Few of Those Eligible Register for Cleanup Help Near 9/11 Site, By Kirk Johnson, NY Times, 9/25/2

ASHINGTON, Sept. 24 — With just a week left to sign up, only about a quarter of the New York City residents eligible to have their apartments tested and cleaned to remove leftover World Trade Center dust have registered, federal environmental officials said today.

They said that many residents perhaps deemed the cleanup unnecessary, and that some might have been discouraged by reports of fraudulent cleanup contractors posing as government representatives.

But the biggest problem may be that many people still do not know that the offer even exists. The first free cleanup and air-sampling work with contractors in the field started on Sept. 12, two months behind schedule.

"One of the things we're finding is that when we go in to clean up, other people see us in the building cleaning up and then come forward," said the Environmental Protection Agency's administrator, Christie Whitman, in testifying before the Senate's Committee on Environment and Public Works about her agency's response to the terrorist attack.

Mrs. Whitman told the panel that she was interested in pushing the sign-up period — which was already extended once, by 30 days — past the Oct. 3 deadline. But because of the complex chain of responsibility over indoor air, she said, the decision would have to be approved by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is paying for the cleanups, and the City of New York.

A spokesman for FEMA said that the agency would go along with any decision to extend the sign-up period if city officials decided that more time was necessary.

The commissioner of the city's Department of Environmental Protection, Christopher O. Ward, noted that calls to the E.P.A.'s hot line were declining, but that the city was committed to seeking full participation in the cleanup program. He said that the city would discuss with FEMA the possibility of expanding the cleanup program to include businesses.

About 20,000 apartments south of Canal, Allen and Pike Streets in Lower Manhattan are covered by the plan. Residents may register by calling the E.P.A. at (877) 796-5471 or by signing on to www.epa.gov/wtc.

In signing up, residents are given two options: for a cleaning and testing, or a testing only.

As of today, 3,633 residents have registered for a clean-and-test, and 1,031 for a testing only, said a spokesman for the E.P.A. Most of the apartments are to be tested only for asbestos, but 250 of those initial apartments will also receive a broader spectrum of tests for dioxins, heavy metals and other pollutants under a separate pilot program.

The Environmental Protection Agency spokesman, Richard Stapleton, said that a decision on whether to expand the testing menu would be made on the basis of those initial 250 apartments, but that results were not yet available. Of the 80 asbestos-only apartment tests so far, he said, 2 contained asbestos in levels that suggested a need for further cleanup.

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New vision downtown, by Greg Gittrich, NY Daily News, Tuesday, September 24th, 2002
Downtown redevelopment honchos are looking beyond Ground Zero - studying ways to build more housing in lower Manhattan and make Fulton St. a prime retail and entertainment center, officials said yesterday.

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City grants chief now a disaster-aid broker, By Greg Gittrich, NY Daily News, Tuesday, September 24th, 2002
A former city official who dished out grants to downtown businesses hurt by the Sept. 11 attacks has left her post to run a consulting firm - advising businesses on how to apply for the same federal aid.

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Feds stiff city on 9/11 loans, By Douglas Feiden, NY Daily News, September 21st, 2002

Whale watching in Alaska. Scuba diving in the Virgin Islands. Panning for gold in Nevada. Full-body tanning in North Dakota. Whitewater rafting in West Virginia.

From the Hamptons to the Hollywood Hills, thousands of companies that offer pricey pleasures to the affluent have been larded with millions in taxpayer-subsidized loans because of Sept. 11-related economic woes.

If only Uncle Sam had been so generous to the hard-pressed small businesses of New York City.

The Small Business Administration's disaster loan program is ordinarily limited to companies in an immediate disaster area and nearby counties. But on Oct. 22, the SBA expanded the program for the first time in its half-century history to cover companies in all 50 states that could prove an inability to pay bills and meet operating expenses because of the terror attacks.

Companies across America rushed to cash in on quick, low-interest, federally guaranteed loans. With terms up to 30 years and no interest or principal payments for five months, the loans provided a helping hand for thousands of entrepreneurs.

Like Forrest Johnson, who runs off-the-blacktop Humvee tours of the desert and gold fields outside Las Vegas — and borrowed from the feds so he could continue his quest for tourist dollars.

"After Sept. 11, it was the job of the SBA to help get America back on its feet again," Johnson said. "Mission accomplished."

Mounds of red tape

Unfortunately, the battered businesses in and around Ground Zero did not fare quite as well, according to a Daily News analysis of SBA data and dozens of interviews with struggling downtown proprietors.

Owners tell of arbitrary turndowns. Mysterious, lengthy delays. Language barriers that often trip up immigrants. Take-it-or-leave-it collateral demands. Inept functionaries who lose critical paperwork. And a bureaucratic mind-set that spawns thickets of red tape.

So daunting is the process that thousands of New Yorkers have withdrawn their applications — or turned down the agency after a loan finally was offered.

Mendel Ciment, whose four-employee network-management company, Tower Computer Services, originally was located on the 21st floor of 1 World Trade Center, said he was horrified when the SBA demanded he put up his home as collateral for a $70,000 loan. He refused.

"My office was vaporized, my business was vaporized — and now the federal government wanted my house in hock," Ciment said. "This was 9/11 — not some flood on Main St. or an earthquake out West — yet the SBA acted as if it couldn't tell the difference."

The bottom line: In the five boroughs, 54% of business loan applicants who claimed terror-related financial hardships got approval from the SBA. By contrast, more than 30 states — and at least five U.S. territories — had approval rates of 58%. "There are an awful lot of businesses in New York City that we tried real hard to help — and gave every benefit of the doubt when it came to their ability to repay," said William Leggiero, the SBA area director for New York, New Jersey and 11 other Eastern states. "But these were businesses on the edge — barely making it and unable to take on any more debt — and much as we tried, we just couldn't help them."

He said local businesses that were marginal before 9/11 — and less likely to make it after 9/11 — wouldn't necessarily qualify for federal lending.

As a result, the approval rate in Manhattan — 58% — was identical to that in the Rocky Mountains and Great Plains states. In other words, in the place where 2,801 innocents died, businesses seeking disaster relief were successful in the same percentages as were companies in Omaha, Wichita and Santa Fe.

The other boroughs fared even worse: In the Bronx, the approval rate stands at 34%, the lowest in the city. Queens hit 42%, and Staten Island, 57%. In Brooklyn, businesses were approved 39% of the time — about the same as firms in California, Arizona, Alaska, Hawaii and Guam.

"Why should a company in Honolulu get the same odds I got?" asked Marc Jacobs, co-owner of a family-run car service in Borough Park, Brooklyn. He said he was denied a loan because of a credit dispute that was resolved six years ago.

Perplexing loans

How did companies thousands of miles from the city qualify for 9/11-related loans?

They claimed, in the language of the SBA, to have "suffered substantial economic injury as a direct result" of the "destruction of the World Trade Center or damage to the Pentagon" — and were able to prove it to the lender's satisfaction.

Among those who met that standard:

• Desert Fox Tours, a Las Vegas off-road guide service. It scored a $50,000 loan capped at 4%. Owner Johnson said his Japanese market dried up and that he needed the funds to reposition his company to cater to U.S. tourists and develop ghost town and gold mine tours.

• Renown Charters & Tours, an Anchorage operator of whale, wildlife and glacier cruises. It snared a $294,000 loan to meet fixed expenses. Owner Randy Becker said that with flights grounded, few travelers were in the mood to spot orcas, otters, porpoises, seals, sea lions and bald eagles in Kenai Fjords National Park. He used the cash to cover payroll, fuel and moorage costs for his boats.

• Tan Your Buns, a Fargo, N.D., tanning salon. It borrowed $16,800 for working capital and loan repayment. Co-owner Caleb Hoag said the brutal Fargo winters had been prime tanning season for his customers, many of whom gave up this luxury after 9/11, costing him 37% of his normal revenue. The money helped him limp through the summer, when salon sessions are traditionally less frequent.

• Dive Experience, a St. Croix, Virgin Islands, scuba diver training service. It got a $42,100 loan. Owner Michelle Pugh said the coral reef — and marine life such as the moray eel and black-tipped shark — lost their exotic appeal after the terror strikes. Cancellations were widespread, and the loan helped her company stay afloat.

• New Stone Age, a Saipan-based import-and-trading concern in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands — 8,084 miles from Ground Zero. It pocketed $35,700. Owner Jim Davies said that after 9/11, he needed cash because goods shipped from Indonesia and the Philippines never reached the Marianas.

• Redi-Spuds, a Las Vegas purveyor of fresh hash brown breakfast potatoes. It got $50,000. Owner Pete Vescio said "decadence was out of fashion" in September, and the market for hash browns and onion rings quickly fizzled. The loan let him maintain staff, supplies — and potato inventories — until demand for spuds grew back.

Mixed signals

Out-of-town recipients tend to gush about their dealings with the SBA. Said Johnson, "They were amazingly helpful, efficient and reasonable."

Pugh said, "They're wonderful people to work with, the process was fabulously painless, and it restored my faith in government."

Vescio agreed. "It was simpler and easier than dealing with our banks," he said.

And in the argot of Fargo, Hoag summed up his experience as "cool beans."

Try telling that to Joshua Rockoff, president of Strike Eagle Graphics, an Internet consulting firm that was housed on the 29th floor of 2 World Trade Center and needed money to buy computers and reconstruct intellectual property.

"They lost my paperwork seven times," he said. "They never apologized; they kept blaming the post office. It was one of the worst experiences of my life."

Rockoff applied for a $150,000 loan in late October and needed a fast turnaround. But, he said, the SBA kept him waiting until June — as revenues nosedived 53% — and then arbitrarily slashed his loan to $57,000. By that time, he no longer was interested.

John Calder, owner of Steamer's Landing restaurant on the Battery Park City esplanade, got a quicker response. His Sept. 24 application for a $180,000 loan was approved Oct. 14 — but there were strings attached.

He had to put up his co-op for collateral. He had to hand over any future grant monies to pay down principal. Loans from other sources also would go to the SBA, as would proceeds from damage and business interruption insurance.

"The loan would have been completely meaningless," Calder said. "So I turned down the SBA."

Still, for statistical purposes, the SBA is able to list the transaction as an approved loan.

The SBA's Leggiero said collateral requirements, usually a home, minimize taxpayer losses and the risk of default. He added that grant and insurance funds are often tapped to repay the loan because the federal law mandates "no duplication of benefits" for disaster loans.

Immigrant-owned businesses whose principals lack fluency in English often describe a long, nightmarish process before they get loans.

Waitim Ho, one of seven co-owners of the Win Hop restaurant at 51 Bayard St. in Chinatown, said he made at least five trips to the SBA's Worth St. office, spent more than 16 hours, talked to four loan officers through a Cantonese translator, produced hundreds of documents — and still was turned down five times.

The two big sticking points: 1) The SBA kept asking Ho to identify Win Hop's majority shareholder, even though all seven co-owners hold equal 14.3% stakes. 2) The SBA kept asking Ho to produce all six of his partners — even though that would mean closing the restaurant at a time sales already were down 50%.

Ho said through an interpreter, "I felt desperate and hopeless, and I cried with dry tears."

The ordeal ended in April, when Jack Chung, a business adviser at LaGuardia Community College's Small Business Development Center, read about Ho's plight in a Chinese newspaper and intervened with the SBA to help him secure a 13-year, $70,500 loan. Ho was one of the lucky ones.

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Asbestos costs to rise by $100,000, High school must replace auditorium upholstery, carpeting, By Heather Barr , The News-Times, 9/20/2
Contact Heather Barr at hbarr@newstimes.com or at (203) 731-3331.

BROOKFIELD — The auditorium of Brookfield High School will remain closed until officials can arrange for more than $100,000 worth of work on seats and carpeting.

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Stop the Presses
    Just Asking... -  by Eric Alterman, The Nation, 9/19/2

[from the October 7, 2002 issue]

Shortly after September 11, Dan Rather--or "El Diablo" as he is known to conservatives--appeared on Letterman and announced, "George Bush is the President, he makes the decisions, and, you know, as just one American, he wants me to line up, just tell me where." About a year later, Rather came to understand how misguided a sentiment this is for a journalist and took it back: "We haven't lived up to our responsibility," he admitted. "We haven't been patriotic enough to ask the tough questions."

The costs of the media acquiescence to the atmosphere of superpatriotism are all around us. We're fighting one war in Afghanistan and may be about to enter another in Iraq. And yet because of the Bush Administration's penchant for obsessive secrecy coupled with the media's misplaced deference, we're not much more knowledgeable about our path than thirty-eight years ago, when Lyndon Johnson sent US troops into combat in Vietnam by retaliating for an imaginary attack.

As a patriotic American, I'd like to offer up a few questions to which we might like answers related to the attacks of September 11, the war against Al Qaeda (which I support) and the proposed war against Iraq (which I don't). In addition to my own research, I have relied on recent reports by Patrick Tyler and Jim Dwyer of the New York Times, Robert Kaiser of the Washington Post, Eric Boehlert of Salon and Juan Gonzalez, author of the new book Fallout. Here goes:

Why did the Bush national security team ignore the Al Qaeda briefing it received from President Clinton's National Security Adviser, Sandy Berger, in the fall of 2000?

Why did the President ignore the August 2001 intelligence briefing warning him of the likelihood of an Al Qaeda hijacking?

Why, in August 2000, was the FBI unable to locate Al Qaeda operatives Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaq al-Hazmi, both of whom had been placed at a terrorist planning meeting by Malaysian intelligence in December 1999? Hazmi was listed in the San Diego telephone directory and Midhar was using a credit card with his name on it. Both were active at the San Diego Islamic Center.

Why didn't the National Security Agency have foreign language expertise to translate the words "Tomorrow is zero hour," spoken by Al Qaeda operatives and picked up in real time on September 10, 2001?

Why can't the FBI afford a decent computer system and people who know how to run it? Can't they hire Microsoft?

Why can't the CIA and the FBI talk to each other? Why can't either talk to the NSA? Microsoft could probably handle this one, too.

Why has no one, apparently, been fired, anywhere, despite a clear systemwide breakdown?

What was really up with George Bush flying around the country on September 11? If they thought they had a "credible threat" to Air Force One, why the hell did he fly on Air Force One?

What's up with those "loose" and missing Soviet-era nukes in Russia, Ukraine and elsewhere? Why is the White House cutting funding for the Nunn-Lugar program, designed to protect them and keep them away from bad guys?

Why couldn't the cops and firemen communicate during 9/11? How many lives will be lost next time if this problem isn't fixed? (Ahem, Mr. Gates? This too.)

Who besides Rudy Giuliani thought it was a smart idea to build a terrorism crisis control center inside an obvious terrorist target? How many people might have survived if it had been built in a halfway intelligent place?

Speaking of Ground Zero, anybody got any idea if it's safe to breathe the air down there? Anybody know how all those contaminants--mercury, asbestos, benzene, etc.--combining in unprecedented chemical cocktails, affect the long-term health of children, pregnant women, old people? Who is monitoring the health effects on the rescue workers? Who made the decision to reopen downtown so quickly, knowing so little?

Why is John Ashcroft arresting people who grow medical marijuana? Ditto New Orleans hookers? Isn't there a war on? Don't the terrorists win if we give up pot and hookers?

What about those detention camps Ashcroft wanted for the purposes of indefinitely incarcerating US citizens deemed to be "enemy combatants," while stripping them of all constitutional rights, including the right to trial? Is that still happening? That sounds kinda bad.

When did George Bush decide to appoint Ariel Sharon as de facto US representative to what used to be called the Middle East peace process? Isn't Marty Peretz supposed to be Gore's guru?

How did Bush decide on war with Iraq without consulting the uniformed military, the intelligence agencies, the UN, NATO, the Republican national security establishment--including both of his dad's secretaries of state and his National Security Adviser--the Republican Party in Congress, the Democratic majority or just about anyone who did not already want to go to war with Iraq?

Why was it OK for Iraq to use nerve gas when we were helping it fight the Iranians during the Reagan Administration? Wasn't Richard Perle in the Defense Department back then? Didn't Reagan send Rumsfeld over there to suck up to the guy? Well, what did they know and when did they know it?

Got any real evidence about those nukes Saddam is building? Got any real evidence regarding his CBW and WMD delivery capabilities? Why is he not deterrable again?

About this pre-emptive war stuff, who gets to go next? China against Taiwan? India against Pakistan? Or is it just a white guy thing?

What happens with Iran if Iraq collapses?

What happens with Kashmir if Musharraf is overthrown?

Does Israel go nuclear if Saddam unleashes a gas attack on Tel Aviv? What happens then?

Is anybody thinking about this stuff?

Who elected this guy anyway?

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9/11 Contractors Near Agreement on Insurance, by Steven Greenhouse, NY Times, 9/21/2

he construction companies that excavated the debris from ground zero were near agreement with the city yesterday on a deal to use federal emergency money to buy $1 billion in insurance, which the companies would use to defend themselves against any lawsuits from residents, property owners and workers connected with the cleanup.

The agreement would protect the companies from a risk that haunted them throughout the cleanup: they did not have the basic liability coverage against injury that contractors typically have on every project, even a single-family house.

Ever since the construction companies began removing the tangled steel and smoking debris from the attack on Sept. 11, 2001, they feared that a flood of lawsuits over asthma, asbestos-related illnesses or other respiratory conditions could bankrupt them because they lacked basic insurance. Several construction officials said it was absurd that there was no basic insurance at a construction site widely seen as the most dangerous in the nation.

"I'm happy to say that there has been some movement," said Peter Davoren, senior vice president of Turner Construction Company, one of the four major contractors in the cleanup. "It's critical that we get this issue resolved. If we don't have this insurance in place, it could put us out of business. We don't have a place to go if these claims come in and we have to pay them out of pocket."

In the deal under negotiation, the city would set up a new insurance company to cover these potential claims. It is expected to use hundreds of millions of dollars from the Federal Emergency Management Administration to secure $1 billion in insurance coverage. That fund, officials in the negotiations said, might cover 20 or 25 years of claims for professional and pollution liability.

Claims covered by this insurance could come from different sources: from victims of respiratory problems, for example, who attribute them to the cleanup, or from owners of a building near the World Trade Center site who conclude that engineering mistakes in the cleanup weakened the building foundations.

In the four months after the Sept. 11 attack, the four major cleanup contractors — Bovis, Tully, AMEC and Turner — failed, despite intense efforts, to persuade insurance companies to provide coverage. The insurers refused to write a policy because they feared a mountain of claims that they said would be impossible to calculate.

When the contractors could not get insurance, several advisers told them they were unwise to continue the cleanup, but company officials said it was their patriotic duty to continue.

The four cleanup contractors and 20 subcontractors turned to Congress for help. In approving more than $20 billion in emergency aid for New York City after the attack, Congress anticipated that some of that money would be used to finance liability coverage for the contractors.

"Even when their own lawyers were telling them to leave, these contractors stayed at the site and continued to work," said Representative Carolyn Maloney, a Manhattan Democrat who pressed the federal government to help create the $1 billion insurance fund. "It's only right that they are getting the insurance protection they deserve and need."

The construction companies were considered particularly vulnerable to lawsuits because Congress had exempted New York City, New York State, the airlines and the Port Authority, which owned the World Trade Center, from any lawsuits stemming from the Sept. 11 attack.

"I don't think anyone is going to know for a long time what these claims are going to be," said one construction industry official. "I don't want to encourage people to make claims, but if there are justifiable claims caused by this work, they should have some place to go."

The main negotiators were Deputy Mayor Daniel L. Doctoroff, the four construction contractors and the General Contractors Association of New York.

The Bloomberg administration and the contractors association declined comment yesterday, saying it was too early to discuss an agreement because some details had yet to be worked out. Any deal must have FEMA's approval.

Under the agreement, several negotiators said, somewhere between $600 million and $900 million in federal money would be used to secure the insurance. The insurance is to be provided by an entity called a captive insurance company, which is essentially a nonprofit company created for this one purpose.

"FEMA has been prepared from early on to provide insurance for the debris contractors," said Brad Gair, federal recovery officer at FEMA. "That's normally done on all of our projects. What was unusual here was because of the potential size of the liability, that insurance wasn't available to the contractors through a traditional mechanism. Now they're relying on New York City to obtain the insurance on their behalf."

One issue still to be worked out, negotiators said, is whether an insurance company or a claims adjustment company would administer the fund to pay and defend against claims.

One official involved in the negotiations said it remained unclear whether the city or the federal government would keep any money that might be left over.

Insurance experts said the fund would not cover claims brought by construction workers because they were already covered by workers' compensation and were largely barred from suing their employers over construction-related injuries.

But several construction officials said they expected claims from firefighters, police officers and other city workers, who are expected to assert that the dust stirred up by the cleanup damaged their lungs.

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Smoke rises at Ground Zero on Oct. 10 as excavation teams dig in search of victims. The towers' collapse unleashed a toxic plume of dust and debris. (Stuart Ramson - AP)

Respiratory Ills Plague Ground Zero Workers, Many Who Breathed Fumes Face Disability, Grim Recovery Rates, By Christine Haughney, Washington Post, 9/16/2

NEW YORK -- Age never seemed to catch up with consummate New Yorker Michael Burke, 43. He flourished on little more than four hours of sleep a night, working as a carpenter and bartender, chauffeuring his four daughters to activities, jogging in the Bronx's Van Cortlandt Park four times a week and playing Gaelic football for his native County Sligo team.

That routine ended abruptly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and his six-week stint at Ground Zero, where he built ramps for firefighters so their hoses wouldn't be run over and helped reinstall blown-out windows in nearby buildings.

By early October, Burke couldn't stop wheezing and coughing. At the end of the month, doctors discovered he had airway dysfunction and dead muscle ringing the outer edges of his heart.

"They diagnosed me as disabled for the rest of my days," he said, before heading back to Ireland to recuperate at his parents' home. "You still think you're superman. But you just can't do it."

A year after the Sept. 11 attacks, medical studies are showing that hundreds of World Trade Center rescue workers are still struggling with respiratory problems. For firefighters, one of the better documented groups, illnesses have necessitated lengthy medical leaves.

With last year's collapse of the two 110-story towers came a toxic plume of dust and debris. In the weeks after the attacks, many New Yorkers pressed through their recovery efforts with little more protective gear than flimsy paper masks. As the fires burned for months, and workers and residents shared the same rackety cough, many New Yorkers speculated about the amount of asbestos, lead and mercury in the gray dust coating Lower Manhattan.

Initially the Environmental Protection Agency insisted that the air was clean enough to work and live in Lower Manhattan, releasing select results to confirm the assertions.

But reports in the New York Daily News and in The Washington Post found that residents and scientists had their own battery of tests showing that the air contained elevated levels of lead and asbestos.

While private Wall Street companies commissioned crews to professionally clean their offices, many downtown residents were left to clean the pulverized debris coating their homes themselves. On May 8, the EPA announced it would provide cleanup and testing to downtown residents.

Doctors see new cases of persistent respiratory problems among those who labored at Ground Zero every day. And the numbers of the afflicted could be much higher than reported -- union officials say not enough workers have sought out the federally funded screening programs.

"My main concern is for the membership to go out and get checked," said Angelo Scagnelli, a business agent for the Cement Masons Union Local 780.

Scagnelli spent 45 years working on the city's largest construction projects, including the World Trade Center. He now suffers from asbestosis and can count on his thick fingers the co-workers who have died from his condition and assorted cancers.

He encourages the younger masons who worked on the World Trade Center cleanup to get their lungs checked. But they are often reticent.

"They don't even want you to know sometimes how sick they are," he said. "They just go to work and they don't want you even to know."

For Ground Zero's firefighters, recovery rates are grimmer than physicians and researchers had expected.

About half of the 358 firefighters who developed the "World Trade Center cough" remain on medical leave or light duty, according to a study of 10,116 firefighters published in the New England Journal of Medicine's Sept. 12 issue.

Although no firefighters have retired from respiratory problems, nearly 500 firefighters may have to retire by year's end because of their failing health.

"We have had persistent symptoms and some people just not have improved at all," Kerry Kelly, chief medical officer of the New York City Fire Department, said at a Sept. 9 New York Academy of Medicine panel. "It's been discouraging."

Similar numbers of workers involved with the recovery and reconstruction have reported respiratory problems.

Mount Sinai Hospital's Irving J. Selikoff Center for Occupational and Environmental Medicine has treated 600 patients, from office workers caught in the dust clouds to fire and construction workers. About 60 percent of them suffer persistent upper and lower respiratory problems.

Nearly 15 percent of the clinic's patients remain sensitive to bus exhaust, cigarette smoke and temperature changes after a year of treatment.

With six full-time physicians seeing patients five days a week, Mount Sinai's clinic has a two-month waiting list for new patients. But medical director Stephen M. Levin still encourages these people to come.

He said he has seen too many patients misdiagnosed by primary care doctors unfamiliar with treating serious chemical burns. "It doesn't leave us confident that they will get appropriate evaluation and care," Levin said.

Burke, whose union has about two dozen members complaining of respiratory problems, encourages his co-workers to get checked out. After visiting a handful of private doctors who misdiagnosed and mistreated his condition, Burke said he found help at the Mount Sinai clinic.

But his breathing and lung capacity are far from normal. Before Burke went to Ireland, he was devoting his days to filling out workmen's compensation forms, lingering in doctor's waiting rooms for appointments and following a daily regimen of four heart and lung medications.

He has realized that for now he no longer can bang nails, run the length of a soccer field or carry his daughter's desk up a flight of stairs. He is trying to find a new profession, writing and taking photographs for a local Irish newspaper. But how much he does each day is guided by his health.

"I was never sick in my life. I didn't even have any doctors," he said. "It has changed everything."

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GEORGIA-PACIFIC'S ASBESTOS NIGHTMARE: ASBESTOS DISASTER: An asbestos backgrounder, Atlanta Journal Constitution, Sunday, 9/ 15/2

What is it?

Asbestos is a generic name for a group of minerals that separate into strong, threadlike fibers and were prized for their insulating and fire-resistant properties. The largest asbestos mines are in Canada and South Africa.

Why is asbestos dangerous?

Exposure to asbestos fibers significantly boosts the risk of contracting certain cancers and respiratory diseases. In its raw state, asbestos can break easily into microscopic pieces that can be inhaled or swallowed. Asbestos embedded in building products such as ceiling tiles or wallboard is considered safe unless it is disturbed by scraping, sanding or other abrasions that release asbestos fibers into the air. Researchers don't know exactly how asbestos makes people sick, but they do know that the fibers can lodge in body tissue, leading to asbestos-related diseases decades later. It's estimated that between 1940 and 1980, 27 million Americans had significant occupational exposure to asbestos. Some people exposed to asbestos develop asbestos-related ailments; others do not. Smoking cigarettes greatly compounds the risk.

What are the most common asbestos-related illnesses?

> Asbestosis: Asbestosis is a progressive scarring of the lung tissue that makes the lungs dense so they don't fully expand, making it hard to breathe. The chronic disease typically is not fatal, although it can lead to cardiac failure in advanced stages.

> Cancers: Asbestos can cause lung and colon cancers and may play a role in cancers of the stomach and esophagus. The most lethal asbestos-related cancer is mesothelioma, which can show up as tumors in the outer lining of the lungs and in the ribs or around abdominal organs.

> Thickening of the pleura and peritoneum: Asbestos fibers in the pleura (membrane covering the lungs) and the peritoneum (lining of the stomach wall) can cause thickening. The thickening by itself seems benign, doctors say, but the condition may increase the risk of developing asbestosis or lung cancer.

Is asbestos still used today?

Asbestos is used in some pipeline wraps, automotive brake linings, floor and ceiling tiles, roofing shingles, gaskets, transmission components, roof coatings, and small appliances such as toasters and hair dryers. The Environmental Protection Agency says these products are safe as long as they aren't damaged in a way that releases the asbestos fibers into the air. The EPA tried to phase out asbestos in 1989, but a federal judge overturned the ban on grounds that the agency had not fully analyzed the risks of replacement products. As a result, the ban covered only "new uses" of asbestos plus a few categories of existing uses, including paper products and flooring felt. Various groups are still pushing for a total ban.

Sources: Environmental Protection Agency, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, staff research.

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GEORGIA-PACIFIC'S ASBESTOS NIGHTMARE: PART I, 'Miracle mineral' exacts painful, long-term price
By Patti Bond, Atlanta Journal-Constitution Staff Writer, 9/15/2

Though Lisa Finkle Pransky was ill at a German cancer clinic in 2000, her husband, Scott Pransky, said she could always find the humor in life. THE SERIES SUNDAY The story behind the largest award for any asbestos-related claim against Georgia-Pacific. An asbestos backgrounder. MONDAY Three decades into the most massive product liability litigation ever, the company is still fighting. TUESDAY Chairman Pete Correll operates in the shadows of debt and asbestos. ABOUT THIS SERIES The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reviewed more than 2,500 documents, including lawsuits, depositions and internal company memorandums, to research these articles. Staff writers Patti Bond and Ann Hardie also conducted dozens of interviews with historians, industrial health experts, attorneys, government officials, retired laborers, victims and their families. Many Georgia-Pacific executives and managers who were involved with asbestos during the 1960s and 1970s are dead; those references or quotes came from sworn testimony or internal documents that were obtained from court records and attorneys' discovery files.

Decades after death and disease were connected to inhaling asbestos, Georgia-Pacific remains ensnarled in the biggest product liability disaster ever. Georgia-Pacific defends its use of the fiber in the 1960s and '70s, saying it never knowingly harmed anyone.

An Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigation shows that at the time the company: Told consumers its asbestos products were safe even as the federal government was moving to ban the products. Experimented with, but abandoned, asbestos substitutes because they didn't work as well. Frequently violated federal asbestos safety regulations in its manufacturing plants. Kept selling asbestos products despite growing evidence of the health hazards of asbestos.

During the spring of 1973, the dust at the Finkle house was nothing more than a necessary nuisance.

The remodeling job in the bare basement was dirty work for homeowner Norman Finkle, but it was exciting for his three young daughters. Amid the dust and disarray, a child's play room was taking shape in their suburban Maryland home.

After dinner, Finkle, a heating and air conditioner contractor, headed down the basement stairs to chip away at the project. Often, Lisa, the brown-haired middle child, tagged along, "helping" in the way third-graders do. Lisa watched her dad hang drywall and seal the cracks with a grayish-white paste.

The really messy part came when the goo dried and Finkle sanded it. He slathered and sanded a second time, and a third time in some places, to give the walls a smooth finish.

Lisa would have to wait four months for the fun stuff --- the pool table, the pinball machine, the juke box --- but in the meantime, the cleanup never seemed to end.

Each round of sanding kicked up dust that landed everywhere --- on the basement floor, on the clothes in the nearby laundry room, even on the sofa upstairs. Sometimes the air conditioning system sucked up the powdery particles and sprayed white specks throughout the house.

Lisa stood by and waited for the playroom to emerge, breathing that dust into her 8-year-old lungs.

Meanwhile, in an Oregon laboratory more than 2,000 miles away, chemists for building supply giant Georgia-Pacific Corp. were tinkering with a key ingredient in the company's product line of joint compounds, including the "Ready-Mix" paste Finkle used.

The ingredient was asbestos, a generic name for a half-dozen minerals that occur naturally in clumps of long, threadlike fibers that are incredibly strong and flexible.

Other manufacturers used asbestos for its fireproofing and insulating capabilities, but Georgia-Pacific, then based in Portland, Ore., used it as a binding agent in paste-like compounds used to finish walls and ceilings.

A little bit of asbestos, the company found, made a world of difference. Take asbestos out of the mix, and the compounds were either too thick or too thin, too rubbery or too watery. The paste fell off trowels and slid down walls.

The obvious solution was to keep the asbestos, but that posed a problem no chemist could get around.

Inhaled, asbestos could be deadly.

Strong as piano wire yet a fraction of the diameter of a human hair, asbestos fibers can get trapped in the walls and membranes of the lungs. The result: fatal cancers and respiratory diseases that sneak up on victims years later.

Georgia-Pacific managers never actually tested the company's asbestos products for safety. Asbestos itself may be highly toxic, but it composed such a small part of Georgia-Pacific's formulas --- less than 10 percent in most cases --- that it just wasn't enough, company executives speculated, to harm the home builders and handymen who used the products.

But a looming government crackdown ultimately forced Georgia-Pacific executives to reckon with asbestos.

By the time Finkle started smearing his walls and ceiling with Ready-Mix, Georgia-Pacific had been trying for three years to get rid of asbestos because federal safety officials were tightening the standards to protect workers in the plants where the products were made. It would take four more years for the company to abandon asbestos altogether.

By then, the damage had been done.

Asbestos, once considered a "miracle mineral," would turn into the biggest product liability disaster ever.

Georgia-Pacific was hit with its first asbestos-related lawsuit in the late 1970s, and the company has been in court ever since. So far, more than 314,000 people have claimed Georgia-Pacific's asbestos products made them sick, and there's another wave of victims waiting in the wings. Asbestos-related illnesses can take up to 50 years to surface, so people who were exposed in the late 1970s could be claiming injuries for years to come.

Today, most of the 41,000 people who sue Georgia-Pacific in an average year are construction workers who claim they got sick on job sites after breathing dust from joint compounds. Some are the wives of workers who brought asbestos home on dusty work clothes. And some are consumers who used the products in home remodeling projects.

But Georgia-Pacific's largest asbestos-related payment, paid this year after a lengthy appeals battle, went to someone who said she was sickened simply by being near dust from the joint compound. As a child, Lisa Finkle watched her father build a recreation room in the basement of their Rockville, Md., home.

As a young woman, she faced a life cut short by a 5-gallon pail of Ready-Mix.

An unhappy reunion

Lisa and Georgia-Pacific would meet again 25 years after the rec room project.

By then, Lisa had graduated from the University of Maryland, fallen in love and married her college sweetheart, Scott Pransky, a pilot who whisked her off to vacations in the Caribbean and spots around the world.

"We loved to pack the bags and hit the road," Scott Pransky recalled in a recent interview. "Lisa would be willing to travel in a moment's notice."

At work, Lisa built a reputation as a go-getter, selling "Cherished Teddies" figurines to Hallmark stores and department stores. It was a lot more fun than peddling vacuum cleaners, she joked, because no one could resist the cute collectibles.

The couple waited six years after marrying to have a baby, and Lisa was gung-ho about that, too. She scoured Consumer Reports for advice on the best car seats and painted birdhouses on the walls of the baby's room. Yet she hardly missed a beat at work when her baby girl was born. Right away, she was working the phone from home and lining up orders.

But a few months after her daughter's first birthday, Lisa's high-energy lifestyle crashed to a halt.

Around Thanksgiving of 1997, Lisa was carrying the baby upstairs and nearly collapsed because she was so out of breath. She bicycled and worked out regularly at the gym, so she knew something was wrong when it happened again at a friend's house.

Lisa thought she might have pneumonia, but doctors delivered a more devastating and mysterious diagnosis: mesothelioma, an incurable cancer almost always linked to asbestos exposure. The outlook was grim --- survival after diagnosis might be six to 18 months, and it would be agonizing as her own lung tissue slowly suffocated her.

"I was in shock, because the last thing I thought in the world . . . was that they were going to say I had cancer," Lisa later testified.

Just a few days after the bad news, surgeons removed her left lung and part of her diaphragm.

Underneath the shock lay a gnawing question: How did a 33-year-old suburban mom who didn't smoke end up with a cancer found mainly in aging industrial workers?

Dad remembers the Ready-Mix

Lisa traced what she believed to be the answer to the basement of her childhood home.

Her father, Norman Finkle, recalled that he used several 5-gallon pails of Georgia-Pacific Ready-Mix joint compound, which he later discovered contained asbestos. Lisa believed that asbestos fibers broke loose when her father sanded the walls and the dust lodged in her lungs as she watched him work. She also thought she continued to breathe asbestos long after the project was done.

Sometimes when Lisa and her sisters played pool in the basement rec room, they inadvertently hit the ceiling with the cues, sending chunks of plaster raining down on the green felt-covered table. They'd brush it off, sending a cloud of dust back into the air.

The only family member to become sick, Lisa sued Georgia-Pacific in 1998. Company attorneys decided to fight the case, and it went to a jury in Rockville, Md., a year later.

The crux of her case was that there was no label to warn Finkle that the Ready-Mix product he used in 1973 contained asbestos.

At that time, Georgia-Pacific and other joint compound manufacturers were only just beginning to put caution labels on products.

In early 1973, Georgia-Pacific was only labeling the powder compounds that kicked up dust when mixed with water. Using language dictated by new federal safety regulations, the labels stated that asbestos dust may cause "serious bodily harm."

Georgia-Pacific put caution labels on its Ready-Mix wet pastes the next year, after a federal safety inspector cited the company for not labeling the product.

Bittersweet victory

ABOUT GEORGIA-PACIFIC Headquarters: 133 Peachtree St. N.E. Chairman/CEO/President: A.D. "Pete" Correll Business: Georgia-Pacific operates in four business segments: tissue products and tableware; building products (including plywood, lumber, wallboard); pulp and paper; and packaging. The corporation is in the process of spinning off everything but building products into a separate consumer products company. Major consumer brands: Brawny, Quilted Northern, Dixie, Angel Soft, Sparkle and Vanity Fair Employees: 71,000, including about 11,000 in Georgia Operations: 600 locations in North America and Europe Sales: $25.02 billion

For its part, one of Georgia-Pacific's main defenses was that even though mesothelioma almost always occurs in people who were exposed to asbestos, occasionally it occurs for no known reason.

Company attorneys also argued that Lisa couldn't prove that she, as a child, was actually in the dusty basement during the few times that her father sanded Georgia-Pacific's asbestos-containing compound.

But as the young woman struggled to the witness stand with an oxygen tank and a permanent port implant in her chest for her chemotherapy treatments, the nine-day trial backfired on the company.

After deliberating only three hours, the six-member jury found Georgia-Pacific negligent for making an "unreasonably dangerous product" and awarded Lisa $9.2 million, the largest award ever against Georgia-Pacific in an asbestos case.

Lisa was waiting for another injection of chemotherapy at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore when her lawyer called to tell her about the verdict.

"Lisa and I hugged, we didn't say much," her husband, Scott Pransky, recalled. "I could see in her eyes, 'But look at me,' as we looked around the room at the other two dozen dying people waiting for their treatments."

Even though Lisa had become so weak she couldn't pick up her daughter, she refused to talk about death. The chemo made her lose weight, but surprisingly, she kept most of her long, brown hair. Somehow, Scott thought, she might just beat the odds.

In the meantime, Georgia-Pacific fought the award for three years by taking the case to Maryland's highest appeals court. The award had been reduced to about $7.4 million because Maryland law limits damages, but more than $2 million in interest accrued while the case was on appeal.

The judgment prevailed this year in an appeals court ruling in June.

Lisa never knew the final outcome. She died in August of 2000, just two weeks after her 36th birthday.

Alarms ring elsewhere

The case was exceptional in its outcome --- Georgia-Pacific lawyers have gone to juries with only a dozen asbestos cases out of hundreds of thousands of claims that have been routinely settled.

By far, most of the claims come from construction workers who were exposed to dozens of asbestos products over the years. They typically sue Georgia-Pacific along with an array of other companies that once used asbestos.

In every case, plaintiffs' attorneys say the company put profit ahead of safety.

Georgia-Pacific estimates that joint compound sales averaged $1 million to $2 million a year during the time the company used asbestos. With less than 10 percent of the market in those products, the company lagged rivals such as National Gypsum and U.S. Gypsum.

"These products represented a very small percentage of the company's total sales," said Jim Kelley, executive vice president and general counsel for Georgia-Pacific.

"Had we known there was a health effect problem with this product, we would've pulled it off the market because it didn't amount to that much for the company in terms of sales," Kelley said in a recent interview. "We would not knowingly harm anyone."

As the company's lawyer since 1993, Kelley has a key role in managing Georgia-Pacific's asbestos litigation.

"It is always difficult defending cases involving facts and events that happened 30 and 40 years ago, but we believe that Georgia-Pacific's management at that time made the best decisions they could based on the information then available to them," Kelley said.

But a review of company documents from that time shows managers clearly struggled with their dependence on a product that the company now says was not that important.

Georgia-Pacific began using asbestos in April 1965 when it bought Bestwall Gypsum Co. of suburban Philadelphia. The deal, valued at about $94 million, was one more notch in Georgia-Pacific's bulging belt as it snatched up lumber companies, built plants and broke into the tissue business. For a company that started in an Augusta lumber yard two years before the Great Depression, the 1960s were a time of growth and excitement.

Bestwall added a lucrative line of gypsum building products to the lumber business. Bestwall's primary money-maker was wallboard, also known as drywall, and the product line included a range of compounds, plasters and textures used to finish walls and ceilings.

Like its rivals, Bestwall had been using asbestos in the compounds since the 1950s.

At the time, a major medical study had raised concern about the dangers of asbestos.

The year before the acquisition, researchers at New York's Mount Sinai School of Medicine found high rates of disease among workers who installed insulation made with asbestos, including lung cancer and asbestosis, a scarring of the lungs that impedes breathing.

The landmark research left no doubt that occupational exposure to asbestos is dangerous --- and it resulted in the first generation of asbestos warning labels on packages of insulation products.

Outside the United States, there were reports that a rare cancer known as mesothelioma was rampant among asbestos miners in South Africa.

But Georgia-Pacific didn't mine asbestos, and it wasn't in the business of making insulation, executives later said, so there was no reason to take note. Georgia-Pacific executives later testified they first realized that heavy exposure to asbestos was potentially dangerous from news reports in the late 1960s, but they said they didn't think those warnings applied to the small amounts of asbestos embedded in the company's products.

A flawed plan

By the spring of 1970, the threat of a government crackdown was beginning to trouble the Georgia-Pacific vice president who oversaw the gypsum division.

"The use of asbestos fibers is receiving more attention every day in the construction industry as it relates to both air pollution and potential health hazards," Glenn E. Wilson wrote in a May 7, 1970, memo to his product development manager. Although he viewed the dangers as "quite remote," Wilson said the company should start looking into alternatives.

Wilson's order that year had little to do with safety, though.

"We were recognizing that the use of asbestos was going to be legislated out of joint compound products," Wilson testified in a 1988 deposition. Despite growing concerns in related industries, Georgia-Pacific "had no indication and no information that there was a health hazard with any of the products we were manufacturing," he said.

But a trove of industry studies and internal memos suggests that executives could have reached a different conclusion.

Around the time of Wilson's 1970 memo, Georgia-Pacific officials knew that Mount Sinai researchers had turned their attention to drywall workers. Georgia-Pacific was concerned about a lung problem in a man who primarily sanded joint compounds.

In light of that study, Georgia-Pacific's safety manager suggested a strategy to head off future claims from drywallers.

"We realize that someone will be the whipping boy," safety supervisor M.F. Fink wrote in the 1970 letter. "It is our opinion that the entire blame can be placed on the contractor, for not insisting on respirators and dust masks when sanding."

That was a flawed plan, though. Georgia-Pacific and its rivals weren't putting asbestos caution labels on the joint compound products at the time.

"Lives . . . are at stake"

The search for an asbestos substitute intensified in 1972, when employee safety became a major problem for the company. That year, a new federal agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), forced Georgia-Pacific and other manufacturers to protect plant workers who handled asbestos.

Stating that "lives of employees are at stake," federal safety officials limited the amount of asbestos dust workers could be exposed to. They also required companies to install ventilation systems and provide workers with respirators and annual chest X-rays. Asbestos was considered so dangerous at this point that Georgia-Pacific and other manufacturers had to provide changing rooms and laundries for workers so they wouldn't bring the dust home to their families.

Some Georgia-Pacific plants producing joint compound repeatedly ran afoul of regulators for failing to monitor asbestos dust, or failing to provide respirators or medical exams for employees.

One of the worst offenders was Georgia-Pacific's dust-filled Akron, N.Y., operation. The violations there were so widespread that company officials considered building a new plant, internal memos show, rather than making the repairs necessary to properly ventilate the plant.

Several workers there were later diagnosed with lung problems.

Asbestos-free products fail

Meanwhile, Georgia-Pacific had taken little action to investigate the safety of its customers.

Although Georgia-Pacific managers had begun to realize that asbestos in its raw form was dangerous, they said at the time they didn't think it posed a hazard once it was blended into products. Asbestos composed less than 10 percent of the company's joint compounds in the 1970s.

"As more and more knowledge became available . . ., we lived with the fact that in large concentrations asbestos could be a problem," Wilson testified in 1988. "When you are talking of a very minor constituent of a product . . . you have no reasonable reason to suspect that there is a problem."

In the early 1970s, OSHA was regulating manufacturing plants but not the construction sites or households where laborers and handymen used joint compounds.

In 1973, joint compound manufacturers had to confront the potential hazards of their products.

That year, an industry trade group ran tests at a suburban Denver townhouse development to see how much asbestos was released into the air when drywall workers mixed and sanded joint compounds. The asbestos fiber in some samples was far higher than concentrations that OSHA considered safe in manufacturing plants.

The test results provided Georgia-Pacific with its first proof that contractors and other consumers were being exposed to asbestos through the routine use of joint compounds. Georgia-Pacific attorneys soon recommended that the company add a line to caution labels telling users to use respirators when mixing or sanding the products.

Yet, even as company officials learned more about asbestos exposure, the issue only grew cloudier at Georgia-Pacific.

The company had begun marketing some compounds without asbestos, but the products posed other problems for Georgia-Pacific. On the same day of the Denver drywaller study, the manager of Georgia-Pacific's troubled Akron plant notified OSHA that he was pulling asbestos-free products off the market and putting the asbestos back in because of sliding sales.

Asbestos was the "glue" that made joint compounds work. In test after test, construction workers hated the asbestos-free compounds because they fell off tools and walls.

Some contractors even used paint remover to strip off asbestos caution labels to get around local bans on asbestos products, according to Georgia-Pacific memos.

"Even with the knowledge that there was some feeling that asbestos fibers might be harmful, [contractors] still wouldn't use the other material," Charles Lehnert, Georgia-Pacific's longtime product development manager, testified in 1999. "If we were going to sell Ready-Mix, we would have to sell it with asbestos in it."

But federal safety officials were unsympathetic to falling sales.

OSHA issued a warning in 1974, citing a study in which nine of 17 New York painters union members who used joint compounds showed signs of a lung fibrosis that can lead to cancer.

"This is the first time I've seen actual cases reported," Georgia-Pacific's general sales manager, Oliver E. Burch, wrote in a memo. But just a week later, in a memo to his sales staff about caution labels, he said the company was "not aware of any health problems in our industry."

The reversal illustrates Georgia-Pacific's failure to come to terms with the growing asbestos crisis. On the one hand, company officials stepped up efforts to get rid of asbestos. On the other hand, as long as it was legal, Georgia-Pacific would sell asbestos products.

Defensive to the end In 1975, though, OSHA proposed restrictions that would be tough to meet. Regulators proposed lower asbestos exposure standards for plant workers and a new warning label that branded asbestos products a "cancer hazard," a more alarming warning than previous "serious bodily harm" cautions.

The looming federal restrictions came as New York state officials started banning asbestos-containing joint compounds and even removing them from some construction sites.

The final blow came from concerns about a group that had not factored into the asbestos debate yet: the do-it-yourself handymen.

In April 1977, the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission had seen enough research on asbestos-containing joint compounds to ban the products. The ban wouldn't go into effect until January 1978.

Even at the end, Georgia-Pacific executives seemed to think they were immune to the asbestos scourge. Around the time of the 1977 ban, at least two do-it-yourself customers wrote the company to ask if they were in danger using Georgia-Pacific's products.

Both were told not to worry.

"To our knowledge, there is no known case of harm from joint cement containing asbestos fiber, even after prolonged exposure, numbered in many years," read one response letter signed by Burch, the sales manager.

A flood of lawsuits, as it turned out, already was on its way.

The family left behind

With nearly 30 years of hindsight, Georgia-Pacific now acknowledges that its asbestos-containing products posed a hazard.

"We think our products may have caused health problems to a very small number of people," said Kelley, the Georgia-Pacific general counsel.

Company attorneys have resolved 250,000 claims so far. Only 5 percent of those claims, Kelley said, come from people who have cancers. Most of the people who sue Georgia-Pacific have noncancerous injuries such as asbestosis, and the company can settle the claims for "small amounts," he said.

Insurance covers most of the settlement cost, according to the company.

Very few asbestos cases make it to trial because defense attorneys don't want to take chances with juries. In the Lisa Finkle Pransky case, attorneys could not reach a settlement. The size of the verdict shocked both sides.

"Our hopes were modest," Scott Pransky said. ". . . perhaps an award to cover the medical bills, child care and the time that Lisa and I were off from work."

Pransky said no amount of money will heal the wounds of the man and the little girl left behind. Danielle turned 6 in July, her second birthday without her mother.

Pransky called the $9 million award a "daily reminder of lost love and canceled dreams."

"I have a daughter who won't know just how wonderful of a mom she really had, so there is no feeling of 'an eye for an eye,' and there is no consolation," he said.

"Every dollar has a ghost."

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9/11 environmental impact unresolved, Health risks from asbestos, other released contaminants near site still being assessed, By Dina Cappiello, Staff writer, TimesUnion.com, 9/11/2

Twenty minutes after the first tower of the World Trade Center collapsed, federal environmental officials rushed to the scene, armed with every monitor, mask and pollution-measuring instrument they could get their hands on.

For them, the attack was not just a dark day in U.S. history. It was an environmental disaster.

As the jet fuel burned in fires deep within the piles of rubble, air monitors detected spikes of cancer-causing benzene and dioxin in the air. The 300 to 400 tons of asbestos that insulated 40 floors was released into the environment in a mushroom cloud of dust.

Along with the bodies retrieved from the site were 650,000 gallons of oily water and fuel, 5,000 containers filled with hazardous materials, and numerous freon tanks.

And a year later, the environmental cleanup still is not over.

Dust laced with asbestos and other possible contaminants may still lurk in corners and carpets of the 30,000 homes around lower Manhattan.

"If you were close in, you got this tremendous shock wave that forced the dust into every little nook and cranny," said Mary Mears, a spokesman with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which had more than 20 monitors measuring the components of the air in lower Manhattan, Brooklyn and Jersey City. Most were taken down in June, when the recovery efforts were completed.

And the health effects of exposure to chemicals and other contamination on everything from birth weights to the number of hospitalizations are still being studied, with millions of dollars in research money.

It could be many years before researchers know if there was any impact on the residents and rescuers who lived and tirelessly worked near ground zero.

The EPA contends that it found nothing during nine months of monitoring to suggest health problems would emerge down the road.

"In general, all of our monitoring results -- and we took tens of thousands of samples of air, dust, drinking water -- pointed to a very, very low risk of long-term impacts," Mears said.

But the federal agency has come under fire for its methods.

Paul Bartlett, an associate professor at Queens College, says the EPA did not do enough to measure air quality around ground zero, and the detection levels used to determine whether air quality was good or bad for some contaminants were too low.

"Of the thousands of samples they took, they don't have data to show the air was safe," Bartlett said.

At least a half-dozen members of the Capital District Urban Search and Rescue Team came back from lower Manhattan with respiratory problems. Many of the symptoms, which included bronchitis and dry cough, have subsided.

Next month, the EPA will start performing asbestos tests on 100 houses. Since July, the agency has been cleaning and testing apartments for the remnants of the insulating material that, when airborne, can be inhaled and lodge itself in the lungs.

The impact could have been worse, said Ken Demerjian, director of the University at Albany's Atmospheric Sciences Research Center. If there was anything lucky about that day, it was the direction of the wind, which carried the plume out toward the ocean.

"If the winds were blowing toward the land," said Demerjian, "it would have been blown into Queens and other inlands."

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9/11/01 - 02: An Unprecedented Attack On New York's Environment, by Eric Goldstein, GothamGazette.com, 9/11/2

One year after September 11th, experts believe that the collapse of the World Trade Center towers and the ensuing fires triggered one of the worst air pollution episodes in New York City's history.

Of course, the pollution-induced respiratory impacts from the trade center terrorism have been rightly overshadowed by the horrific toll of more than 2,800 lives that were lost as a direct result of the attacks. Moreover, the contaminants released from the World Trade Center's collapse and fires did not create a disaster comparable to the 1984 toxic gas leak at a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, which killed over 3,000 and seriously injured 20,000 more. And significantly, outdoor air quality in Lower Manhattan has returned to pre-September 11th levels.

But the public health and environmental consequences from the September 11th attacks in New York have had disturbing short-term impacts for many thousands of New Yorkers. Concerns about indoor air pollutants remain among some who live and work in the area. And it is almost certain that a portion of those who have suffered sort-term health problems from inhaling pollutants on or after September 11th, or who were otherwise exposed to 9/11 contaminants, will experience mid-term or long-term respiratory conditions or disease.

The collapse of the two 110 story towers released an avalanche of debris and pollution that roared down adjacent streets in Lower Manhattan. Intense fires, fueled initially by thousands of gallons of jet fuel, sent billowing smoke over large areas of the financial district. Prevailing winds carried some of the pollution across the East River into Brooklyn. Huge volumes of pulverized cement, fiberglass and particulate matter of all sizes, along with hundreds of toxins (including asbestos, dioxins, and volatilized metals such as lead and mercury) were rocketed into the environment. The fires at Ground Zero, which continued for more than three months, emitted noxious gases; a sickening, acrid odor often pierced the air.

AT HIGHEST RISK

Public health risks from environmental assaults such as the one that began on September 11th are related directly to the intensity and duration of the pollution exposure.

Not surprisingly, then, the first short-term health impacts were seen among the first-responders, including thousands of hero firefighters who developed respiratory symptoms that were dubbed the "World Trade Center cough." Today, the New York City Fire Department reports, several hundred members are still suffering from significant respiratory problems. Indeed, some firefighters who came from across the country to assist in recovery efforts also returned to their homes with a variety of pulmonary and related symptoms.

Police, emergency personnel, construction workers and others who spent significant time at the pile are also among those who also may have received high exposures. More than one hundred ironworkers have been treated by occupational health physicians at Mt. Sinai's Selikoff Center for Occupational and Environmental Medicine. And according to the Center's Director, Dr. Stephen Levin, two of three still have persistent coughs and other signs of respiratory distress.

The several thousand largely untrained workers who were hired to clean out dust and pollution inside commercial buildings in the immediate vicinity of Ground Zero constitute another high risk group. A medicinal team headed by Dr. Steve Markowitz from the Center for Biology Systems at Queens College, supported by the September 11th Fund, set up a mobile van to provide free medicinal screening to such workers. In cooperation with the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health, the physicians saw 415 workers over a five week period. Almost all had persistent respiratory irritation and/or systemic symptoms such as headache, dizziness and poor appetite -- even though they had completed their work assignments four to six weeks prior to the medical examinations.

OTHER EXPOSED POPULATIONS

Another at risk group includes those office workers and others who were caught in the extraordinary cloud of pollution and debris on September 11th. Little information on the health impacts of this group has been developed to date.

Residents who returned several weeks later to their apartments faced lower risks than groups such as those mentioned above, most experts believe. Nevertheless, sensitive subpopulations, such as those with pre-existing lung diseases, are more likely to have suffered adverse respiratory reactions when they returned to their homes or offices. (And many of the returning residents have been understandably frustrated by the pace and scope of the long-delayed indoor clean-up program which is still -- one year later -- in the design stage.)

Lower Manhattan is also the home to a handful of public schools and other learning institutions, and some students also experienced short-term health problems in the aftermath of 9/11. At Stuyvesant High School, the first local school to reopen, some students (as well as faculty members and staff experienced a variety of adverse heath reactions, which were probably exacerbated by the debris-hauling barge operation that was located across from the school.

In total, approximately 10,000 to 30,000 people or more suffered some short-term respiratory problems associated with the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, according to a forthcoming report by the Natural Resources Defense Council (where I work). (This estimate is limited to pollution-related illnesses and does not include those who have experienced or may still be experiencing mental health problems in the aftermath of September 11th.)

There is much we still do not know about the environmental health consequ ences of the trade center's collapse and the subsequent fires. And the synergistic impacts of exposure to multiple pollutants makes the September 11th exposures extremely difficult to assess. For such reasons, it is essential that on-going health studies such as those underway at Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health (tracking pregnant women and their offspring), and at Mt. Sinai, New York University, Johns Hopkins medical schools be fully funded.

The September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center, in addition to their unspeakable loss of life and huge economic dislocations, also constituted an unprecedented attack on New York's environment. Thousands have suffered or are still suffering adverse health impacts. And much work still remains to be done to provide indoor clean-ups in residences and small businesses in the World Trade Center vicinity and to insure follow-up medical care to all those who were exposed.

But even as the recovery process continues, New Yorkers can once again stand outside in Lower Manhattan and breathe freely.

GOVERNMENT RESPONSE

How did government agencies perform in response to the environmental health challenges posed by the September 11th attacks?

What lessons can be learned from their actions?

And what steps should government take now to address remaining environmental health concerns and be better prepared to handle future environmental health emergencies in New York?

These questions will be addressed in Part II of this article, in October.

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9/11 Dust Sickens New York Firefighters, Residents, Environment News Services, September 10, 2002

NEW YORK, New York, September 10, 2002 (ENS) - More than 90 percent of the New York City Fire Department rescue workers who responded to the collapse of the World Trade Center last September 11 have developed a severe cough," Dr. David Prezant of the New York City Fire Department told journalists Monday during a telebriefing organized by the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. 

Some 12,100 firefighters and medical services personnel were exposed to the dust, smoke and heat of the burning towers during the first week, and many were re-exposed in the following weeks. Some are coughing so badly that they have had to take four weeks or more of medical leave for a new condition that health officials are calling "the WTC related cough." 

On that day one year ago, 2801 people died as two hijacked airplanes struck the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Over 343 New York City Fire Department (FDNY) rescue workers died during the collapse - 341 were firefighters and two were paramedics. Over the next 24 hours, another 240 FDNY rescue workers, firefighters and paramedics, sought emergency medical treatment. 

"I think that we're never going to know the full scale of what firefighters were exposed to on that day," said Dr. Prezant. 

Twenty-three New York City police officers were killed in the course of their duties related to the terrorist attacks. No figures on contamination related illnesses suffered by police personnel are immediately available. 

Most environmental monitoring began on September 18, a full week after the event. But "the clear thing that every person knows," said the FDNY physician, "is that they were exposed to a massive dust cloud. There is visual evidence for that. And that massive dust cloud includes a respirable airborne particulate matter." 

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says the dust was composed mainly of ground up construction materials, including concrete, glass, fiberglass and some asbestos. 

Analysis of the Ground Zero air by the University of California Davis DELTA Group, an association of aerosol scientists at several universities and national laboratories, found unprecedented levels of mass and very fine particles containing sulfur, vanadium, nickel, lead and mercury, as well as silicon aerosols produced by the vaporization of soil and glass. 

Dr. Prezant said, "Even if that respirable airborne particulate matter does not include a single chemical, it is incredibly toxic at that level of exposure. There are voluminous data in the literature saying that exposure to airborne particulates may induce increasing rates of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, asthma, emphysema, and heart disease." 

Many firefighters worked at the disaster scene without any respiratory protection at all. As standard equipment, they are issued what Dr. Prezant called "the best respirator on the Planet Earth," the Self-Contained Breathing Apparatus (SCBA). Designed to fight fires, the air tank is heavy and contains only enough air for 15 minutes. In the rescue operation environment of the World Trade Center, the heavy tanks were discarded when they ran out of air. 

"Our firefighters went in with the best respirator and the best intention for protection, but then did not have any respirator because of the resulting lack of ability to use the SCBA," Dr. Prezant said. 

The EPA says that it and other federal agencies made thousands of respirators and other protective gear available to workers at the scene. 

But Dr. Prezant says it took days to get them the half-face T100 respirators certified by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. "During that time they tried to use hardware, sawdust masks," said Dr. Prezand, "but even that was of very limited value." 

As a result, during the six months following September 11, 332 firefighters and one ambulance worker developed WTC related coughs, defined as being severe enough to require at least four weeks of medical leave. 

These people suffer from both upper and lower aerodigestive tract irritation, including sinusitis, gastro-esophageal acid reflux, and asthma. Fifty-two percent have shown only partial improvement and remain on either medical leave, light duty, or are filing for retirement injury/disability evaluations, the fire department physician said. The other 48 percent, with treatment, have recovered and have returned to full firefighting duty. 

"We expect that over 500 firefighters will ultimately file and probably qualify for retirement injury/disability on the basis of WTC cough and other respiratory related problems," Dr. Prezant said, a "dramatic" increase from prior numbers. 

Residents and office workers in buildings near Ground Zero were also exposed to the polluted dust cloud and continuing smoke and dust from the collapsed towers, which smoldered for weeks. 

Dr. Rachel Kramer of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, says that her agency, in collaboration with the CDC, conducted a community needs assessment in Lower Manhattan six weeks after the attacks that found hundreds of residents were still feeling ill. 

Between October 25 and November 2, a door-to-door survey was conducted in three residential neighborhoods covering about 50 percent of the Lower Manhattan residential population. 

On September 11, 2001, an estimated 75 percent of the households were evacuated from their homes following the attacks. During the survey six weeks later, 66 percent of residents in the 1,400 households surveyed reported nose or throat irritations, half had eye irritation or infection, 47 percent were coughing. 

About 60 percent of the population reported receiving information about proper cleaning procedures, yet only 45 percent reported that their apartments had been cleaned according to the recommended method. 

As of June 3, the EPA offered Lower Manhattan residents cleaning and/or testing of their homes. On August 16, the EPA started the scheduling of testing for airborne asbestos in 100 residences in lower Manhattan. 

Manhattan residents living below Canal, Allen and Pike Streets have until October 3 to ask to have their homes cleaned and tested for airborne asbestos by certified asbestos contractors, or they may ask for testing alone under EPA's Lower Manhattan Dust Cleanup Program. 

Chinatown lies close to the World Trade Center, and residents experienced heightened rates of asthma after the terrorist attacks, suggests a survey conducted by the Chinese Progressive Association, a nonprofit community group. The survey, reported in the September 4 issue of the "Downtown Express" newspaper, was conducted by volunteers who received an orientation on air pollution in Chinatown. 

They surveyed 580 households with 2,040 residents and found that about half the new cases of asthma reported were diagnosed during the first eight months of 2001, and half during the fall of 2001 and spring of 2002. Half the cases occurred in children under 17. 

The survey found that the highest concentration of asthma was in northern Chinatown, but residents there are outside the boundary to receive the free EPA testing and cleaning of asbestos and contaminated dust. 

Households north of Canal Street are not eligible for the EPA services, although many affected residents live there, said Mae Lee, Chinese Progressive Association's executive director. "If you live south of Canal, you're eligible to get free testing," she said. "If you live north of the boundary, you're not." 

Across the East River, Brooklyn was covered with dust and debris from the disaster, but their borough is being left out of testing and cleanup programs, say New York Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez and New York Council Member David Yassky and other Brooklyn elected officials. 

On September 4, they decried the EPA's existing post September 11 testing and cleanup programs and insisted that the agency include Brooklyn in its efforts. Despite earlier complaints by elected officials and residents that the cloud of pollution not only passed over, but settled on Brooklyn's parks, streets, houses, businesses and citizens, the EPA has failed to extend its cleanup and testing efforts to the borough, the officials say. 

NASA photos taken immediately following the attack and collapse of the World Trade Center's Twin Towers and released on August 28, show in detail the heavy concentration of smoke and debris from the site traveling across the East River and over Brooklyn. 

In response, Yassky and Velazquez drafted a letter last week to EPA Administrator Christine Whitman outlining their concerns. "We all watched the cloud of debris cross the river and descend on our neighborhoods in Brooklyn," Yassky said. 

"Now, one year later, we have proof to show the federal government that we need its help just as much as Manhattan. My constituents are worried, with good reason, that their own health and the health of their families and neighbors have been in jeopardy since the tragedy. They are worried that the government isn't doing anything about it. So am I." 

"On September 11, I watched debris fall on Carroll Gardens, while the dust cloud swept through Brooklyn," Congresswoman Velázquez said. 

"Local, state and federal agencies have monitored the health of residents and recovery workers at and near Ground Zero. The same should have been done for Brooklyn. 

"The NASA pictures and information from local health officials paint a very clear picture of what we already suspected - the toxic cloud of debris wasn't confined to Lower Manhattan but was carried over to Brooklyn," the Brooklyn officials wrote to Whitman. "It is time for the EPA to acknowledge they underestimated the environmental impact on our borough and take action immediately." 

The EPA acknowledges that its greatest concern is "the potential long term health effects resulting from the release of a wide range of toxic contaminants." 

The agency says that it began monitoring the smoke plume on September 11, 2001 and has since taken and analyzed nearly 20,000 samples of air, dust and water in lower Manhattan, Brooklyn, Staten Island and New Jersey. "All of this testing, as well as the sampling results from other federal, state and local agencies, shows that the risk for long term health effects is very low. This is reinforced by independent assessments conducted by area doctors, researchers and health professionals." 

Cleaning or testing is available by logging on to the EPA's World Trade Center website at: http://www.epa.gov/wtc/ or by calling the EPA toll-free hotline at 1-877-796-5471. 

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NY1 For You

NY1 For You Follow-Up: Red Cross Offers To Help Residents Clean Up Their Apartments, Susan Jhun, 9/9/2

Since last September, the “NY1 For You” segment has brought viewers the stories of many individuals who were adversely impacted by the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. As we near the one-year anniversary, NY1's Susan Jhun takes a look at one of the problems many Lower Manhattan residents faced immediately following the disaster.

Sheila Rossi's Battery Park City apartment laid buried in a blanket of soot and ashes, an ominous reminder of the tragedy that unfolded weeks before right outside her door.

“I believe these ashes to be cremated people, asbestos, and PCB’s," says Rossi.

Jodi Cowen found her apartment covered in the same dust and debris.

“When I walked in here I was like, ‘Oh my God!’ says Cowen. “I looked at everything and I just couldn't believe it.”

The cleanup task was enormous for the two tenants who lived in separate buildings at Gateway Plaza. At the time, they said their landlord, the LeFrak Organization, offered to pay for cleaning services, but only for the walls, ceilings and floors.

“To me, that doesn't make any sense, because everything else still has to be cleaned,” says Cowen.

The cost of the cleanup ran into the thousands.

Like many renters, both Rossi and Cowen were uninsured. Since they couldn't afford the cleaning expenses, they were forced to seek financial assistance. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, told the two they didn't cover cleanup costs.

“We can't provide direct assistance specifically targeted for cleanup for renters, because that's really the responsibility of the landlord,” says FEMA’s Michael Byrne.

That’s a notion some legal experts seemed to agree with.

“Whether they have a legal obligation or not, part of it has to do with it is good landlord-tenant relations, and part of it is if they leave whatever is there - the dust, etc. - it may be causing harm to the tenant if the tenant moves back in,” says Joseph Burden, a landlord-tenant lawyer.

Not knowing where to turn for assistance, the two women contacted "NY1 For You." First we called their landlord to ask them why they wouldn't cover full cleaning costs for their own tenants. The LeFrak Organization refused to comment on any part of our story.

Then NY1 called the American Red Cross. Back when “NY1 For You” originally aired the story, the Red Cross was offering partial cleaning costs on a case-by-case basis. In Rossi's case, she said they offered to pay $1,000 of her almost $5,000 cleaning bill.

After we brought Rossi's and Cowen's case to their attention, the American Red Cross agreed to cover both of the renters cleaning costs in full.

“The American Red Cross was able to assist these two clients with cleaning expenses, as we were able to assist thousands of other clients who lived in the downtown area and the affected area,” said Red Cross spokesperson Tracy Gary.

And the Red Cross says it hasn't stopped offering assistance to those downtown who still have cleaning to be done.

According to Gary, “We are working cooperatively with the Environmental Protection Agency, which is now offering cleaning and testing, and we are providing ancillary services in cooperation with the EPA. Housing people during cleaning would be one example of those services, and if residents still require assistance we would encourage them to call the Red Cross Call Center at 1-877-746-4987.”

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Chinatown asthma survey by local group shows high rate, By Mary Reinholz; Downtown Express photo by Corky Lee, 9/4/2

Kevin Lam, 4, worked on an art project at P.S. 124, where a new study suggesting children in Chinatown have high rates of asthma was released. A 2002 survey on asthma conducted by a Chinatown community group reported that one in five households in the neighborhood has at least one person suffering from the disease.

The Chinese Progressive Association, a non-profit grass roots community group founded more than 20 years ago, sponsored the survey and released its findings a week ago during its Neighborhood Day at P.S. 124 to spur public awareness of health issues and activism by advocacy groups.

"We went to many different locations in Chinatown - libraries, parks, senior centers - and asked the people what they knew about asthma and whether or not they had it," Mae Lee, C.P.A.'s executive director, told a smattering of Asian adults and reporters gathered in the school auditorium which also featured children holding brightly colored balloons and participating in face painting. She did not identify the volunteers, but the report said they consisted of high school and college students, retirees, parents and other interested community members.

The volunteers underwent a two-part training that included an orientation on air pollution in Chinatown. They surveyed 580 households with 2,040 residents. The report says that Chinatown's poor air quality was exacerbated by the events of Sept. 11.

About half the new cases were diagnosed during the first eight months of 2001 and half during the fall of 2001 and spring of 2002, presumably a six-month period although the report did not specify. The report made no attempt to say to what extent the discrepancy in the rate of new cases after September could be attributed to sampling error, heightened awareness about asthma, or to a change in the air quality as a result of the collapse of the World Trade Center.

Another finding indicates that children under 17 were at the highest risk, representing 51.1 percent of the people with asthma.

Survey participants held a wide range of occupations. Almost a quarter (23.6 percent) were unemployed. The next largest groups were students (11 percent) and garment workers (10.2 percent).

The report notes that asthma is a complex respiratory ailment that can be caused by environmental conditions, a genetic pre-disposition or some combination of the two. Pollution, mold, smoke, pollen, dust, roaches, colds, seasonal changes, animal fur and humidity are examples of some of these environmental triggers for an asthmatic attack.       

Lee disclosed highlights of the survey findings in English while Chris Chan, a community organizer for the Chinese Progressive Association, addressed the audience in Chinese. Pointing to maps and charts included in the report, Lee said that the survey found that the highest concentration of asthma was in northern Chinatown, represented by the zip code 10013. Canal Street runs through it, the "artificial boundary" that she said is still being used by the federal government as a cut off point for which households can receive "free testing" for environmental problems. "If you live south of Canal, you're eligible to get free testing," she said, referring to a cleanup and testing program initiated by the Environmental Protection Agency. "If you live north of the boundary, you re not [eligible.] The boundary cuts our community in half; half of the people with asthma live on one side and half live on the other side."

Steve Wellmeier, a spokesperson for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which funds the E.P.A. cleanup, said the latter agency had begun a Lower Manhattan cleanup and environmental project this month with a phone line open since June. Wellmeier acknowledged that Canal St. was the boundary that the E.P.A. had determined after spot testing had been done in other parts of Manhattan. FEMA also supplies air purifiers under its Individual and Family grant program, but applicants must first purchase the equipment and then apply for reimbursement from the state of New York. The state labor department is administering the program.       

Long before 9/11, many suspected that asthma rates in Chinatown and other Lower Manhattan neighborhoods were high because of pollution. The Chinese Progressive Association developed its asthma survey because of the high concentration in Chinatown of diesel particulates, a major cause of respiratory conditions, according to the report. In 1996, the E.P.A. found that Canal St., Chinatown's main neighborhood thoroughfare, had the highest levels of diesel particulates in the city. The report states that the E.P.A. finding is no surprise since Canal St. is the "major thoroughfare for vehicles," including diesel trucks and buses, traveling between the Manhattan Bridge and the Holland Tunnel.       

More than half of the residents surveyed moved into their Chinatown homes in the last ten years, the report said. Almost a quarter (24 percent) felt their respiratory health had changed since then. A smaller group (12 percent) felt that work affected their health and that the ailments they experienced included allergies, asthma, coughing and sinus problems. Many residents felt that the dust and air pollution that always have been present in Chinatown made breathing more difficult. Almost a third (28 percent) said they were concerned about the effects of Sept. 11 on the Chinatown environment.       

Lee said she was not sure what her group would do next. "We still need to talk to a lot more people about it," she said. "There needs to be more outreach in the community. The boundaries [for environmental testing] should be expanded. These are some of the things we've been saying from the beginning and what we're thinking and talking about. This [survey] is not like the final thing. It's a beginning."

The C.P.A. made several other recommendations, including calling on the government to develop a public health education campaign with a more comprehensive knowledge of the asthma problem in Chinatown. This would include "clearer data" about the quality of care that asthma patients are getting. The report states that hospitalization rates do not provide a complete representation of the problem in Chinatown because many asthma sufferers may never be admitted to the hospital. There is a crucial need to know the full scope of the asthma problem in Chinatown, not just those who have required emergency care.       

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