http//downtownexpress.com/de_55/epapanelconsiders.html
The Environmental Protection Agency’s goal of retesting Lower Manhattan apartments by the end of June seemed remote this week as the agency’s expert panel grappled with how to measure lingering contamination from the World Trade Center collapse.
At its third public meeting on May 24, the 17-member panel of government and independent experts continued discussing whether World Trade Center dust has a chemical fingerprint that would distinguish it from normal urban grit. This so-called signature would help scientists determine what, if any, contamination remains from the World Trade Center collapse.
The panel was formed in March and charged in part with overseeing the retesting of select Lower Manhattan apartments that registered for the E.P.A.’s post-9/11 cleanup. This voluntary program sampled solely for asbestos in most of the approximately 4,200 participating apartments.
But panelists have moved away from the retesting approach, which would gauge whether any recontamination occurred after the cleanup. Instead, they have argued for broader testing that would determine whether any W.T.C. toxins remain in areas exposed to the dust cloud, regardless of whether they resulted from recontamination or from the original event.
"The panel decided that the recontamination question is not the most interesting question," Dr. Paul Gilman, E.P.A. assistant administrator for research and development and chairperson of the panel, told Downtown Express at the meeting.
In March, Gilman acknowledged that the goal of completing the retesting by June might be "terribly optimistic." Even so, the E.P.A. may not have anticipated the degree to which the panel would rethink its original mandate Panelists have delved into the design of a testing program that would restore public trust in the agency after an inspector general report last August found it acted without enough evidence when it declared the air Downtown safe to breathe one week after the terror attack.
Gilman asked panelists at Monday’s meeting if they might reconsider their original goal of retesting cleaned apartments, an option they declined. At its next meeting, the panel will continue to discuss whether certain compositions of glass fibers or other materials would effectively indicate World Trade Center dust, a question that will then shape its testing program.
The scope of the program remains under discussion. Community members have pressed for extending dust sampling beyond the original boundary of Canal St. in Manhattan, and also for the inclusion of offices, schools and firehouses in the program.
Panelists were told not to consider costs when designing the testing program, but at Monday’s meeting members acknowledged that they needed to work with whatever resources are available. E.P.A. officials have not publicly named a dollar figure for the testing program but have acknowledged that the price tag will limit its reach.
During a public comment session at Monday’s meeting, one Battery Park City mother cut to the heart of the community’s concerns about Downtown air quality.
"The only question I asked was if it was safe for my children," said the mother of two, who requested anonymity. The panelists greeted her question with silence, she recalled with disappointment "I was hoping to get some response."
The next public hearing of the E.P.A. expert panel is tentatively scheduled for June 22. For more information, call 800-803-2833 or go to www.epa.gov/wtc/panel.
Elizabeth@DowntownExpress.com
http//www.nydailynews.com/news/local/story/197084p-170233c.html
Cancer shows up long after Sept. 11In the agonizing hours after the towers collapsed on Sept. 11, Brooklyn Firefighter Pete Strahl was on his belly, crawling in a tunnel of debris under 7 World Trade Center to reach an injured civilian.
The victim, with broken bones and a split-open head, was carried to safety by Strahl and his fellow Engine 236 firefighters. Their act of bravery was one of several retold in a Daily News front-page story "The Great Rescue of Sept. 11."
Strahl is now battling a deadly throat cancer. His lung tests are also showing chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, dubbed the "World Trade Center cough" by medical experts.
"They took out my voice box," said Strahl, a 21-year FDNY veteran who retired in August 2002, just months after doctors found a malignant neoplasm of the larynx in his throat.
"My doctor feels it was definitely caused by 9/11. To me, I don't know. I'm a firefighter, not a doctor. But they can't tell me it definitely isn't because of what was in the air down there," he said.
Strahl's oncologist, Louis Rosner, said he believes the 47-year-old father of three developed cancer because of his work on Sept. 11 and in the days after.
"It is my professional opinion that the toxic exposure to known carcinogens at the World Trade Center site was a significant contributing factor to Mr. Strahl's diagnosis," Rosner wrote in a letter to the Sept. 11th Victim Compensation Fund.
Strahl originally applied for money to settle a knee injury, but he rejected the award when he learned he had cancer. He made a new application and testified two weeks ago before a judge representing the fund.
The difficulty for Strahl and other first responders at the World Trade Center is that they must prove their illnesses are job-related. So far, there is no medical evidence linking Ground Zero to cancer.
"We have no interest in denying people what they have coming to them,"said NYPD Supervising Chief Surgeon Eli Kleinman, who heads the department's medical board. "But everything has to be done on a scientific basis."
Detectives Bill Ryan and Ed Wallace were denied tax-free pensions equal to three-quarters of their salaries. They worked side-by-side at Ground Zero. Ryan was assigned to the arson and explosion squad and had been one of the lead investigators in the 1993 Trade Center bombing. Wallace was assigned to the crime scene unit.
Both were in elite units that required them to have yearly lung X-rays and breathing tests. In the summer of 2001, both said they had healthy, clear X-rays.
It is a much different picture today. Both suffer shortness of breath, chronic coughs and exhaustion all symptoms of sarcoidosis, a permanent lung condition they believe they got while working on "the pile."
"All these politicians say we are never going to forget the heroes," said Ryan, 41, who retired in January after 20 years. "Well, they already did."
Too late for fund aid
The deadline to apply for financial help from the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund passed on Dec. 22, 2003.
Advocates and lawyers fear that some serious, even critical, health problems related to 9/11 will not become apparent until months or years later, too late to apply to the fund.
Attorney Michael Barasch, who represents Pete Strahl and a slew of other emergency workers, said he has 73 clients who missed the deadline.
He is trying to persuade Special Master Kenneth Feinberg to open those claims.
"Their injuries were not diagnosed until after the deadline. But cancer doesn't have a calendar. Their lungs weren't informed of the deadline to apply," Barasch said. "The fund was very fair to people who had orthopedic injuries but very unfair to people who had latent diseases who were not diagnosed prior to the deadline."
All contents © 2004 Daily News, L.P.
EPA and Fort Worth Colluding to Expose City Residents to Asbestos, According to Leaked EPA Documents, Natural Resources Defence Council Press Release, May 25, 2004
Demolition of Abandoned Building Threatens Public Health, Says NRDC
EPA Considering Unsafe Method of Asbestos Removal for Use Around the Country
WASHINGTON (May 25, 2004) - Internal Environmental Protection Agency documents reveal that the agency is planning to allow the city of Fort Worth to demolish an abandoned building using a method that violates the Clean Air Act's asbestos abatement regulations, putting the surrounding community at risk.
The documents, which were obtained by NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) and the Trial Lawyers for Public Justice, show that the EPA's inspector general's office and its own scientists, as well as independent experts, have condemned the proposed method as inadequate and unsafe, and that the agency and the city of Fort Worth have deceived city residents about the threat of exposure. (For access to the leaked documents, click here. The inspector general's report is available here.
"EPA's approval of this method is tantamount to approving an illegal experiment on human beings," said Dr. Jennifer Sass, a senior scientist at NRDC. "It likely would expose workers on the site and residents in surrounding neighborhoods to high levels of a known carcinogen -- without their full knowledge or consent. It's scientifically indefensible and morally repugnant."
EPA has established stringent work practices in keeping with Clean Air Act regulations requiring containment of asbestos during demolition projects. These rules generally call for removing asbestos-containing materials prior to demolition, which can be costly.
Since 1999, Fort Worth has been seeking EPA approval of an asbestos abatement method that would violate the Clean Air Act rules. The city's inadequate and illegal approach, which has come to be called the "Fort Worth method," relies on nothing more than partially wetting down a building with a fire hose during demolition to limit asbestos fibers from escaping the work site into surrounding residential neighborhoods. The proposed method does not require the safe removal of asbestos-contaminated materials before demolition.
The city proposed a three-phased approach to obtaining EPA's approval of the Fort Worth method. First, the city demolished a small, single-family dwelling that didn't contain any "friable" asbestos, which can be crushed by hand-pressure and therefore is more likely to become airborne. Next, the city plans to knock down the Cowtown Inn, which contains enough asbestos-contaminated material to be regulated under the Clean Air Act rules. If the second experiment is deemed successful, Fort Worth plans to conduct a third test, demolishing multiple buildings using the Fort Worth method. If approved, the method would then be available for other cities to use when they demolish thousands of similar structures across the country.
The demolition site for the second test, the Cowtown Inn in East Fort Worth, is an abandoned motel that has become a haven for transients and illegal activities. The motel is adjacent to a predominantly minority and lower- to middle-income neighborhood, near a school, park, playground and creek.
The city has told the neighborhood that its new technique is safe and that its monitoring program will ensure that no dangerous asbestos is released. In fact, the leaked internal EPA documents show that EPA scientists and independent experts maintain that the method is not safe, and that monitoring will not prevent airborne asbestos contamination. The city's monitoring method, they say, will put workers at the site and local residents at significant risk during and following the demolition.
The most damning indictments of the Fort Worth method come from EPA scientists and independent experts. The expert committee of EPA's asbestos scientists, called the Asbestos Coordination Team (ACT), issued a scathing internal critique of the Fort Worth Method. Individual members of the ACT have written even stronger detailed criticisms of the project and practices by EPA's Dallas office.
For example, the scientists stated
"The risk criterion...would allow for unacceptable exposures to the community.... The proposed residential exposure limit...represents an asbestos exposure level commonly considered to require emergency response on behalf of the U.S. EPA." (Memo from EPA scientist Christopher P. Weis, Ph.D., to ACT, March 18, 2004, pg. 1)
"No information...provides a basis for assuming that off-site releases will be harmless, inconsequential, or not potentially result in contamination of area soils, dusts, and structures. Furthermore, the current study design does not include relevant sampling and analysis to determine if offsite asbestos contamination has occurred." (Memo from EPA scientist Aubrey K. Miller, MD, MPH, to ACT, May 10, 2004, pg. 1)
"The assumption that the likelihood of a 'significant air release is extremely remote' is without foundation." (Draft Summary of ACT General Comments on Ft. Worth, May 13, 2004, pg. 6)
"Monitoring will not identify a potential exposure until a release has occurred." (ACT Draft Summary, pg. 1)
Despite these objections, EPA is considering issuing what is called a "formal enforcement discretion letter," which in effect promises the agency will not to sue Fort Worth for violating the Clean Air Act (For a copy of the EPA letter stating the agency is prepared to issue an enforcement discretion letter, click here.) Such a promise would violate longstanding EPA policy.
Finally, the city has told the community that it cannot afford to follow normal safe and effective demolition procedures. However, in a May 17 article in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Brian Boerner, director of the city's environmental management department, conceded that the cost of the Fort Worth Cowtown Inn experiment will at least equal the cost of complying with the more protective Clean Air Act rules, undermining their original rationale for the project, which was to save money.
"EPA and Fort Worth would spend roughly the same amount of money, and waste a lot less time, if they did the right thing and protected the citizens of Fort Worth," said John Walke, the director of NRDC's Air Program. "The EPA should have learned a lesson from its World Trade Center scandal, when it misled New Yorkers about the threat of airborne asbestos. We hope the scientists inside the agency will prevail and put a stop to the unethical experiment in Fort Worth."
The Natural Resources Defense Council is a national, nonprofit organization of scientists, lawyers and environmental specialists dedicated to protecting public health and the environment. Founded in 1970, NRDC has more than 1 million members and e-activists nationwide, served from offices in New York, Washington, Santa Monica and San Francisco.
© Natural Resources Defense Council
Bush Ignores Sick 9/11 Firefighters & Cops, The Daily Mislead, May 25, 2004
http//www.misleader.org/daily_mislead/read.asp?fn=df05252004.html
Over the last month, President Bush has
repeatedly recounted how he was inspired by "the courage of the firefighters and the
police" [1] in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks. He recounted how,
when standing atop a pile of rubble at Ground Zero, he was told by a firefighter,
"Don't let me down" [2]. But more than two years later, he continues to ignore
the needs of firefighters and police officers who are now suffering adverse health effects
from their rescue efforts at Ground Zero. The situation has reached a head yesterday,
1,700 cops and firefighters were forced to sue in court for the medical help they
desperately need [3]. While the President's very first campaign commercial used photos of
coffin draped corpses [4] being pulled from the rubble, the White House has sought to hide
evidence that Ground Zero firefighters and cops were exposed to
Press Release, National Academies of Science, Engineering & Medicine, May 25, 2004
http//www4.nationalacademies.org/news.nsf/isbn/0309091934?OpenDocument FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Indoor Mold, Building Dampness Linked to Respiratory Problems and
Require Better Prevention; Evidence Does Not Support Links to Wider Array of Illnesses WASHINGTON -- Scientific evidence links mold and other factors
related to damp conditions in homes and buildings to asthma symptoms in some people with
the chronic disorder, as well as to coughing, wheezing, and upper respiratory tract
symptoms in otherwise healthy people, says a new report from the Institute of Medicine of
the National Academies. However, the available evidence does not support an association
between either indoor dampness or mold and the wide range of other health complaints that
have been ascribed to them, the report says. Given the frequent occurrence of moisture
problems in buildings and their links to respiratory problems, excessive indoor dampness
should be addressed through a broad range of public health initiatives and changes in how
buildings are designed, constructed, and maintained, said the committee that wrote the
report. "An exhaustive review of the scientific literature made it
clear to us that it can be very hard to tease apart the health effects of exposure to mold
from all the other factors that may be influencing health in the typical indoor
environment," said committee chair Noreen Clark, dean, School of Public Health,
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. "That said, we were able to find sufficient
evidence that certain respiratory problems, including symptoms in asthmatics who are
sensitive to mold, are associated with exposure to mold and damp conditions. Even though
the available evidence does not link mold or other factors associated with building
moisture to all the serious health problems that some attribute to them, excessive indoor
dampness is a widespread problem that warrants action at the local, state, and national
levels." Excessive dampness influences whether mold as well as bacteria,
dust mites, and other such agents are present and thrive indoors. Moreover, wetness may
cause chemicals and particles to be released from building materials. Many studies of
health effects possibly related to indoor dampness do not distinguish the specific health
effects of different biological or chemical agents. Through its careful review of the available scientific studies,
the committee found sufficient evidence to conclude that mold and damp conditions are
associated with asthma symptoms in asthmatics who are sensitive to mold, and to coughing,
wheezing, and upper respiratory tract symptoms in otherwise healthy people. However, the
evidence did not meet the strict scientific standards needed to establish a clear, causal
relationship. An uncommon ailment known as hypersensitivity pneumonitis also is associated
with indoor mold exposure in genetically susceptible people. Damp conditions and all they
entail may be associated with the onset of asthma, as well as shortness of breath and
lower respiratory illness in otherwise healthy children, although the evidence is less
certain in these circumstances. Likewise, the presence of visible mold indoors may be
linked to lower respiratory tract illness in children, but the evidence is not as strong
in this case. The committee found very few studies that have examined whether
mold or other factors associated with indoor dampness are linked to fatigue,
neuropsychiatric disorders, or other health problems that some people have attributed to
fungal infestations of buildings. The little evidence that is available does not support
an association, but because of the dearth of well-conducted studies and reliable data, the
committee could not rule out the possibility. Studies on animals and cell cultures in labs have found toxic
effects from various microbial agents, raising concerns about whether these same agents
growing in buildings can cause illness in people. Molds that are capable of producing
toxins do grow indoors, and toxic and inflammatory effects also can be caused by bacteria
that flourish in damp conditions, the report noted. Little information exists on the toxic
potential of chemicals or particles that may be released when building materials,
furniture, and other items degrade because of wetness. The committee recommended that
current animal studies of short-term, high-level inhalation exposures to microbial toxins
be supplemented with new research that evaluates the effects of long-term exposures at
lower concentrations. Moisture and mold problems stem from building designs,
construction and maintenance practices, and building materials in which wetness lingers.
Technical information describing how to control dampness already exists, but architects,
engineers, building contractors, facility managers, and maintenance staff do not always
apply this knowledge, the report says. Training curricula on why dampness problems occur
and how to prevent them should be produced and disseminated. Guidelines for preventing
indoor dampness also should be developed at the national level to promote widespread
adoption and to avoid the potential for conflicting advice from different quarters. In
addition, building codes and regulations should be reviewed and modified as necessary to
reduce moisture problems. Research on various means to prevent or eliminate excessive
dampness -- including educational initiatives and building renovations or design changes
-- should be undertaken to find out which are effective. While there is universal
agreement that promptly fixing leaks and cleaning up spills or standing water
substantially reduces the potential for mold growth, there is little evidence that shows
which forms of moisture control or prevention work best at reducing health problems
associated with dampness, the report notes. In addition, materials designed to educate the
public about the actual health risks associated with indoor dampness should be developed
and evaluated. The effectiveness of economic and other incentives to spur adherence to
moisture prevention practices -- such as bonuses for facility managers who meet defined
goals for preventing or reducing problems, or fines for failure to correct problems by a
specified deadline -- should be evaluated, and successful strategies should be
implemented. The committee had insufficient information to recommend either an
appropriate level of dampness reduction, or a safe level of exposure to organisms and
chemicals linked to dampness. Better standardized methods for assessing human exposure to
these agents are greatly needed, the report says. It calls for studies that compare
various ways to limit moisture or eliminate mold and to evaluate whether the interventions
improve occupants' health. The study was sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention. The Institute of Medicine is a private, nonprofit institution that provides
health policy advice under a congressional charter granted to the National Academy of
Sciences. A committee roster follows. Pre-publication copies of Damp Indoor Spaces and Health
are available from the National Academies Press; tel. 202-334-3313 or 1-800-624-6242 or on
the Internet at http//www.nap.edu. Reporters may obtain a copy from the
Office of News and Public Information (contacts listed above). [ This news release and report are available at http//national-academies.org
]
Panel Finds Mold in Buildings Is No Threat to Most People, by Anahad O'Connor, New York Times, May 26, 2004
http//www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/national/26mold.html
Stepping into an issue that has alarmed homeowners and led to hundreds of lawsuits and billions of dollars in insurance payments, a government panel of experts reported yesterday that toxic mold in homes did not appear to pose a serious health threat to most people.Though the experts said mold and indoor dampness were associated with respiratory problems and symptoms of asthma in certain susceptible people, they found no evidence of a link between mold and conditions like brain or neurological damage, reproductive problems and cancer. They based their conclusions on a review of hundreds of scientific papers and reports but warned that the research was limited and that more studies were needed.
The panel, which consisted of epidemiologists, toxicologists and pediatricians, was convened by the Institute of Medicine, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences that advises the federal government on health issues. Its findings come as public concern about mold-related health problems grows, stoked in part by lawsuits and accounts of people driven from their homes and schools by mold. In 2002, insurers in the United States paid out $2.5 billion in mold-related claims.
Yesterday's findings drew criticism from homeowners who say they have experienced the phenomenon.
"I get calls from people every day saying they've had water problems, windows that leak, or water plumbing events behind the walls," said Janet Ahmad, president of Homeowners for Better Building in San Antonio, an advocacy group for people affected by mold. "Somebody in the house usually has nosebleeds. They go away for the weekend and the children stop coughing and having nosebleeds."
But the government panel said even the link between mold and respiratory problems had yet to be demonstrated conclusively.
``We know that when people are in damp spaces they report more upper respiratory tract problems and asthma symptoms," said its chairwoman, Dr. Noreen Clark, dean of the School of Public Health at the University of Michigan. "But we don't know that mold is the cause, because dampness is associated with dust mites, bacteria, and can lead to chemical emissions from buildings and from furnishings."
Dr. Jordan N. Fink, an expert on allergy and immunology at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee who was not a member of the panel, disagreed, saying there was strong evidence that dampness and mold cause allergic diseases.
"The allergy literature over the years demonstrates that molds can cause asthma and hay fever," said Dr. Fink, a professor of pediatrics and medicine.
Dr. Fink did agree with the finding that there was no basis to claims that molds could produce nonallergic health problems. In the more than 70 years that scientists have studied molds, he said, "you would think that someone would have reported some evidence of that."
Melinda Ballard, a Texas homeowner who won a $32 million judgment against an insurer in a mold-related lawsuit several years ago (later reduced to $4 million), said her mold-infested home made her family violently ill in a matter of months. Her husband suffered memory loss, had trouble breathing and started coughing up blood. He had brain seizures that were evident in brain scans. Their son developed stomach problems and diarrhea.
A mold expert found that they were breathing in mycotoxins, a mold often caused by water damage, and persuaded them to leave, Ms. Ballard said. Some scientists say mycotoxins can cause brain and lung damage.
The Ballards lived in Austin, not far from a school where large amounts of stachybotrys, another mold linked to health problems, were found in 2000. Some teachers and students became sick as a result.
"When so many people have been exposed to similar varieties of mold and they're all reporting the same symptoms, the bottom line is Are we all a bunch of pathological liars, or is there something to this?" said Ms. Ballard, who formed an organization called Policyholders of America.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
Back to TopSaddest of words News told you so, by Juan Gonzalez, Daily News, May 25th, 2004
http//www.nydailynews.com/news/local/story/196775p-169949c.html
With the city facing heat from cops and firefighters who say they became sick working at Ground Zero or the Fresh Kills landfill, we would do well to remember the warnings.
More than two years ago, on Oct. 26, 2001, the Daily News published a front-page story, "Toxic Zone," by this reporter that created a furor in our town.
The story began "Toxic chemicals and metals are being released into the environment around lower Manhattan by the collapse of the World Trade Center towers and by the fires still burning at Ground Zero."
It was based on hundreds of pages of environmental tests taken by our own federal government - tests that were not made public until The News obtained them through a Freedom of Information Act request by the New York Environmental Law and Justice Project.
Those tests showed that, in addition to asbestos, dangerous substances like benzene, heavy metals, dioxins and PCBs were being released into the environment, sometimes at amounts far exceeding federal safety levels.
The city's political and business leaders immediately tried to kill the messenger.
William Muszynski, then a regional administrator at the federal Environmental Protection Agency, called it "one of the worst kind [of stories] you can write." There were only a few "spikes" of high readings for some contaminants - nothing to worry about, Muszynski said.
Kathryn Wylde, head of the Partnership for New York City, accused me in a letter to The News of engaging in "a sick Halloween prank" that only scared the residents and workers of downtown Manhattan.
Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former Health Commissioner Neal Cohen also tried to knock down the story.
"The short-term irritation of eyes, nose and throat that some people ... may feel does not translate into significant or any long-term health effects," Cohen said.
Former EPA administrator Christie Whitman, then the nation's top public health guardian, chimed in with a personal rebuttal that The News published.
Our story would make New Yorkers believe "the situation at Ground Zero presents a major environmental health hazard to area residents and employees," Whitman wrote, and "that would be inaccurate."
As for any danger to the thousands of workers on the rubble pile, "respirators, when used properly, protect workers from exposure to contaminants," Whitman wrote.
Amazingly, the same week The News published our Toxic Zone article, another federal safety agency issued a report blasting officials at Ground Zero because many workers at the site were not using proper respirators and safety equipment.
Today, our city is dealing with more than 1,000 firefighters and cops who assert they became sick while working at Ground Zero or the Fresh Kills landfill.
Several cops and firefighters have developed cancer, which they believe is connected to their time on The Pile. Tests done of city workers at Ground Zero show many were contaminated with heavy metals like chromium, mercury and arsenic.
Most experts say they would normally expect many more years to pass before cancer developed from toxic exposures, but everyone realizes that the combination of toxic exposures at Ground Zero was unprecedented.
Earlier this month, a summary report of dozens of scientific studies on Ground Zero pollution was published.
The summary begins with these ominous words
"The destruction of the World Trade Center on 11 September 2001 caused the largest acute environmental disaster that ever has befallen New York City."
The federal government itself has now admitted that the World Trade Center collapse represented the largest dioxin release ever recorded. Another group of scientists has calculated that between 100 and 1,000 tons of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), many of them cancer-causing, were dumped onto lower Manhattan by the burning fires.
Giuliani, Cohen, Whitman and Muszynski all are out of office now. The cops, firefighters, recovery workers and downtown residents who believed their assurances are left to cope with the aftermath.
Sometimes it takes a while for the facts to come clear.
All contents © 2004 Daily News, L.P.
9/11 toll still grows, by Michele McPhee, Daily News, May 25th, 2004
http//www.nydailynews.com/news/story/196776p-169946c.html
Workers Cancer is no coincidence
For Bob Shore and Victor DiPierro, the tragic story of Sept. 11, 2001, didn't end that day.
They were among the innumerable heroes who spent weeks and months looking for remains - only to develop life-threatening cancer.
The Daily News revealed yesterday that many cops and firefighters assigned to Ground Zero are developing serious illnesses, including cancer.
And though no direct link between Ground Zero and cancer has yet been established, more victims came forward yesterday to tell their stories.
DiPierro, a cop in the 46th Precinct, worked at Ground Zero all night on Sept. 11 and every day for months afterward.
"When I saw the plane hit, I drove right to the precinct," DiPierro told The News yesterday.
He was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in March, and underwent surgery on April 5 to have two tumors removed.
"I don't regret it. What we did is nothing," said DiPierro, 36, a nine-year veteran who is on sick leave while undergoing radiation treatment.
"I almost feel guilty now getting sick and saying it's because of that day. I knew the air just wasn't right then. You could smell it, and it didn't feel right.
"But it's not a coincidence that we are all getting sick now. Young, healthy cops and firemen all getting sick a couple years after working down there? There is no way that is a coincidence at all."
Shore, a retired correction officer, said he worked nearly nonstop for three weeks at Ground Zero. He has pancreatic cancer, a condition his doctor insists was either caused by or accelerated by the "smoke and chemical gases" in the air those terrible days.
Shore, 52, said he volunteered to work in the massive recovery effort. "My wife called me and said my sister-in-law was trapped in the building. I ran right there and stayed for weeks. I came home every night crying from what I saw there."
His dark experiences prompted him to retire from the Correction Department eight months after the disaster.
By September 2002, Shore became crippled with pains in his rib cage that spread to his spine. Months later, he was told those pains were caused by terminal pancreatic cancer.
By April 2003, Shore was having surgery at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center to remove his pancreas, gallbladder and spleen.
Two doors down was NYPD Detective Robert Williamson, 43, whose struggle with pancreatic cancer was detailed in The News yesterday.
Williamson is one of 1,700 cops and firefighters who filed a notice of claim against the city, saying their illnesses or injuries were related to their work after the 9/11 attacks.
Shore is not expected to survive, despite extensive chemotherapy and radiation treatments. His doctor, Charles Hesdorffer, insists the deadly blend of noxious gases released by the collapse of the towers either caused or accelerated his condition.
"His occupational exposure, albeit as a result of a terrible terrorist act, was the likely cause of his unfortunate disease, which will inevitably lead to his untimely demise," Hesdorffer, an oncologist at Columbia Presbyterian, wrote in a letter to Shore's attorney, Michael Barasch.
Hesdorffer testified on behalf of Shore - and nearly a dozen others with grave illnesses - at Sept. 11th Victim Compensation Fund hearings. Shore's claim is pending.
Hesdorffer examined several patients who developed cancer after working at or near Ground Zero.
"One or more of these chemicals and these fumes may very well have been the cause of the cancers that these patients developed," he wrote.
"In all instances, the cancers developed in young, otherwise healthy individuals with no personal or family histories of cancer."
How cases are resolved
The recovery efforts at Ground Zero and Fresh Kills landfill resulted in 1,700 notices of claim against the city. Of those, 1,500 led to lawsuits.
The vast majority of those plaintiffs eventually dropped their suits to pursue settlements with the federal Sept. 11th Victim Compensation Fund of 2001. Under the terms of the federal fund, anyone who accepts a settlement cannot also file suit.
How these legal claims are ultimately resolved has no bearing on a tragic fact People who helped sift through the remains of Sept. 11, 2001, are developing serious, sometimes fatal, illnesses.
All contents © 2004 Daily News, L.P.
1,700 sue over 9/11 sickness, by Michele McPhee, New York Daily News, May 24, 2004
http//www.nydailynews.com/news/local/story/196481p-169671c.html
In a dramatic sign of escalating health problems stemming from 9/11, more than 1,700 cops and firefighters have filed lawsuits against the city claiming they were sickened by work at Ground Zero or the Fresh Kills landfill.To handle the unprecedented legal overload, the city's Law Department set up a special division to tackle 9/11 claims and appointed attorney Kenneth Becker as chief of the World Trade Center unit.
Underscoring the problem's severity, a police officer was awarded a tax-free disability pension after a judge issued a landmark ruling that 9/11 work was a contributing factor in the cop's cancer.
Richard Lahm, 49, who retired from the 46th Precinct in the Bronx this year, is battling terminal tonsil cancer - a condition his doctor claims was caused by the toxins released at Ground Zero.
Last month, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Kibbie Payne ruled that Lahm's cancer "was exacerbated" by his work after the terrorist attacks and ordered the city to pay him a tax-free disability pension.
While most medical experts doubt any cancer clusters would emerge so soon after 9/11, there is extensive evidence of other ailments among those who worked at Ground Zero or Fresh Kills - where nearly 2 million tons of Trade Center debris was taken to be sifted through.
The illnesses include sarcoidosis, a permanent lung condition; asthma; reactive airway disorders; chronic coughs, and emergency workers with glass lodged in their lung tissue, according to medical records reviewed by the Daily News.
"If I got a cancer after working in the terrible conditions cops, firefighters, construction workers did and developed a cancer a few years later, of course my first thought would be I got it there," said Dr. Stephen Levin, the medical director of the center for occupational and environmental medicine at Mount Sinai Medical Center.
But, he added, "It's too soon. It's impossible to say definitively there is an increase in cancer until we get a better sense of the people whose faces were in the plume there."
Dr. Kerry Kelly, chief medical officer for the FDNY, has been monitoring the health problems of firefighters since Sept. 11 and said while respiratory issues are the most prevalent problem, cancer is a major concern.
"We've had so many different reports from the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] we don't know what people were exposed to. The synergy of all those substances mixed together ... we never had an exposure such as this," Kelly said. "Our concern is, what will be the long-term consequence. Cancer tends to be something that develops after years - but it's very hard to say the cancers we are seeing weren't caused by what happened on 9/11."
Kelly and FDNY spokesman Frank Gribbon said firefighters tend to develop cancer at a higher rate than civilians because of the toxins they are exposed to. From 1999 to the World Trade Center attacks, 104 firefighters were diagnosed with cancer. From Sept. 11, 2001, until today, that number dropped to 71.
More than 300 firefighters have retired with disabilities related to injuries and illnesses related to their work at Ground Zero, Gribbon said. There are an additional 300 disability pension cases pending, meaning that 600 firefighters are on track to retire with three-quarter pensions.
"The Fire Department is concerned about health risks. We gave medicals to every one of our people since 9/11 - active and retired firefighters," Gribbon said.
The FDNY received a $25 million federal grant to monitor health issues with firefighters. The NYPD was denied a similar grant.
NYPD Supervising Chief Surgeon Eli Kleinman, a hematologist and consultant to the city's Trade Center health registry, said the department is "very concerned" about cops developing cancer but has not seen a spike in cases since the terror attacks.
"There are many unknowns here," Kleinman said. "There is no evidence of date of clusters of cancer or malignancies related to 9/11. One cannot rule anything in or out."
Detective John Walcott is one of those cops who has filed a notice of claim against the city seeking financial compensation after he was diagnosed with cancer last May.
The rugged, athletic 39-year-old narcotics detective and hockey coach is living with deadly acute myelogenous leukemia (AML) - a cancer his doctors believe was caused by a toxic mix of pulverized compounds he breathed in while sifting through the rubble at Ground Zero or the Fresh Kills landfill.
AML is often caused by exposure to chemicals and radiation, primarily benzene, a toxin found in airline fuel, his doctors and lawyers said. Walcott said he never smoked, rarely drinks and lives in upstate New York where he says he's never been exposed to any carcinogens.
"I've never been sick a day in my life, except for a sore throat or a common cold," Walcott told The News with his attorney, David Worby, at his side. "I've had friends of mine who were stationed with me [at the landfill] visit me in the hospital and panic, asking me, 'Am I next?'"
This year, Walcott has undergone bone marrow transplants and a series of chemotherapy treatments, and he often wakes up in the middle of the night with blood coming out of his eyes. But the worst pain is not physical, he said.
"I missed the first year of my daughter's life," said Walcott, whose only daughter, Colleen, recently turned 2.
"The hardest part is each day I spend with her, I think ... is this going to be the last one?" he added, before his shoulders began to shake with tears.
NYPD street crime Detective Robert Williamson, 43, became sick with pancreatic cancer in March 2003, a year after he retired from the force. Williamson, his doctors and his attorney, Michael Barach, insist he became sick inhaling carcinogens at Ground Zero 16 hours a day for five months. He never smoked and has no family history of cancer.
"It's been a nightmare. My doctors are telling me basically to go home and die," said Williamson, a married father of three children, ages 12, 9 and 7.
"Did I know the air was not safe? Yes. Would I go down there again today knowing that? Yes. A lot of people made sacrifices," he said. "I might be a casualty of 9/11, but at least I had a few more years with my family."
Williamson is not the only potential casualty associated with the health risks of the Trade Center aftermath.
Union leaders for the police and firefighters say they've seen too many cases
Michael Palladino, president of the Detectives Endowment Association, had his members fill out a medical survey. He was disturbed by the findings.
"I have a lot of active detectives who are extremely sick. I have retired detectives, healthy people, coming down with all kinds of strange illnesses, cancers and diseases they never had before."
Uniformed Firefighters Association President Steven Cassidy said three Brooklyn firefighters have been diagnosed with thyroid cancer since working at Ground Zero. Another has leukemia. Hundreds more have retired with asthma and other respiratory issues, he said.
"All these guys with cancer worked extensively at Ground Zero. How can anyone draw a conclusion that the cancer is not related to their work there?" Cassidy said.
Port Authority Patrolman's Benevolent Association President Gus Danese said his members are complaining of lung ailments, mouth sores and chronic coughs. He is bracing himself for worse.
"We lost 37 members on 9/11. Could that number go higher because of the air quality at Ground Zero and the landfill? Absolutely," Danese said. "Now the question is, what do we do?"
Patrolman's Benevolent Association President Pat Lynch predicted Lahm's case would be the first of many similar ones. "Richie Lahm is just the beginning," Lynch said.
Barach, Williamson's lawyer, has six retired city cops and six city firefighters as clients, all of whom have developed cancer since 9/11.
"I fear that a lot of guys who worked in the rescue effort were given a death sentence," Barach said. "A lot of them don't even know it yet."
All contents © 2004 Daily News, L.P.
Pension bill would offer help, by Michele McPhee, NY Daily News, May 24th, 2004
http//www.nydailynews.com/news/local/story/196482p-169675c.html
City workers would be eligible for a tax-free disability pension - even if they've already retired - if they can prove their illnesses were caused by the terror attacks, under a controversial bill.
Last year, the World Trade Center Presumption bill was passed by the state Senate and Assembly, but was canned after Gov. Pataki vetoed the measure at Mayor Bloomberg's urging.
A rewritten version of the bill was sent to City Hall last week, said the author of the
legislation, Peter Meringolo, chairman of the New York State Public Employees Conference.
The bill would give any city worker who could prove their illness or injury was related to their work after 9/11 a tax-free pension equal to three-quarters of the worker's salary.
"There were hundreds of uniformed members who responded that day, risking their lives. If, God forbid, they should come down with some sort of disease that has been found by medical experts attributed to working at that site, or at the [Fresh Kills] landfill, they should be protected even after they retire," Meringolo said.
"We don't know the effects of that attack. There have to be safeguards for the people who work down there. People are going to start getting sick, and then it's too late," Meringolo said. "The city is opposed to us because they are afraid the floodgates are going to open up and everyone is going to retire on three-quarters."
In October, Bloomberg urged Pataki to can the original bill, saying it would create an "enormous financial liability" for the city, according to a letter obtained by the Daily News. "The sacrifice [of] our men and women in uniform in response to the World Trade Center attack cannot and will not be forgotten," Bloomberg wrote. "However, this legislation ... is a flawed and poorly conceived attempt to address this issue."
All contents © 2004 Daily News, L.P
Stadium Opponents Criticize City for Adopting Jets' Economic Study, by Charles V. Bagli, New York Times, May 23, 2004
http//www.nytimes.com/2004/05/23/nyregion/23stadium.html
When Bank of America asked the city last year for more than $1 billion in tax-free bonds and other incentives to build a skyscraper on 42nd Street, the city took nothing for granted and had its own economists analyze the potential economic impact of the project.
When the Yankees and Mets revived discussions last year about each of them building an $800 million stadium, the city hired a consultant to assess the value of the professional sports teams to the city's economy and a possible municipal investment.
Yet, when it came to the New York Jets' proposal to build a $1.4 billion stadium on the West Side of Manhattan, the city simply reviewed and adopted an economic impact study commissioned by the football team. An independent analysis by either economists at the city's Economic Development Corporation, or by a consultant, might have produced the same results. But the unusual break with a routine practice has made some officials at City Hall nervous and outraged opponents of the Jets stadium.
The Jets contend that the proposed 75,000-seat stadium, which requires $600 million in cash from the city and the state, would generate $27.5 million more in annual tax revenue than it would cost government in bond payments.
"This is the problem we've had with them from the beginning there's no independent analysis," said Walter Mankoff, chairman of Community Board 4 on the West Side and an opponent of the stadium. "City money is at risk here. They're blind to all the alternatives."
The stadium, which would be built over the railyards bounded by 30th and 34th Streets, between 11th and 12th Avenues, would also serve as an Olympic stadium if the city is successful in its bid for the 2012 Summer Games. On Tuesday, the International Olympic Committee selected New York as one of five finalists for the Games.
"The city is relying on the Jets for these revenue estimates," said Ronnie Lowenstein, director of the Independent Budget Office, a nonpartisan city agency, which is doing its own economic impact analysis of the stadium. "It suggests how badly they want the project to proceed."
The Jets say they will put up $800 million for the stadium, more than any professional sports team has ever invested in a new facility. The state and the city are providing $600 million for a retractable roof and the platform over the railyards on which the stadium would be built.
According to a study done by Ernst & Young for the Jets, the stadium would generate $72.5 million a year in new tax revenues for the city and the state from football and other sports events, trade shows and circuses. City and state officials estimate that annual debt service payments would cost them about $45 million, leaving a surplus of $27.5 million.
Deputy Mayor Daniel L. Doctoroff said the city was comfortable with the results of the Jets' Ernst & Young study.
"The key conclusion is that there's a substantial net gain for the city and the state," said Mr. Doctoroff, who founded the city's NYC2012 Olympic bid committee before joining the Bloomberg administration.
He said that the city had not yet found the need to do an independent analysis, "given the fact that a reputable firm did a thorough analysis, and we had an opportunity to review it in great detail.''
"That's not to say we won't eventually do our own," Mr. Doctoroff said.
According to current and former city officials, the city generally does its own economic analyses of so-called retention deals, in which a corporation threatens to leave the city unless it gets tax breaks and other incentives for a new building. Last year, Bank of America and the developer Douglas Durst asked for $1 billion in tax-free bonds and $80 million in sales tax breaks to build a 51-story tower at 42nd Street and the Avenue of the Americas, according to one person involved in the negotiations.
Economists at the Economic Development Corporation did an analysis and pared the numbers sharply, with the city ultimately agreeing to provide $650 million in bonds and about $50 million in tax breaks, although critics thought even that was too much.
For larger deals involving cash investments, the city frequently hires a consultant, as it did last year when it asked the accounting firm Deloitte & Touche to do an analysis of revised stadium proposals from the Yankees and the Mets. Neither team was happy with the results and they have since hired their own consultants, according to a team official.
There is no guarantee, however, that a consultant will come up with a different or more accurate result.
"There's a fair amount of uncertainty in any of these studies," said Robert Berne, a senior vice president at New York University and an expert in municipal finance. "It's very hard to parse out the economic impact of any subject. The developer will always have one set of assumptions, and the city would probably cut it down using a different set of assumptions."
The Jets have gotten plenty of service from the Ernst & Young report. On March 15, Councilman David I. Weprin became one of the first members of the City Council to endorse the stadium, citing the economic benefits. Mr. Weprin, chairman of the Council's finance committee, acknowledged that he had based his evaluation on the Ernst & Young report.
Mr. Weprin was back on the steps of City Hall with the Jets and members of Mr. Doctoroff's staff last Sunday when he promoted a report by Tishman Construction indicating that the Manhattan site was better than an alternative in Queens favored by many critics. Tishman, which may bid to be the construction manager for the project, said it had used the Ernst & Young report.
"This is not an ordinary, arms-length transaction," said Assemblyman Richard N. Gottfried, a Manhattan Democrat. "This is driven by Deputy Mayor Doctoroff's personal vision of bringing the Olympics to New York. He married his idea to the Jets, a ready partner. I don't think the evidence, or the merits, play much of a role here."
Copyright 2004 The New York Times CompanyGround Zero Funds Often Drifted Uptown, Money Also Went to Luxury Apartments, by Michael Powell and Michelle Garcia, Washington Post, May 22, 2004
http//www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46524-2004May21.html
NEW YORK -- Six months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Congress approved an $8 billion program to repair this city's damaged office towers, build apartment buildings and finance the rebirth of the financial district.But two years later, city records show that much of the money, dubbed Liberty Bonds, has gone to developers of prime real estate in midtown Manhattan and Brooklyn and to builders of luxury housing.
Local and state officials -- over the objections of their own downtown development chief -- gave one developer $650 million from the Liberty Bonds to erect an office tower for the Bank of America near Times Square, miles from the shattered precincts of Ground Zero. According to city records, another developer got $113 million to build a tower for Bank of New York in Brooklyn. One of the few projects downtown has gone to actor and sometime developer Robert De Niro, who picked up nearly $39 million from the bonds in November to build a boutique hotel in Tribeca, directly north of Ground Zero.
Congress designated $1.6 billion of the Liberty Bonds for rental housing. Nearly all the money from those bonds has gone to prominent developers to build luxury apartment towers in the neighborhoods around Ground Zero, accelerating its transformation into one of New York's richest neighborhoods, the city records show.
Local political leaders, urban planners and neighborhood residents have sharply criticized these spending choices, saying that wealthy developers shouldn't need subsidies to build office towers in midtown -- where private construction is booming -- or luxury housing downtown. The new luxury towers will contain just a small percentage of apartments for the tens of thousands of moderate-income residents who live in Lower Manhattan.
"Explain to me why helping Bank of America build a tower on one of the most expensive pieces of property in the world is a good use of these moneys?" said state Sen. Liz Krueger, whose district encompasses 42nd Street at Sixth Avenue, where that tower is to rise. "We've gotten free federal money and, instead of building affordable housing, it's become a race between the most powerful groups in the city to claim it."
In the frenetic months that followed the terrorist attacks, Congress worked fast to assemble financing to rebuild the area around Ground Zero. In a rare move, Congress allowed private developers to receive proceeds for commercial projects from interest-free, tax-exempt bonds sold on the municipal bond market. While the Liberty Bonds were backed by the federal government, state and local officials selected the projects that would receive the money.
Congress put few conditions on the Liberty Bond program, but the program's advocates said the intention was clear -- and it was not for luxury apartments and commercial projects far from the site of the World Trade Center. In fact, the program stipulated that New York's governor and the city's mayor had to deem a downtown project "not feasible" before diverting money for use elsewhere in the city.
"We didn't put a lot of strings on the Liberty Bonds, but more should have gone for jobs and affordable housing," said U.S. Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney, (D-N.Y.). "A lot of this money has been spent on projects that fit the letter of the law but not the spirit."
The city's Industrial Development Corp. was designated to hand out the commercial Liberty Bonds. The corporation's executive director, Barbara Basser-Bigio, said that city and state officials wanted to jump-start the broader city economy and that some of the projects would not have been built without the assistance. "Our top priority is to create office space," she said. "We are looking to stimulate the economy through the creation of jobs and enhance business districts throughout the city."
New York officials also say that critics are missing the urgency felt in the weeks after the attacks to retain businesses in the city, especially Lower Manhattan, which remains the nation's third-largest central business district.
"Downtown was hemorrhaging in those days," said Carl Weisbrod, a former top city development official and now president of the Alliance for Downtown New York. "It was critical to stabilize the residential and commercial communities."
'Rebuild, Renew, Enrich'
The first recovery aid began to flow to New York in the weeks immediately after the terrorist attacks. The Bush administration tapped $3.5 billion in community development block grants, a federal program usually reserved for economic development in poor communities. Of this money, $300 million was quickly directed to a program to retain companies tempted to flee from downtown Manhattan. Auditing firm Deloitte & Touche got $17 million, Bank of Nova Scotia got $3 million, and Bank of New York received $40 million. American Express got $25 million even without threatening to leave its 3 World Financial Center home.
Other federal money intended for small businesses ending up going to investment-house brokers and traders.
In March 2002, Congress started to move beyond this initial emergency patchwork and created the Liberty Bond program. (This week the Senate approved an extension of the Liberty Bond program, and the legislation is now headed to the House.)
City officials applauded, saying the bonds would spark the redevelopment of downtown. "The Liberty Bonds will rebuild, renew and enrich Lower Manhattan," Gov. George E. Pataki (R) said at the time.
Myriad agencies are involved in the effort. The Lower Manhattan Development Corp., a joint state-city agency, has taken the lead in the rebuilding but was given no power over the Liberty Bonds. Separate city and state development agencies -- including the city's Liberty Development Corp. and the New York City Industrial Development Agency -- sell the bonds and provide the proceeds to developers.
The corporations' records show the agencies gave $400 million from Liberty Bonds to World Trade Center leaseholder Larry A. Silverstein to rebuild an office tower near Ground Zero, which he is doing even though he has no prospective tenants. The state set aside money for a downtown convention center and gave funding to De Niro and his partners for their six-story, 83-room boutique hotel 10 blocks north of Ground Zero.
But the commercial market downtown continues to sputter. The vacancy rate today hovers at 15 percent, more than twice what it was four years ago.
By the middle of 2003, no other developers had stepped forward to build downtown, city officials said. Officials at the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. argued for holding the Liberty Bonds in reserve and waiting for the downtown market to pick up.
But city and state development officials who controlled the Liberty Bonds turned their eyes elsewhere and provided funding for the Bank of America building and the Bank of New York office tower.
Developer Bruce C. Ratner, who is constructing the bank building, has also received $243 million from Liberty Bonds for the construction of a tower for Pace University and New York University Downtown Hospital. Media tycoon Barry Diller received preliminary approval for $80 million to build the corporate headquarters for his company, IAC/InterActiveCorp., which includes Ticketmaster, in the Chelsea neighborhood.
John C. Whitehead, the chairman of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., criticized those awards, saying that Congress did not intend the Liberty Bonds for the more prosperous precincts of midtown. He told the corporation board last year that the bonds eventually "will be needed for the World Trade Center site itself and the surrounding area."
Rental Market Subsidies
The parceling out of $1.6 billion in Liberty Bonds to finance luxury housing has proved no less contentious. The downtown housing market slumped briefly after Sept. 11 but then swiftly rebounded. Today three-bedroom apartments near Ground Zero rent for $6,500 a month -- and sell for more than $1 million. Manhattan residential occupancy rates -- more than 95 percent -- are higher than before the terrorist attacks, according to real estate statistics.
Yet the state and city agencies that award the bonds -- the New York State Housing Finance Agency and New York City Housing Development Corp. -- awarded nearly all the residential Liberty Bonds to subsidize the rental market.
Common Cause New York reported that 30 percent of the state's residential share of Liberty Bond proceeds went to Leonard Litwin, who is a major campaign contributor to Pataki.
State housing officials said that political favoritism played no part in their decisions and that loans were handed out "on a first-come, first-served basis." Litwin, they say, had projects in the works and simply got in line when the Liberty Bonds came available.
"Market rents had gone down, and it was a market necessity," said Gary Jacob, a vice president of Glenwood Management Corp., Litwin's real estate firm.
Many urban planners doubt the economics of this argument, noting that Litwin put up a huge equity share in these projects, an indicator of his good financial health. But these planners save their most furious criticism for the state's Housing Finance Agency, which decided to waive its own guidelines requiring that developers who get public bonds set aside 20 percent of the apartments for families with low or moderate incomes.
Instead they required that Liberty Bond developers designate just 5 percent of the apartments for families of moderate income, which is defined there as $80,000 a year for a family of three.
A year ago, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg laid out his master plan for rebuilding Lower Manhattan, saying he wanted to preserve its economic and residential diversity. But Deputy Mayor Daniel L. Doctoroff, who has overseen much of the development, now says that goal is difficult to achieve.
"It's an admirable goal to have a mixed-income community, but maybe over time it's shifting," he said in an interview, adding that affordable housing in downtown Manhattan requires a deep subsidy. "Maybe this isn't the best use of scarce dollars," he continued. "We have to look at the trade-offs."
Surveys have shown that many residents want the federal recovery money used not just for affordable housing but also for economic development, schools and parks in downtown Manhattan.
"I constantly wonder what Congress will make of our lavish subsidies for some of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the country," said David Dyssegaard Kallick, an economist and senior analyst with the Fiscal Policy Institute, a think tank funded by foundations and labor. "It just seems shocking."
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
'Significant Adverse Effects', by Jennifer Barnett, Newsweek, May 19, 2004
http//msnbc.msn.com/id/5006568/site/newsweek/
Recent reports show that the dust from the World Trade Center attacks is more toxic than researchers initially realizedand so is the range of health
WEB EXCLUSIVE
May 18 - John Graham used to joke that his doctor would go bankrupt if he relied on him for income. The longtime carpenter, who was also trained as an emergency medical technician (EMT), was so seldom sick that he can’t recall taking anything stronger than an occasional aspirin for a headache. But that was before the September 11 attacks.
Now Graham carries a bag full of medications around with him each day. He takes 17 different drugs for ailments ranging from asthma to chronic infections, and sees his doctor so often that he’s had to ask the receptionist to call and remind him of upcoming appointments so he can keep track.
Graham, whose office was blocks from the World Trade Center, was able to get down to the Twin Towers so quickly after the first plane struck that he was standing across the street from the North Tower when the second plane hit. Because of his unusual combination of medical and carpentry skills, Graham ended up staying at the site for more than nine months helping out, despite his own mounting health problems. His first sought treatment three weeks after the attacks. The initial diagnosis respiratory problems including asthma, and chemical burns on his esophagus and throat.
Doctors and researchers now believe that Graham is one of tens of thousands who suffer debilitating health problems stemming from their exposure to contaminants in the air around the World Trade Center siteand it’s not just rescue and recovery workers who are affected. A report published this month in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives found that pregnant women who were inside the Twin Towers or within a 10-block radius at the time of the attacks showed a twofold increase in the incidence of smaller than average infants compared to pregnant women in a demographically similar population who weren’t in Manhattan on September 11.
The findings are part of a comprehensive report believed to be the first to combine extensive environmental and medical data on the effects of the World Trade Center attacks; it draws a direct link between the contaminated air at and near the World Trade Center site and "significant adverse effects on [the] health" of those who were in the area.
As the 9/11 Commission holds hearings this week in New York to examine the coordination and communication between response units on September 11, the recently published health report sheds new light on the environmental dangers that those first responders and rescuers, as well as construction workers, were exposed to that day and for several weeks afterward.
Air sampling, the report found, showed dust in the plume above the towers had high alkaline levels (about 10 pHthe same as ammonia or detergent) and contained contaminants like asbestos, lead and polychlorinated biphenyls (or PCBs)in addition to pulverized cement and glass fibers. Among workers involved in the cleanup and recovery, many of whomlike Grahamspent several months in and around the disaster site inhaling that air, almost one third experienced a chronic cough that began shortly after employment at the site, 24 percent reported new onset of phlegm production and 18 percent reported new onset of wheezing. About half of all workers reported at least one new symptom after they began working at the site. Residents in the area reported similar health problems. Of 10,116 firefighters evaluated, 332 suffered from a persistent cough and other respiratory symptoms so severe as to require at least four weeks leave of absence. Other rescue and construction workers were treated for a host of ailments ranging from asthma and alkaline burns to rashes and respiratory infections.
"One problem is that no one was insisting that workers wear respirators," says Dr. Philip J. Landrigan, chair of the Department of Community and Preventive Medicine and director of Environmental and Occupational Medicine at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine in New York, and principal author of the recently published study. "I wouldn’t fault anyone in the first 48 hours during the immediate response," he adds, "but for months afterward most workers at Ground Zero were still not wearing respirators and, in my mind, that is a terrible failure in regulation and it’s going to result in a lot of diseases that could have been prevented."
Graham did not use a respirator when he started work at the site, though he wore a mask later. Still, he says, he believed the air was safe after the Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christie Whitman declared it so a week after the attacks (a statement she has since been widely criticized for making). "The government lied to us," he says. "They said the air was clean."
Graham continued to work after his initial diagnosis. But his symptoms only worsened. When he left Ground Zero in May 2002, he could no longer work as a carpenterthe combination of dust and exertion provoked asthma attacks so bad he had to be rushed to the emergency room once when he was working with an apprentice. So he took a cut in pay and a job as a health and safety instructor for the New York District Council of Carpenters. Even that is a struggle at times; last winter he suffered a severe attack in class and was unable to talk until a student brought him medication.
"This was a life-changing event medically for people who were caught in the dust cloudand probably tens of thousands were caught in that cloud," says Dr. Michael D Weiden, a medical officer for the Fire Department of New York who has treated hundreds of firefightersmany of whom suffer permanent disabilities. "There are hundreds who are no longer able to work," he says.
Weiden, Landrigan and other doctors who have treated or studied those who spent time at Ground Zero are urging continued long-term follow-up of the health impact of exposure to the contaminants as well as long-term treatment for those affected, some of whom risk developing more serious ailments like mesothelioma, a relatively rare form of cancer (with no cure) associated with asbestos exposure.
Making sure that long-term treatment is covered is a particular challenge to those representing the residents and rescue and construction workers who were in the area, as there’s no way to predict what symptoms may yet emerge.
"The real concern is that we do not yet know the long term effects of 9/11, and the period of manifestation differs from person to person," says Michael Palodino, the president-elect of the Detectives' Endowment Association, which represents about 15,000 active and retired police detectives. "But despite the possible fiscal costs, you can’t turn your back on these people."
Lawyer Michael Barasch, who has helped file hundreds of injury claims with the Victim Compensation Fund, says all but a handful of those he has represented have had their claims approved. But the fund has turned down some claims for lack of medical proof or because the victim’s symptoms improved. "It’s so ironic that so many of these guys who were rescue workers are now in need of being rescued themselves," he adds.
There are bills under consideration at the state and federal level that would help cover the costs of long-term medical care and follow-up for a wider range of those affected by the attacks. Nationally, the Remember 9/11 Health Act, sponsored by New York Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney in March, would expand those eligible for coverage for health problems related to the attacks; it has been referred to a House subcommittee. Proposed state legislation would shift the burden of proof from the rescue workers to the compensation board in determining whether health problems were a direct result of exposure at the World Trade Center site.
"There are those who are active[-duty] today but suffering from some symptoms and may get sick down the road when the answers come out, but there is no mechanism now to bring them back then and get them what they deserveunless we get this bill passed," says Palodino. He adds that about 5 percent of active detectives have been treated for symptoms, from rashes to respiratory problems. "And I am positive that there are plenty more who are running around that are not reporting them."
It’s not clear how many of those who were exposed to the contaminated air around Ground Zero have yet to come forward for treatment, but there is widespread agreement within the medical community that the number who are suffering lingering health problems from the September 11 attacks is greater than initially anticipated. Weiden, who treats the New York firefighters, says there’s still "a large unmet need" and warns "Someor manyof those caught in the cloud will be in crisis if they don’t understand what’s going on.".
"It's much more serious than we initially realized," says Landrigan, the principal author of the study. "It took awhile to realize just how toxic this dust was."
It could take even longer stillLandrigan says the first related cancer cases may not appear for at least a decadeto realize just how serious the consequences will be for the thousands like Graham who were exposed to the dust.
© 2004 Newsweek, Inc.
Clear the air from 9/11, by Juan Gonzalez, NY Daily News, May 18, 2004
http//www.nydailynews.com/news/local/story/194410p-167989c.html
For nearly a year after 9/11, Ron Vega was part of a team of architects and engineers from the city's Design and Construction Department supervising recovery efforts at Ground Zero.
Like so many workers at the site, Vega was not provided with a proper respirator for the first two months, which would have protected him from the many dangerous chemicals at the site.
For Vega, the heavy cough, headaches, dizziness and rashes started almost immediately. At first, he figured it was just from overwork.
Not until August 2002, after he had left the site and the city tested him for heavy metals, did Vega learn that arsenic and mercury levels in his body were three times higher than is considered safe.
"They tried to tell me I was eating too much contaminated fish," Vega said. "I told them I'm allergic to fish. And no one could explain the arsenic."
Vega says he wasn't alone.
Of some 60 department employees who worked at Ground Zero, Vega said at least 18 have confided to him that their tests were positive.
"We all came back with some level above toxic for specific metals like chromium, mercury, zinc," Vega said.
Amazingly, more than two years after the attack on the World Trade Center, the city has never made public the results of toxic-metal testing of the department's workers - or any Ground Zero workers, for that matter.
Today and tomorrow, the federal 9/11 commission is scheduled to hold hearings on our city's response to the attacks and what officials have learned to help prevent future threats.
Much of the attention will focus on how former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, the NYPD, the Fire Department and other city agencies reacted in the hours after the planes hit the twin towers.
We will once again relive the unbearable anguish of a day that claimed nearly 3,000 lives.
But what about the weeks and months after the attack?
Will the commission dare to ask tough questions about why our leaders, at all levels of government, failed adequately to protect the health of recovery workers and thousands of New Yorkers who live or work near Ground Zero?
Two weeks ago, an independent task force of more than a dozen top medical experts released a summary of all known scientific studies on the public health effects of the collapse.
That summary begins with these ominous words
"The destruction of the World Trade Center on 11 September 2001 caused the largest acute environmental disaster that ever has befallen New York City."
The report goes on to document some of what we already know that a high percentage of firefighters and rescue workers who were assigned to Ground Zero, and even some community residents, are still suffering from coughs and respiratory problems two years later; that pregnant women who were either inside or near the towers on 9/11 showed "a two-fold increase" in undersize babies.
And it makes clear that years will pass before we can say for sure what the long-term public health impact will be from the pollution released at Ground Zero.
The tone of that report is a far cry from the "air is safe to breathe" assurances given to all of us in the days after the attack from Christie Whitman, the former Environmental Protection Agency administrator, or from Giuliani and his former health commissioner.
Last year, an investigation by the EPA's inspector general concluded that the agency misled New Yorkers about any possible health dangers from the disaster and still has failed to do a proper cleanup of lower Manhattan.
The inspector general even revealed that White House officials rewrote EPA news releases to minimize health dangers.
But EPA is not the only agency that's supposed to safeguard public health. It's also the job of the city's Health Department and Environmental Protection Department, and also of the state's Environmental Conservation Department.
Let's hope the 9/11 commission asks Giuliani and other former city officials not only what they did to protect human life on that terrible day but what they did to protect recovery workers and the public in the many months that followed.
All contents © 2004 Daily News, L.P.
Mayor Attacks Critics of His Plan to Coordinate Emergency Response, by Mike McIntire, New York Times, May 17, 2004http//www.nytimes.com/2004/05/17/nyregion/17fdny.html
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg yesterday attacked critics who say his new plan to coordinate the city's response to emergencies does not go far enough to prevent squabbling and confusion between the Police and Fire Departments."I don't know what they do for a living, but they should probably go back to whatever they do," Mr. Bloomberg said in his first public remarks since the new incident command system was announced Friday.
"It's sort of an insult for the men and women of all the agencies who work together every day," he said. "They know exactly what they're doing; they each have their responsibilities. That's why the public is safer in this city than any place else."
Several academic experts and consultants, the chairman of the City Council's public safety committee and the president of the Uniformed Fire Officers Association have called the system flawed. The main concern is that it has not completely resolved critical command and control issues that led to confusion over who was in charge at the World Trade Center on 9/11.
The new system, the first such formal arrangement among the city's emergency response agencies, was announced just days before the national commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks is scheduled to hold public hearings in New York. The city's difficulties in developing the system, and the continuing controversy surrounding it, are likely to be raised at the hearings, which are to start tomorrow.
Early yesterday, the mayor attended an emergency response drill in Lower Manhattan that simulated the effects of a terrorist bombing in the Bowling Green subway station. Responding to questions afterward, he played down past problems with coordination between the Police and Fire Departments at real emergencies, saying, "The number of times that there is any dispute is so small that it's very hard to measure."
The new incident command system shifts more responsibility to the police in some areas. Some fire officials have objected to the decision to give the police responsibility for assessing incidents involving biological, radiological and nuclear materials, saying their department is better equipped and trained to handle such incidents.
The mayor said that despite the different roles of the agencies in various types of incidents, the new system requires them to work together to respond to all emergencies, although he insisted that they usually do that already.
"What we want to do is add a component that deals with the new world reality of the potential terrorist attack, which we didn't have really before," he said. "What the protocol basically says is that the ranking officers of every agency that responds will be together, and sometimes in the past they've sort of set up separate command posts."
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
'The city owes me', by Graham Rayman, NY Newsday, May 17, 2004http//www.nynewsday.com/news/printedition/stories/nyc-nysan173805857may17,0,4446285.story
Sanitation workers who hauled debris to Fresh Kills landfill seeking compensation for health problemsFor Roy Redman and 56 current and former city sanitation workers, the echoes of those awful months after the Sept. 11 terror attacks still reverberate.
Redman, 75, drove a city Sanitation Department launch - known as a "Sweetboat" - for nearly a year following the disaster, when the Fresh Kills landfill became the resting place for about 1 million tons of debris.
The intricate barge operation ferried debris from Ground Zero to docks on Staten Island, and then to Fresh Kills, where it was sifted and interred. As police and FBI agents culled remains, personal effects and important items from the debris, sanitation workers performed several other tasks at the docks, at marine transfer stations and at the landfill.
"There was a tremendous amount of smoke and dust in the air, which made it hard to breathe," Redman said. "We were breathing that without respirators. My eyes are still dry all the time, I have a cough and acid reflux."
Done in by dust
In pending lawsuits filed in federal and state courts, the 57 workers claim that city officials misled or did not inform them about the dangers of the World Trade Center dust and failed to train them and provide respirators for as long as two months.
Their throats, lungs and stomachs, they said, were coated with the corrosive dust, causing mild to severe respiratory discomfort, such as asthma and persistent heartburn, and exposed them to potential future illness. A recent Mount Sinai study said the dust consisted mainly of pulverized concrete and tiny glass shards, which caused a chemical reaction "like drain cleaner."
"The doctors asked me if I had had a throat operation, because it was so scarred," said Jack Saltarella, 64, another of the plaintiffs. "The city owes me. They lied to us."
Because they did not work at Ground Zero, the men could not qualify for the federal Victim Compensation Fund. "Obviously, someone believed that Ground Zero workers deserved to be compensated without approving of liability," said the plaintiffs' lawyer, Robin Wertheimer. "Now these guys have to prove liability. There is something inherently unfair about that."
Keith Mellis, a Sanitation Department spokesman, and Kate Ahlers O'Brien, a spokeswoman for the Office of the Corporation Counsel, both declined to comment, citing the ongoing litigation.
"As much as we want to be able to respond, we feel it is inappropriate to comment further," O'Brien said.
Litigation abounds
The city has mounted an aggressive defense. City lawyers fought the validity of the initial notice of claim, although it did not do so for Ground Zero workers. The city also questioned workers for seven hours and subpoenaed their entire medical histories, going back decades, in some cases.
"They asked us everything from almost the day we were born," Redman said.
Wertheimer said the city has treated the workers "not as patriots but as malingerers trying to cash in on a national disaster."
Though they did get dust masks early on, the workers say they did not receive the far more effective respirators and Tyvek suits until as late as two months after they started working on the debris operation. FBI agents and other federal workers had the equipment within two days after the attacks.
"They had them from day one," sanitation worker John Menoni said in his deposition.
Menoni claims he was told he couldn't have one unless he were a law enforcement worker. "Nobody was thinking, 'Am I breathing something bad.' We were all just trying to do what we could," he said.
When they asked for the equipment, other workers said, they were told they had to get it at the landfill, but access was a problem.
"Sanitation is telling us nothing is really dangerous," Saltarella said. "Then, we see guys wearing respirators, but we're told we couldn't get a vehicle to go up there."
A chilling memo
On Dec. 10, 2001, each sanitation worker in the debris operation received a memo that said "as a result" of the work, they "may have been exposed to asbestos." For some workers, the memo was jarring.
"They send us the letter after the fact," said retired sanitation worker John Brace, 63. "If they knew I was being exposed to it, why didn't I get a respirator right away? We just weren't told everything that was going on."
The central questions in the lawsuit are whether the city adequately took care of the workers and whether the city was aware of the health risks at the time. At a place where maintaining the production schedule was a top priority, records unearthed in the lawsuit indicate there were mixed signals about the health dangers.
The city's environmental testing did not find elevated levels of unsafe materials in the air, records show. Questions have been raised, however, about that testing. Meanwhile, records of interagency meetings indicate the dust was a constant concern. There was, for example, a "decontamination trailer" on the site.
In his deposition, sanitation official Dennis Diggins admits that dust was a concern. But he insists "The EPA was telling us it was safe to work it. To my knowledge, we were safe."
In a deposition, Edmund Brescia, a sanitation department industrial hygienist, said the first safety seminars were not held until the "end of October, 2001," and that site safety training did not start until November. It is unclear how many workers received the training.
There are still dozens of workers complaining of ailments. In depositions, Robert Goffredo said he still gets easily winded, and Lenny DiNotte complains of shortness of breath. Wayne Brown worked in the 59th Street Marine Transfer Station, where debris was transferred to the barges. "You could barely see," Brown said in his deposition referring to the dust inside the building.
Doctors who have studied trade center workers have established a link between health effects and the dust. "Patients would have been better served if respiratory protection had been made available early, and if they had been presented with the need of wearing it," Dr. Stephen Levin of Mount Sinai said in his deposition. "That was a great misfortune, and it was bad public health policy."
Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc.
City's Golden Quest May $tumble on Cleanups, by Sam Smith, New York Post, May 16, 2004
http//web1.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/24152.htm
EXCLUSIVE
The city's ambitious plan to bring the Olympics to New York City in 2012 requires erecting five of the venues on some of the city's most toxic sites - one contaminated by an oil spill whose cleanup would be comparable to that of the Exxon Valdez spill, one expert said.
But the cleanups are so staggering that New York's Olympic organizers are now re-evaluating the cost of the Games as part of a report due in November to the International Olympic Committee, The Post has learned.
The NYC2012 committee has already allocated more than $70 million to clean the toxic wastelands, but officials admit the figure could balloon by at least $100 million. The toxic fields with gold-medal dreams are
* Industrial blocks in Long Island City, Queens, earmarked as the Olympic Village site, adjacent to Newtown Creek.
* The former Eastern District Rail Terminal in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where archery and beach volleyball would be staged.
* Meadow and Willow lakes in Flushing, Queens, for rowing.
* The NYPD firing range at Rodman's Neck in The Bronx, where an Olympic shooting range would be installed.
* The Richmond Avenue Truckfill in Staten Island's former Brookfield Landfill near Fresh Kills, which would become an equestrian center.
Cleanup of the proposed Olympic Village site, the Queens West development in Long Island City, is covered under a current state plan. But the adjacent Newtown Creek, polluted by raw sewage, oil and other hazardous waste, has not yet been addressed.
The state Department of Environmental Conservation estimate for cleaning just one of the sites along the creek is $100 million, a cost not accounted for in the city Olympic plan. According to Riverkeeper, an environmental group pushing for a cleanup of the creek, there are at least half a dozen similar sites, including a 17 million-gallon oil spill.