawsuit will help."
In a new approach, the suit charges that the utilities are creating a "public nuisance," global warming, that harms residents in the states bringing the action. The suit seeks a court order requiring the companies to reduce their emissions by at least 3 percent per year for 10 years, said Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut attorney general. No monetary damages are sought.
"We're here because the federal government has abdicated its responsibility and has in fact resisted our court action," Mr. Blumenthal said.
During his 2000 campaign, Mr. Bush promised to restrict carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, but abandoned that pledge early in his term. The Bush administration has called for voluntary measures to slow the growth of emissions.
Most scientists now agree that most of a decades-long warming trend is caused by rising atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Yet scientific projections of the possible local impacts have remained laced with caveats.
One of the hardest things to predict is the potential impact of shifting climate conditions on health. In a 2001 report, for example, the National Research Council of the National Academies said projections of health impacts were "highly uncertain."
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
Power Plants Pose Unnecessary Chemical Release Dangers to Millions of Americans, Press Release, Working Group on Community Right to Know, July 21, 2004
http//www.crtk.org/detail.cfm?docID=730
For Immediate Release
- Some 225 non-nuclear power plants endanger 3.5 million Americans in the event of emergency chemical releases of gaseous ammonia or chlorine.
- Just two-dozen power plants account for two-thirds of the people in danger.
- In ten states more than 100,000 people live in danger of emergency chemical releases from power plants. These states are California, Texas, Florida, Illinois, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Rhode Island, Virginia, and New Jersey.
- Numerous federal agencies and other experts have warned that terrorist might target facilities that use extremely hazardous chemicals.
- Power plants can sharply reduce the danger to communities by switching to safer chemicals.
Republicans Blast President Bush on Environment, by Erik Stetson, Associated Press, July 20, 2004
http//www.seacoastonline.com/news/07202004/news/27695.htm
Copyright 1999 - 2004 Seacoast Newspapers
Democrats in Senate to Confer on Asbestos Fund, Reuters, July 20, 2004
http//www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=politicsNews&storyID=5723527
9/11 building a loss Nadler, by Lisa L. Colangelo, New York Daily News, July 20, 2004
http//www.nydailynews.com/news/local/story/213801p-184114c.html
The Deutsche Bank building is far more contaminated than the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. wants to admit, Rep. Jerrold Nadler charged yesterday.
The 40-story Liberty St. building, severely damaged in the World Trade Center attacks, could be demolished this year.
Nadler (D-Manhattan) said the LMDC has underplayed the quantity of asbestos and other contaminants in the structure. LMDC officials said they are still conducting their own tests.
"It is clear that the LMDC cannot be trusted to supervise the demolition of the building and to safeguard the public's health," Nadler said yesterday at a City Hall press conference.
He pointed to data, pulled from a legal battle between the owners of the building and its insurance company, that shows high levels of contaminants.
"This is nothing more than political gra