For an index to NYCOSH in the News articles
from other time periods, click here.

• Migrants Did Dirty & Dangerous Work: WTC cleanup crews not protected, often not paid - Daily News, January 11, 2002
  

For an index to NYCOSH in the News articles from
other time periods, click here.

Family Wants Facts In Death

By John Moreno Gonzales
NEWSDAY
January 24, 2002

http://www.newsday.com/news/printedition/ny-nywork242563059jan24.story

The family of a demolition worker who died a day after being rushed from the teetering Verizon building at Ground Zero has hired an attorney to determine if the man perished in a work-related accident.

The relatives are unconvinced by reports from the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the city medical examiner that say Angel Quiroga, 36, suffered a brain aneurysm that caused him to become dizzy and leave the work site by ambulance on Oct. 18. Quiroga was reported dead the next day at Bellevue Hospital Center, the only fatality possibly related to the reclamations around the Trade Center rubble.

"When we identified his body, he had a gash on the right side of his head and bruises on his right shoulder and side," said Quiroga's brother, Sergio Quiroga, 29. "To us, it looked like he fell off a ladder."

Angel Polivio Quiroga, a cousin who lived with the deceased in Corona, quit the same demolition company because of what he called unsafe working conditions.

"He'd be at home after work and he would sit down and have trouble drawing breath," Polivio Quiroga, 30, said.

Manhattan attorney Steven Goldman said he has requested ambulance, hospital, and company medical records for possible legal action against Quiroga's employer and Verizon.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration fined Quiroga's employer, Calvin Maintenance, $100 for reporting the incident six days later instead of within the required eight hours. The small fine drew criticism from the nonprofit New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health, which is investigating the death.

Joseph G. Marrone, the owner of Calvin Maintenance, said he was shocked that legal action was being considered. He said supervisors did not report the incident quickly because they were unaware of OSHA's time requirements. "We never had a guy die on us before, and we were not sure what to do," he said.

According to OSHA records, Calvin Maintenance has been issued at least seven violations since 1998.

Verizon spokesman John Bonomo said company policy prohibited him from commenting on pending litigation but that safety consultants have been at the 31-story building throughout its continuing repair.

Last week, city medical examiner spokeswoman Ellen Borakove said the office had no autopsy record for Quiroga. Yesterday, Borakove verified that a Nov. 1 examination found the cause of death to be a cerebral artery aneurysm. She said Quiroga's external injuries were not related to his death.

Quiroga was buried in Ecuador, where his wife and four daughters live.

Copyright © 2002, Newsday, Inc.

Also see Newsday, January 18

NYer of the Week: Volunteers For WTC Mobile Medical Monitoring Unit

NY 1 NEWS
January 21, 2002
http://www.ny1.com/ny/OnTheAir/SubTopic/index.html
?topicintid=8&subtopicintid=34&contentintid=18667

Our New Yorkers of the Week are nurses and doctors who volunteer their time near the World Trade Center site. They are making sure undocumented immigrant workers are getting the care they need. Rebecca Spitz introduces us.

Dr. Ekaterina Malievskaia isn't working in her normal office these days and Lucio Solis isn't one of her usual patients.

Solis is a day laborer who spent weeks cleaning buildings around the World Trade Center site. For about two months he's been feeling sick. He gets dizzy, feels short of breath and has constant headaches.

Now Solis is being cared for, free of charge, in the Medical Monitoring Unit - a van parked on the corner of Broadway and Barclay near the World Trade Center site. It's the brainchild of health and labor activists and doctors from queens College.

"We sat down a couple of months ago and we said we want to do something related to the World Trade Center because we're all in this field of occupational and environmental medicine, and we've got to be there," says Dr. Malievskaia.

Many of the patients coming to the Medical Monitoring Unit are illegal immigrants, and before the van arrived, most of were afraid to come forward for help.

Omar Henriquez of the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health coordinated a massive outreach.

"No one should have fear," Henriquez says. "Whether you're undocumented or not, you have rights by law, you have rights according to the United Nations and you have rights by the fact that you're a human being."

Jesus Palomino worked for six weeks, unprotected and off the books. He says he never got paid and now he's paying a price. He says he has a throat irritation from the dust at the site.

Inside the van, more volunteers pitch in translating for the patients and the doctors.

"We're realizing that a lot of these people don't have regular medical care, and even seeing a physician just once is really helpful for them," says volunteer Nora Rosenberg.

Everyone who comes in is checked out by a doctor. Even though many have already been exposed, they also get a lesson from a volunteer nurse on how to use masks to protect themselves.

The program is subsidized by the September 11th Fund. The demand is great, but the unit can only afford to be there until the end of the month. The goal is to see as many people as possible.

"It feels great," Dr. Malievskaia says. "We're very busy. I don't think we concentrate on this feeling, we don't dwell on it, but still it's very rewarding."

So, for taking care of those in need, the volunteers at the Medical Monitoring Unit are our New Yorkers of the Week.

The van will be at Broadway and Barclay Street weekdays between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. until the end of the month. Exams are by appointment.

Track Their Health Now, to Protect Others Later

By Susan Q. Stranahan
WASHINGTON POST
January 20, 2002

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6854-2002Jan19.html

Twenty years from now, will the World Trade Center disaster continue to claim victims? Will the tragedy be compounded by a loss of life that had less to do with terrorism than with ignorance? In the haste to return Lower Manhattan to a sense of normalcy, have additional lives been put at risk?

Nobody can answer those questions. But the issue of long-term health implications for all those at or near Ground Zero since the catastrophe must not be swept away along with the million tons of twisted steel and rubble. Sure, several small studies have begun, most focusing on discrete groups of the population, but none has the funding or capacity to match the scale of the disaster.

Consider the tip of Manhattan an ideal laboratory and all who worked or lived there in the days and weeks after Sept. 11 as prime candidates for a massive health study that may finally prove what we don't know: How resilient the human body is when bombarded with a plethora of natural and man-made chemicals.

There is real reason for concern. Many of the air-quality standards used by the Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and others date to the 1970s and measure a specific substance, such as benzene, lead or PCBs. As a result, they fail to take into account a far more likely scenario: Exposure to a chemical "soup" such as the one that was given off when the contents of the World Trade Center burned. "They keep saying that almost all of these contaminants are below levels of concern," says Monona Rossol, an industrial hygienist who lives and works near the World Trade Center. "But they're not looking at the incredible number of plasticizers, fire retardants, fillers. You had 210 floors of carpets, wallboard, furniture and computers burning. We have no idea what this will do."

Over the past two decades, anecdotal evidence has mounted that such chemical exposures take a toll. Having spent several years gathering health data on more than 200 firefighters and emergency workers who fought a 1978 hazardous waste fire in Chester, Pa., I am well aware of how little is known about the long-term effects. In that case, no fire or rescue workers were killed at the time of the fire, but eventually more than 40 of the people at the scene were stricken with serious diseases, including cancer; of that group, 28 are dead. No one can say with certainty that the cause was the chemicals they encountered, but their fate -- and the uncertainty of what will happen to the thousands of professionals and civilians who raced to the World Trade Center -- cries out for investigation.

The study of those exposed in Manhattan must be started immediately and continued for the two decades or more it takes for certain diseases, notably cancer, to develop. Perhaps it will turn up nothing. But it must be undertaken, if only to reassure all Americans that the existing framework of environmental and occupational regulations protecting their everyday lives is performing as intended. "Out of the billions of dollars devoted to recovery efforts, there should be money put aside to find, register and clinically assess these people," says Stephen M. Levin, medical director of the Mount Sinai-Irving J. Selikoff Center for Occupational and Environmental Medicine in New York.

From the beginning, Levin and his colleagues saw evidence of health problems among responders and residents living near Ground Zero. Many people have suffered from coughs, nosebleeds and respiratory ailments, triggered by the massive amounts of dust and debris in the air. Some of these are probably temporary irritations; others may be far more serious. "This wasn't [about] breathing dust," said Levin, referring to the size of the particlesin the air. "It was breathing chunks of material." In recent weeks, concern has grown about levels of asbestos permeating the air of Lower Manhattan, and about repeated assurances by the Environmental Protection Agency that the air is safe. The EPA's handling of air-quality data isthe subject of an internal investigation, launched by agency ombudsman Robert J. Martin.

Some have accused city, state and federal officials of playing down the possible health hazards near Ground Zero, encouraging residents to return and businesses to reopen. "There was a concern to get life back to normal at all costs," said Joel A. Shufro, executive director of the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health, a coalition of 250 labor unions whose members include secretaries, teachers, government employees, construction workers and others who work near the World Trade Center. Officials "were frightened to death of the economic consequences of shutting down Lower Manhattan, said Shufro. "Rather than explaining the risks, they worked to reassure people." As a result, he worries, "we'll turn heroes into martyrs."

The studies that are underway will certainly provide some useful data. In October, a team from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health began a survey that will follow at least 200 construction workers at Ground Zero, according to Alison Geyh, an assistant scientist at the university. Although by the time the study started workers were wearing sophisticated protective equipment, including respirators, Geyh says "we don't have a clue what the long-term [health] consequences will or will not be."

Another survey, undertaken jointly by Columbia University's School of Public Health and the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, will attempt to locate all pregnant women living or working near Ground Zero to ascertain what effect, if any, prenatal stress or environmental contaminants may have on their babies.

A third, launched by Shufro's group and the City University of New York, is attempting to identify hundreds of day laborers who were hired to clean office buildings and residences. The structures were often heavily contaminated with asbestos,yet few of the workers -- many of them illegal immigrants -- were provided with adequate protective equipment.

These small surveys, while helpful to segments of the affected population, cannot take the place of a large study and a tracking program that encompasses everyone who was at the scene. "I think it is incredibly valuable to do that," says Geyh, echoing the views of many experts.

If any city is equipped to oversee such a program it would be New York. "New York has a public health infrastructure unlike any other in the country," says Shufro, "and a concentration of people concerned with environmental and occupational health. It is unique in that way. The city is a ready-made laboratory for investigation."

Yet, to date, no one has stepped forward to offer the critical element: Money. That must come from Washington, for this is a national public health issue that goes far beyond the fate of thousands of firefighters, police, rescue workers and well-intentioned volunteers who converged on the smoldering rubble. These are matters of concern to every worker who labors in a chemical-filled job site. They are critical to the 14 million Americans who live within a mile of the nation's 1,500 federal Superfund sites still awaiting cleanup, whose air and drinking water may be tainted by chemical residues. And they are of significance to every parent whose child faces a lifetime of exposures to chemicals in food, air and water, at homes, schools and playgrounds. If the disaster has a legacy, let it be that the rules meant to protect us do exactly that.

Susan Stranahan is a freelance journalist who has written about environmental and occupational health issues for more than two decades.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

Some See N.Y. Air as a Hidden Menace: Many believe EPA cited safety too quickly. Pollutants indoors a key worry.

By Josh Getlin
LOS ANGELES TIMES
January 18, 2002

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-011802air.story

NEW YORK -- As New Yorkers choked and gagged under a cloud of smoky dust after the World Trade Center attacks, the Environmental Protection Agency constantly assured them that the air did not pose a major health risk.

"EPA is greatly relieved to learn that there appears to be no significant levels of asbestos in the air in New York City," said Administrator Christie Whitman in a Sept. 13 message repeated many times.

But now, amid growing scientific evidence of high asbestos levels in homes and other potentially serious air quality problems related to the attacks, many New Yorkers believe the EPA misled them and was perhaps too eager to promote the return to business as usual in lower Manhattan.

"The assurances we got from the EPA came from ignorance, and we do not want to pay a terrible price in death and sickness down the road," Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-New York) said Thursday, joining federal, state and local officials in a call for the EPA to clean up contaminants inside New York homes and businesses.

"Federal officials have only tested the air outside," he added. "They couldn't possibly know if the city is really safe now."

It was the latest outburst in an escalating debate over New York's environmental health after Sept. 11. EPA officials deny they have overlooked health needs, and in a statement Thursday the agency said it has used "sound science" to chart the problem and "has undertaken an unprecedented response to the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center."

Yet the criticism mounts.

Ever since the fires and smoke at the trade center site disappeared, there has been less concern over outdoor air quality and an increasing focus on indoor contaminants. The agency's independent ombudsman has called for a probe of Whitman's reassuring statements about air quality. And a senior EPA chemist has charged that asbestos levels in New York homes pose a health risk equal to that of Libby, Mont., a mining town so contaminated it has been declared a U.S. Superfund site.

Meanwhile, parents are rebelling against Board of Education orders to return their children in three weeks to public elementary schools near ground zero, saying they won't go back until they are convinced the air is safe.

An unprecedented study has been launched to test pregnant women who were exposed to the clouds of gas and smoke at the World Trade Center, and health testing has also begun for hundreds of day laborers who have been working at the site without adequate respiratory protection.

While there is no hard scientific evidence that New Yorkers are in danger from contamination, many observers say federal officials failed to properly communicate the level of medical risk to the city.

"All along, the EPA and other departments have been assuring people in New York City that things were fine, but things were not fine," said Dr. Stephen Levin, medical director of Mount Sinai Hospital's Center for Occupational and Environmental Medicine. "There was a great desire to resume business as usual here, and I do mean business, because there's a great push to commercially redevelop the [World Trade Center] site."

Much of the controversy has focused on asbestos testing. When the World Trade Center towers collapsed, a large but still undetermined amount of asbestos used in the original building construction rained down on Manhattan. The site was only partially lined with the cancer-causing fireproofing material, because New York outlawed its use in 1971 while the buildings were under construction.

Many experts believe that the force of the airplane blast pulverized the asbestos into particles smaller than those normally identified by detection equipment. And while rigorous EPA tests suggest the outside air at the site is free of dangerous contamination, several private studies using more sophisticated technology have shown higher levels of asbestos and other contaminants in the smaller dust particles that blew into homes and offices near the World Trade Center.

The tests, by HP Environmental Inc. of Herndon, Va., and Chatfield Technical Consulting, a Canadian firm, could not determine whether those exposed to the minute particles would develop any potentially fatal diseases. Typically, individuals must be exposed to asbestos for long periods of time, and the disease may not appear for 20 years or more.

"We found conditions that EPA inspectors may not have suspected," said Hugh Granger, who directed the HP Environmental study. "And we don't want to alarm people, but this kind of information should be widely known."

Under EPA guidelines, 70 fibers of asbestos per square millimeter calls for decontamination procedures in schools. In the HP study, several indoor samples showed more than 300 fibers per square millimeter.

EPA officials have said they do not regulate the interior of people's homes, and that the responsibility for enforcing such cleanup rests mainly with the city's health department. But the health department has come under heavy fire for advising people to clean up potentially dangerous particles of airborne asbestos with wet rags, mops and other crude home equipment, instead of the costly and more effective vacuums used at other sites.

Amid the debate, Levin and other experts urge calm. While he said there had been an "unexpectedly high" number of respiratory complaints from New Yorkers, especially among office workers and people who lived near the site, he believes health dangers are greatly abating.

"The fires at the site are out and the risks are diminishing," he told parents from Public School 150 at a meeting this week to decide whether they should return to the school, six blocks from the World Trade Center site. The school and several others were evacuated after the attacks.

Levin pointed to recent air quality tests at the school, indicating that levels of asbestos, lead and other contaminants did not pose a danger to students. Given all the information that is now available, he said he would not have a problem sending his children back to school near the disaster site.

Yet some parents were not convinced and asked pointed questions: Is there an air quality problem caused by trucks filled with trade center debris that rumble past the school? Is it safe for youngsters to play outside for 45 minutes at recess so close to the site? And what about the contaminated dust particles that may be tracked into the school by children playing outside?

By the end of the meeting, parents were still wrestling with the question, but they clearly resented the Board of Education's edict that their children and students of other schools had to return to their original campuses by Feb. 4. Earlier, parents at nearby Public School 89, citing health concerns, voted against returning.

"You just don't know who to believe in the government anymore," said one angry mother, preparing to leave the meeting in the cafeteria of the Greenwich Village school where Public School 150 students have been temporarily housed since the attacks. "I don't think federal people told us the truth."

Those concerns prompted Robert J. Martin, the EPA's national ombudsman, to call for an inquiry into Whitman's assurances about air quality. Martin, who has called for 35 investigations into EPA actions over the years, is waging a court battle against Whitman's effort to dissolve his job at the agency.

"We felt there was something rotten in Denmark," said Hugh Kauffman, Martin's chief investigator. "I don't want anyone to be scared [about asbestos levels], but we need to find out what exactly she [Whitman] knew when she made these comments, and how forthcoming the agency was."

Yet another charge has been lodged by Cate Jenkins, an EPA chemist, who has performed a risk assessment study of reported asbestos levels in New York homes, and found the city has a level comparable to that of Libby, Mont., where hundreds of people died of asbestos poisoning from nearby mines.

She cautioned, however, that her analogy to Libby is a projection. It is not based on epidemiological studies, which rely on medical histories to chart the onset of diseases and the conditions that caused them.

"If EPA doesn't call for uniform, proper cleanups in these Manhattan homes, the risks will be very high down the line for people," she said.

Elsewhere, researchers at Columbia University's School of Public Health and the Mount Sinai School of Medicine are launching a study that will track the effect of the terrorist attacks on 300 pregnant women. They want to know what chemicals and metals these individuals were exposed to, and whether they contribute to any health problems in the mothers or their children.

David Newman, an industrial hygienist with the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health, said, "We need to make it clear that not everybody will get ill in New York or has been exposed to something bad.

"But people get concerned, sometimes to the point of hysteria, if we don't have a coordinated governmental response to the problem and what people should do. In New York, that's been sorely missing."

WTC-Area Laborers Not Getting Much Help
Clinic Finds Safety Precautions Are Often Lacking for Immigrant Workers Wading Through the Dust and Debris Near Ground Zero

By Dina V. Montes
STATEN ISLAND ADVANCE
January 18, 2002
http://www.silive.com/news/advance/index.ssf?/xml/
story.ssf/html_standard.xsl?/base/news/

After Sept. 11, Omar Jaime and Sara Casa joined a legion of immigrant workers in Downtown Manhattan cleaning offices coated with dust and debris from the World Trade Center collapse. Although they had heard the dust could contain contaminants, they claimed their employers told them it was safe to clean without protective equipment.

Now the natives of Ecuador complain of dizzy spells, headaches and shortness of breath. "They didn't provide us with respirators or gloves to do our work," Jaime said. "They told us that it was safe and if we didn't want to work without the safety equipment they could easily find other people who would."

Testimonies like those offered by Jaime and Ms. Casa, who said they continued to work cleaning ventilation-system filters, lighting fixtures and ceilings without safeguards, were heard again and again at the World Trade Center Mobile Medical Monitoring Unit this week in Lower Manhattan.

While firefighters, rescue workers and other people who work at or near Ground Zero have had their health problems -- wheezing, coughing and other respiratory difficulties -- documented and treated for months, the workers who clean buildings have been largely overlooked by health officials, advocates said.

The Latin American Workers' Project, the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health (NYCOSH), and the Center for the Biology of Natural Systems at Queens College have banded to together to fill the void, coordinating the mobile clinic at the corner of Barclay Street and Broadway.

The small trailer provides little space for the doctor, nurse and translator that staff it. But the unit has provided free health screenings to a parade of immigrant day laborers with no health insurance. Since Monday, the clinic team has examined 70 laborers, and 200 more have made appointments for exams that will run through Feb. 1.

Dr. Ekatarina Malievskaia, an internist from Queens College, was surprised by the steady stream of worried workers.

"We are totally overwhelmed by the response. At this point, we realize we don't have enough resources to provide everyone with medical services and equipment," Dr. Malievskaia said.

The clinic conducts a breathing test, urinalysis and blood work on each laborer during an hour-long work-up. Test results take two to three weeks to complete. Workers also receive educational information on safety guidelines and a free respirator mask with filters.

"This is a large, neglected group that has not received the proper medical attention," said David Newman, industrial hygienist for the NYCOSH. "The nature of these clean-up efforts are uncoordinated and done in haphazard conditions."

NYCOSH sent organizers down to the World Trade Center area after Sept. 11 and soon discovered that many workers who came in direct contact with dust and debris were not provided respirators or gloves.

The clinic doctors said they've been seeing patients with wheezing, coughing, eye irritation and headaches, symptoms similar to those of other Lower Manhattan workers. Dr. Malievskaia said she witnessed a couple of workers cough up blood, but is not sure if it was a result of airborne contaminants.

Health officials have noted that the World Trade Center debris has levels of asbestos, lead, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and dioxins. Whether these levels are physically harmful has not been determined. The Center for the Biology of Natural Systems at Queens College is using test results gleaned from the mobile clinic as data to characterize the general health of area workers.

Part of this process of collecting data requires documenting workers' employment history, but gathering this information has been difficult.

"A lot of times they don't know who they work for," Dr. Malievskaia said. "They don't know the name of their employers. They get picked up at the corner and work for a short time."

Language is a barrier for the Spanish-speaking workers, many of whom can't relay their employer's address or supervisor's name. Oscar Paredes, director of the Latin American Workers Project, said many workers only know their companies by acronyms.

"Many of these companies hire sub-contractors for their cleaning," Paredes said. "We don't have any documentation of the companies. All we have are names like SEC and DMS."

Clean-up work for immigrants is usually temporary. Most laborers work for a company for a month or so and are replaced by eager workers who don't make demands that would jeopardize their hiring.

A typical day laborer, according to Omar Henriquez of NYCOSH, is a non-union worker without medical benefits who receives $60 for an eight-hour shift and $80 for a 12-hour shift.

The U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which oversees investigations and complaints concerning worker safety, has not received any complaints from World Trade Center-area employees. OSHA spokeswoman Kate Dugan said the agency has recently published notices in both English and Spanish letting workers know their rights to safe working conditions.

"We will certainly investigate any complaints from immigrant workers," Ms. Dugan said. "OSHA would investigate allegations and possibly propose penalty and fines to those who violate federal working laws."

NYCOSH and the Latin American Workers Project have not yet spoken to OSHA. Paredes said the Mobile Medical Unit is primarily concerned with providing medical care to day laborers.

Henriquez of NYCOSH is meeting tomorrow with OSHA in Washington, D.C., to speak on immigrant workers and safety violations in general. He plans to draw attention to Lower Manhattan immigrant workers' safety.

"Of course I'm going to bring it up," Henriquez said. "New York State has the highest accident death rate for immigrant workers."

WTC Cleanup Worker Died

By John Morales Gonzales
NEWSDAY
January 18, 2002

http://www.newsday.com/news/printedition/newyork/ny-nywork182556037jan18.story

A man performing cleanup in the weeks after the World Trade Center attack died at a hospital a day after being rushed from his work site with complaints of dizziness, officials said yesterday.

His employer did not report the incident until six days after he was taken to the hospital and ultimately was fined $100.

Occupational Safety and Health Administration officials said yesterday that Angel Quiroga complained of lightheadedness on Oct. 18 as he cleared debris a few blocks from Ground Zero.

Quiroga's ailment was serious enough to require he be taken by ambulance to Bellevue Hospital Center, where he died Oct. 19.

His employer, Calvin Maintenance Inc., was fined for failing to report the workplace incident in the required eight-hour period, said OSHA spokeswoman Kate Dugan. The company, which was not listed at the address provided to OSHA and could not be reached for comment, has had at least seven workplace violations since 1998.

OSHA officials initially fined Calvin Maintenance $4,000 in Quiroga's case but lowered the amount to $100 after Bellevue doctors attributed his death to natural causes, Dugan said.

Joel Shufro, executive director of the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health, said his organization has been investigating the matter for the past week and will continue to do so.

"There are thousands of examples where workers' cases, particularly those of immigrants, are not reported," he said. "What is outrageous is they cut the fine for a company which has a history of violating the law."

OSHA closed the case Dec. 6, saying the cause of death officially deems it unrelated to the workplace and not warranting further investigation. OSHA officials would not release details on the man's working conditions or be more specific about his symptoms, citing privacy concerns.

They have acknowledged, however, that hundreds of thousands of workers in and around Ground Zero either did not wear the proper respirators or did not fill out the forms required of people who do wear them. The forms determine if a worker's body can stand the strain of bending and scrubbing while wearing the respirators, known to inhibit breathing.

When asked if the lack of oversight or other matters could have contributed to the man's death, Dugan said: "We have no such suspicions."

Sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity said Quiroga was an immigrant from Central America whose body since has been returned to his homeland.

Also see January 24 follow-up.

Toxic Cover-up: Asbestos, Lead, Mercury, Dioxin. World Trade Center Syndrome

Democracy Now
January 17, 2002

http://www.webactive.com/pacifica/demnow/dn20020117.html

Today, we will meet a doctor who has treated a parade of Ground Zero patients . . . a lawyer working on behalf of police union activists investigating why so many cops are coughing . . . a parent whose son goes to Stuyvesant High School, blocks from Ground Zero, where kids are suffering nosebleeds and other respiratory problems . . . organizers who started a free mobile health unit to treat the hundreds of sick workers . . . and a woman who was sent to the emergency room twice because of toxins in her apartment. An audio feed of the roundtable discussion is available at the link listed above.

Guests:

• Marilena Christodoulou, Head of the Stuyvesant High School Parents Association;
• Omar Henriquez, Safety and Health Specialist, New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health (NYCOSH);
• Joel Kupferman, Director, New York Environmental Law and Justice Project;
• Dr. Stephen Levin, medical director, Mt. Sinai Hospital and the Irving J. Selikoff Center for Occupational and Environmental Medicine;
• Joel Shufro, Executive Director, New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health (NYCOSH);
• Wendy Tabb, resident, lower Manhattan, who had to leave her apartment because her symptoms were so severe. She still has not moved back.

Exámenes Médicos en la ‘Zona Cero'

Ana María Ramírez
Hoy
15 de enero, 2002

http://www.holahoy.com/internet.nsf/All/pg022220.htm

Un grupo de latinos que trabajaron limpiando oficinas cercanas al World Trade Center temen por su salud porque no usaron los equipos adecuados y comenzaron a realizarse exámenes médicos.

La mayoría de los trabajadores aunque tienen licencia para remover asbestos, no tienen documentos para solicitar empleo en compañías que les den seguros médicos.

Por iniciativa del Centro para la Biología de Sistemas Naturales del Queens College, la Universidad de la Ciudad de Nueva York, el Proyecto de Trabajadores Latinoamericano y el Comité para la Salud y Seguridad Laboral de Nueva York se instaló una clínica móvil en la avenida Broadway y la calle Barclay, en el Bajo Manhattan, que funcionará desde las ocho de la mañana hasta las ocho de la noche, hasta el 1 de febrero.

Para hacerse el examen, que consiste en una revisión general, pruebas respiratorias, análisis de sangre y orina sólo hay que pedir una cita. También se les informa a los trabajadores cómo protegerse y se les dan máscaras.

De acuerdo a las organizaciones que colocaron la unidad móvil, el polvo en los alrededores del Centro de Comercio Mundial contiene sustancias tóxicas, como asbestos, fibra de vidrio y plomo.

Mientras esperaba para hacerse el examen, José Primo, afiliado al sindicato 12 A, contó que el 16 de septiembre empezó a trabajar para la compañía Trade Wins, limpiando la empresa Merry Lynch. Luego fue contratado por Pinacle para limpiar otras oficinas. "Era tal la cantidad de polvo que mis botas quedaban cubiertas. Nos daban máscaras pero no las apropiadas y a veces no tenían suficientes filtros. Trabajamos 12 horas al día y sólo teníamos media hora para almorzar. Sabía el riesgo que corría, pero si dejaba el empleo, estaban 50 personas esperando".

El 8 de diciembre, Primo empezó a sufrir de tos, dificultades para respirar y a veces en la expectoración encontraba sangre. "El 27 de diciembre me hospitalizaron por insuficiencia respiratoria, sufrí casi un paro cardíaco. Antes de trabajar en la zona cero no tenía ningún problema de salud, estas compañías son muy exigentes y hacen exámenes antes de empezar".

Otro trabajador que acudió a la unidad móvil, José Garnica, fue empleado por las mismas compañías que Primo, "acepté el trabajo porque por la situación de la ciudad no había otros. Empecé a sentir que me faltaba el aire y tos, creí que era porque el trabajo era muy fuerte, doce horas al día. Ni siquiera había un baño para limpiarse el polvo al terminar. Muchas veces no había filtros suficientes para los trabajadores".

Según Garnica, el sindicato 12A no hizo nada para ayudarlos. "Lo que me preocupa es que las enfermedades que produce el asbesto se manifiestan hasta diez años después de estar en contacto".

Algunos trabajadores como Gabriel Peña dijeron que por su condición de indocumentados no pudieron conseguir otro empleo. "Tengo licencia para remover asbestos. Representantes del sindicato 78 me dijeron que para tener beneficios médicos tenía que haber trabajado 400 horas. Creo que hay discriminación porque somos latinos".

José Sánchez coincidió con Peña en que no recibió ningún respaldo del sindicato 78, "no hacen nada por nosotros, me parece muy bueno que se realice este examen".

Oscar Paredes, director ejecutivo del Proyecto de Trabajadores Latinoamericanos reafirmó que algunos de los trabajadores afectados no recibieron la atención que requerían por parte del sindicato. "No se han responsabilizado por ellos y por eso muchos vinieron a la unidad móvil a examinarse".

En la cola para el examen también estaba Ramón Carrero quien dijo que después de trabajar en los alrededores del World Trade Center sufre de dolor en el pecho, la espalda y una tos seca. "Tuve que ir al médico y me dijo que tenía una infección en los pulmones. Trabajamos muchas veces sin las cosas que necesitábamos porque había como 70 personas y no alcanzaban"

Omar Henriquez, del Comité para la Seguridad y Salud en el Trabajo, dijo que no importa el estatus legal, los trabajadores que demuestren que fueron afectados tienen derecho a compensación." Desde octubre seguimos este caso. Nueva York es el estado con más casos de inmigrantes que sufren accidentes en el trabajo".

Steven Markowitz, uno de los médicos que se encargará de los exámenes añadió que, "pretendemos ayudar a las personas menos protegidas, que no recibirán cuidados médicos por problemas de salud como consecuencia del trabajo. Ellos limpiaron, removieron e inhalaron polvo. Tenemos que identificar sus enfermedades y proveerles los equipos respiratorios para protegerlos en el futuro".

Francisco Vega, delegado del sindicato 12 A, dijo que varias compañías contrataron a personas sin documentos para remover asbestos para ahorrar dinero, "la ciudad y el estado son responsables y deben ayudar a los afectados. Las compañías abusan empleando a estas personas para hacer estos trabajos que pueden ser peligrosos ".

También ayer en cuatro hospitales del Bajo Manhattan se comenzaron a analizar los efectos de la contaminación del área en las mujeres embarazadas.

Is 'Ground Zero' Toxic?

United Churches of Christ Disaster Alert
January 15, 2002

http://www.ucc.org/disaster/d011502.htm

Asthma attacks, headaches, nosebleeds, sore throats, hacking coughs, bronchial infections, rashes. People who live near ground zero are taking these symptoms to their doctors, and for workers still clearing rubble, it's even more serious. Firefighters call it the "World Trade Center cough," and four Port Authority police officers were reassigned from the site after they tested positive for elevated mercury levels in their blood.

Is ground zero toxic? And what's being done about it?

Not enough, said Roger Cook, executive director of the Western New York council on occupational safety and health. "We could be setting ourselves up for something disastrous here," he said. "Our main concern is the toxins in this dust, it was a big mixture of chemicals and we still have no idea what all people are being exposed to."

At least some tests indicated a toxic cocktail that's a combination of asbestos, fiberglass, dioxin, PCBs, lead, and chromium. More should be done to monitor both the public and workers, said Cook, adding that people are worried about the long-term effects of breathing this dust, said Cook. Many fear that the neighborhood will be a future "cancer cluster."

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the state's department of environmental protection are monitoring and testing daily air quality throughout lower Manhattan. Both agencies' Web sites list test results. The public can also view maps of where tests are taken.

The New York City department of public health has been testing air quality at nearby schools. All three agencies' test results say that toxin rates, including those on the cancer-causing substance asbestos, have rarely peaked above the limit for public safety. "The tests for asbestos were high (immediately following 9/11), but the rates have gone down (below the unsafe level)," said Jessica Leighton, New York City's assistant commissioner on environmental risk and communication. "We are seeing a decline on our monitoring maps of harmful particulates in the air."

People need to realize the difference between risks to those actually working in ground zero and those who work or live in the area, added Leighton. "We need to separate workers and residents here," she said. "Obviously workers (in ground zero) have different hazards, but they are also equipped with protection like masks and such." If the professional cleaning crews have access to such protection, what about those simply trying to clean their homes and businesses?

In this respect, government agencies aren't doing enough, said Joel Shufro, executive director of the nonprofit New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health. "The New York City department of health is just saying 'professional cleaning is recommended, but you can do it yourself.' "

Shufro wondered why this is when other, smaller-scale disasters in the past have sparked better response. "Some ten years ago in Gramercy Park we had a huge event where a ventilation shaft exploded and sent a cloud of asbestos up all over the area," he said. "When that happened, the city came in, evacuated everyone, sealed off the area, and cleaned it all up. It was declared a public health emergency by the Department of Health."

Cook shared Shufro's concerns. "We have church groups going around helping clean up these other local buildings, but they have no training," he said. "Now they're having health problems, too. Not enough precautions are being taken."

But Leighton defended the city's approach, citing a highly visible public education campaign about how to properly clean one's residence, and what to do if a landlord doesn't adequately clean up. "The department of health sent out flyers to all the local landlords telling them 'before you reopen your building, you must do this to make it safe,' " she said. "If any residents have problems with their landlords not doing this, we immediately move in to investigate."

Cook and Shufro added that there should be more health screening of the public and workers alike. "We've been referring many of the rescue workers to Sinai Hospital for further testing," said Cook. "But no one in any government agency is saying that there is any need for further testing of those who've had the highest exposure. We say that if we start early looking for possible long-term effects, we might be able to avoid any long-term effects." Among fears expressed by workers and residents are that they will be part of a "cancer cluster" or experience high rates of leukemia in the future.

Shufro said they've been working with Sinai Hospital's Dr. Stephen Levin, director of the hospital's Selikoff Center for Occupational and Environmental Medicine. "He's agreeing with us that there may be long-term effects for these workers and others exposed to this dust," said Shufro.

In the meantime, the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health is opening up a new medical van Monday at ground zero to provide health screenings for day laborers. "We're also doing an education campaign about proper cleaning methods for local residents. We're offering industrial hygiene programs to come in for testing if people request it," Shufro said. Shufro and Cook say they're also working on keeping the pressure on the government agencies. "Many groups are starting to raise these issues too," said Shufro. "We haven't had any huge success yet, but I think there's a growing recognition that these (cleanup and exposure) standards are not appropriate and are not right for people's health. We're continuing our dialogue with regulatory agencies as well, and we know the greater the pressure, the greater chance they'll respond."

Recently, Cook and Shufro met with Dr. Levin and with United Church of Christ representatives Florence Coppola and Joann Hale to start formulating an action plan. "We're working on where to start. This is such a massive project," said Hale.

Leighton said the city is planning on expanding its outreach efforts as well. "We're sending out education teams and we have a speakers' bureau with a number of local experts," she said. "The amount of work going into this—from the endless extensive testing to all the education efforts—it's impressive how much is being done."

The city continues to work with the EPA and the state department of environmental protection on air testing to see long-term effects, if any. "We're putting all these tests together to set up a long-term analysis, and the EPA is setting up long-term trend analysis on the test results as well," said Leighton. "This is going to take time because it's so much information. "But we want people to know that we're trying to get the information out there and we're not trying to hide anything. We're here to protect public health."

How you can help

1. Continue to pray for families of victims and survivors of the September 11 tragedy; and persons working at and/or living near ground zero.

2. To help those affected you might send gifts made out to your local church, marked in the memo portion "Hope from the Rubble" and request that it be sent to the Conference Office with a note asking them to send the gifts to the Office for Global Sharing of Resources; Wider Church Ministries; 700 Prospect Ave., Cleveland, OH 44115

or

3. Send gifts, made out to Wider Church Ministries and marked in the memo portion "Hope from the Rubble," to the Office for Global Sharing of Resources; Wider Church Ministries; 700 Prospect Ave., Cleveland, OH 44115

Health Checks at Ground Zero: Cleaning Workers Flock to Mobile Medical Unit

By Margaret Ramirez
NEWSDAY
January 15, 2002
http://www.newsday.com/news/health/ny-nymed152552064jan15.story

Dozens of fearful workers who cleaned buildings in lower Manhattan after the World Trade Center attack lined up outside a mobile medical unit yesterday to be tested for respiratory problems and toxic exposure.

Even before the van opened its doors, the mobile clinic had scheduled 52 appointments for the week. In addition, about 50 other workers complaining of headaches, chest pains and a wide range of other problems crowded around the van in the cold, desperate to be tested.

"I have this horrible pain in my chest," said Blanca Rodriguez, 29, an Ecuadorean emigrant who was hired as a day laborer to clean asbestos. "It feels tight, like someone is squeezing me, like asthma. But I've never had a pain like that before Sept. 11."

Alsivar Naranjo, 23, who cleaned One Liberty Plaza just blocks away from the trade center, suffers from a chronic cough and fears he may have been exposed to toxic substances. Environmental tests have detected dioxins, PCBs, lead, chromium and fiberglass in the air and soil around Ground Zero.

"The people who hired us told us nothing about the hazards we might be facing," Naranjo said. "Now I want to know if my body is contaminated, is there any way to get rid of it?"

Firefighters and rescue workers stationed at Ground Zero have complained of respiratory illnesses. This month, four Port Authority police officers were found to have elevated levels of mercury in their blood. Little attention has been focused on the estimated 400 immigrant workers.

The van, stationed near Ground Zero at the corner of Broadway and Barclay Street, hopes to examine mainly non-unionized workers without health insurance. The clinic will provide pulmonary tests, blood tests and urinalysis, as well as distribute properly fitting respirators to workers.

Omar Henriquez of the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health became concerned when he discovered workers suffering chest pains and nosebleeds and several women complaining about irregularities in their menstrual cycles. Henriquez said many of the workers never received protective equipment or proper training for toxic cleanup.

The mobile unit is a joint project sponsored by the Center for the Biology of Natural Systems at Queens College, the Committee for Occupational Safety and Health and the Latin American Workers' Project. Inside the van, a team of three doctors and two medical technicians conduct a physical exam and respirator fitting, which takes about an hour.

Vicente Bolanos, 36, of the Bronx, was one of the first workers to be examined. Although he was grateful for the opportunity, he worried about the consequences of speaking out.

"I became nauseous after working near Ground Zero in September and I'm concerned about my health. But I worry this medical record will make it harder for me to get work," he said.

Copyright © 2002, Newsday, Inc.

Free Exams Offered To WTC-Area Laborers

By Ralph R. Ortega
DAILY NEWS
January 15, 2002
http://www.nydailynews.com/2002-01-15/News_and_Views/City_Beat/a-138280.asp

Ground Zero-area laborers lined up for free exams at a mobile medical monitoring unit that opened yesterday just blocks from the World Trade Center devastation.

Most of those who showed up at the trailer, parked at Broadway and Barclay St., were illegal immigrants who cleaned buildings in lower Manhattan after Sept. 11. Many were seeking treatment for respiratory problems they fear came from handling possibly toxic dust.

Among them was Vicente Bolanos, 36, who said that since doing asbestos removal work in the area he has suffered a constant dry throat and bouts of coughing up blood.

"At this point, I can only hope that I am not gravely ill," said the Ecuadoran immigrant, who lives in the Bronx.

The Daily News revealed last week that after Sept. 11 up to 600 workers — most of them illegal immigrants — were plucked off streetcorners by contractors to clean up downtown apartments and office buildings.

Many complained they were given no safety training or equipment, and some said they were stiffed of $7.50 hourly wages.

The state attorney general's office is investigating alleged labor law violations.

"Now we are clearly seeing the results of this situation, due in part to the irresponsible exploitation of these workers by unscrupulous contractors," said Oscar Paredes, executive director of the Latin American Workers Project.

The labor rights group, the Center for the Biology of Natural Systems at Queens College and the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health have joined to run the mobile medical unit.

Financial support came from the September 11th Fund, which is administered by the New York Community Trust and United Way.

Open for Several Weeks

The medical unit will be open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. weekdays for the next several weeks. Patients undergo respiratory tests and are given free respirators, as well as tips on how to protect themselves.

The workers — most of whom have no health insurance or access to other medical care — said they were grateful for the help, even if they feared for their health.

Vicente Vargas, 33, said he battled nosebleeds, sore throats and a nagging cough for weeks after cleaning a dust-covered restaurant near Ground Zero.

"In the beginning I thought I just had a bad cold. I figured that after taking a few pills I would recover," said Vargas, 33, of Queens. "But until now, I haven't felt good at all."

Day Laborers To Be Tested For Exposure To WTC Toxins

WABC - TV
January 14, 2002
http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/news/WABC_011402_wtc.html

New York State's attorney general is looking into allegations that hundreds of illegal immigrants were hired for next to nothing to risk their health cleaning up the dust and debris that rained down from the collapse of the World Trade Center. Now, a medical van will offer those workers free medical care near Ground Zero.

The choking cloud swept across Lower Manhattan as the towers collapsed. Some buildings still haven't been cleaned. Some of those that were may have been at the hands of workers who ended up getting paid very little money, if any at all. Many workers were stiffed by anonymous bosses who never delivered paychecks for all that work in dangerous conditions. Now, a coalition of legal and health experts is taking action offering medical care with no questions asked.

Dr. Steve Markowitz, "Many of these workers are immigrants, or they were short-term workers working with toxic dust, such as asbestos and fiberglass. We want to provide a specialized health examination which focuses on the toxic exposure these people have had."

Most of the workers at Ground Zero are union protected and supplied with respirators. But cleaning up nearby buildings was a different matter and that's where the migrant workers spent their days with little or no protection. The Latin Americans Workers Project says that many of these men have had little or no training. However, those who did take precautions wanted to make sure they suffered no ill effects from their work.

Enrique Galias, Day Laborers: "I wore the mask, but I still would like to get checked out."

Joel Shufro/Executive Director, New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health: "Workers have been complaining to us about what they call the 'World Trade Center' cough. These are asthma like symptoms. Some people have experienced this early on and others are just now developing these symptoms, three months later."

Open air tests around Ground Zero have found contamination at safe levels. But a recent independent test reported finding asbestos levels indoors that were nine times higher.

Michael Bloomberg, (R) New York City Mayor: "Whether nine times is significant, I don't know, so we will have to see. But we will follow the EPA closely."

The project could be expanded if needed. In addition to the free health screening, workers will be provided with safety training and a free respirator.

Clinic to Test Day Laborers for World Trade Center Toxins

By Karen Matthews
ASSOCIATED PRESS
January, 13, 2002

http://fresnobee.com/24hour/special_reports/terrorism/
attack/story/218189p-2105256c.html

Immigrant day laborers have performed thousands of hours of work removing debris from downtown office and apartment buildings since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, many without adequate protective gear and most without health insurance.

Starting Monday, the workers can get free physical exams and be tested for health problems at a mobile health clinic parked near City Hall.

"We are aiming to help the most neglected, least protected workers, who might otherwise receive no medical care for occupational health problems," said Dr. Steven Markowitz, director of the Center for the Biology of Natural Systems at Queens College.

"We want to identify their illnesses and provide them with properly fitting respirators to protect themselves in the future," said Markowitz, who is overseeing the initiative.

Day laborers tend to have less training than union workers and are paid a fraction of the union rate. Many of the several hundred who have worked at the site are illegal immigrants.

Paul Bartlett, a research associate at the center, said many building owners "basically cut corners, and they started hiring day laborers, predominantly Latino immigrants, to clean up the buildings."

The Queens College center will operate the mobile heath clinic with the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health and the Latin American Workers' Project.

The worker health project is designed to provide care and collect data about the workers' exposure to asbestos and other toxins.

"We want to see if we get sufficient numbers to try to characterize as a group what they experienced," Markowitz said.

Many fire fighters who raced to save victims are now facing health problems because of the contaminated air at the disaster site. A few hundred are on medical leave or working light duty because of respiratory illness including asthma, persistent cough and diminished lung capacity.

For three weeks starting Monday, the clinic will be open 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. two blocks from the trade center site. Clinic employees will also make sure the workers' respirators fit properly or provide a respirator if needed.

Omar Henriquez, the coordinator of immigrant programs for New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health, said he interviewed workers and found that they were getting $60 for an eight-hour day or $90 for a 12-hour day and that many were not receiving proper training or equipment, such as vacuum cleaners and respirators with highly efficient HEPA filters.

"I found out there were instances when there weren't any masks at all," Henriquez said.

The project is one of several public health initiatives begun in response to the collapse of the twin towers, an unprecedented event that spewed smoke and dust for miles and left emotional scars in New York and beyond.

Researchers at Columbia University's School of Public Health and the Mount Sinai School of Medicine have begun studies of pregnant women who were near the trade center site on Sept. 11 and in the days after.

"We want to get a handle on their exposure to the contaminants that we suspect were in the air that day and their potential risk for health problems in the future," said Dr. Frederica Perera, who is heading the Columbia study.

Asbestos Risks Near Ground Zero May Be Far Greater Than Government Reports

By Andrew Schneider
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
January 13, 2002

To use the URL below to view the original article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch website, you will need to copy the URL into a blank document, then delete the space at the end of each line, and then paste the resulting 1-line URL in your browser.

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/news/D06F5999A373550F
86256B400053EAA9?OpenDocument&highlight=2%2Cschneider%2Casbestos
?opendocument&headline=Asbestos+risks+near+ground+zero+may+be+far+
greater+than+government+reports

Federal and state officials in New York have grossly underestimated or played down the number of people in lower Manhattan who are at risk of being sickened or killed from exposure to asbestos released in the collapse of the World Trade Center.

Evaluations of analyses done by teams of leading asbestos researchers show the increased risk of death to people who live, work or study in homes or offices that have not been properly decontaminated could be as high as one additional cancer death for every 10 people exposed.

These figures come as federal and state officials continue to insist that there is no significant health risk to those living and working near ground zero from the dust of hundreds of thousands of tons of asbestos-containing products used in the floors, walls, ceilings and on the steel of the twin towers.

"The agencies have made it a priority to get the lower Manhattan financial and stock markets up and running at any cost. In so doing, they have allowed thousands of people to be exposed to substances that haven't even all been identified, let alone quantified," said Joel Shufro, Executive Director of the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health, which represents more than 250 unions.

Federal and state officials are not disputing that the dust is making thousands of New Yorkers ill. For months people have been plagued with effects such as severe sinus infections, asthma attacks, nausea, headaches, rashes, beet-red eyes, and coughing that can bring a person to his knees. This is caused by the pulverized concrete, fiberglass, metal and other debris in the toxic dust storm and smoke that inundated the city after the towers crumbled Sept. 11.

These symptoms are not indications of asbestos exposure. It takes 18 to 30 years for asbestos to exert its deadly effects. This latency period - the time from when a fiber is impaled in lung tissue to when a person knows they are ill or dying - makes it easy to ignore or overlook the hazards of asbestos.

"Those (asbestos) exposures may have grave adverse public health consequences, but we will not know exactly what those consequences are for decades," Shufro said.

Help rushes in with new and old technology

When the World Trade Center went down, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration rushed teams to the site. Over the months, they gathered thousands of samples but used 20-year-old methods for collecting and counting asbestos fibers to assess the health risks from dust that blanketed lower Manhattan. The agencies and their state counterparts said only low levels of asbestos were found outside.

"The public faces little or no danger from asbestos," numerous agency heads echoed.

Civilian scientists and physicians hired by unions, tenant groups, contractors and New York political leaders found just the opposite. Taking hundreds of samples, many inside apartments, offices and condos, these experts used the newest electron microscope technology and fiber counting protocols. They found far more asbestos fibers than did government investigators. These private experts - all regularly used by the government as consultants - found levels in the dwellings that alarmed many assessing the health risk New Yorkers face.

"These eminent asbestos researchers brought state-of-the-art methods to lower Manhattan and the significance of what they found with the new technology is dramatically different than what EPA and New York State reported," said Cate Jenkins, a senior EPA chemist in the agency's hazardous waste division.

"For every asbestos fiber EPA detected, the new methods used by the outside experts found nine," Jenkins said. "This is too important a difference to be ignored if you really care about the health of the public."

Jenkins, a 22-year veteran of the EPA, talked about the asbestos levels that researchers Eric Chatfield and John Kominsky found in apartments and condos near the collapse that had not been cleaned or cleaned improperly.

"If people continue living and working in places that still have dust in the carpets, furniture, drapes and heating and cooling system, these fibers will continue to be resuspended," Jenkins explained. "The elevated risk could be from around one-in-a-thousand extra cancers to maybe as high as one in 10."

Four other federal health experts - two toxicologists, an epidemiologist and physician - from the EPA and the Centers for Disease Control, have studied the data gathered by Chatfield, Kominsky and a team headed by Hugh Granger of HP Environmental in Virginia. They agreed with Jenkins' interpretation of the data.

Officials at EPA headquarters declined repeated requests to comment on these statements.

No one really knows how many, if any, people might be killed by the asbestos. But a study released three weeks ago by EPA investigators on the health risks to vermiculite miners and their families in Libby, Mont., bodes ominously for what New Yorkers may face.

"The concentrations of asbestos in both settled dusts inside homes in Libby is comparable to the settled dusts inside the buildings in lower Manhattan," Jenkins said.

She and others in the agency are questioning why, if Libby is dangerous enough to be declared a Superfund site, is the EPA shrugging off even higher levels in New York.

"It is unfathomable to believe that EPA can stand behind antiquated science when the report on Libby, issued by the same agency, irrefutably documents the validity of the new methods," Jenkins said.

Many federal employees, contract scientists and physicians believe the confusion over how federal agencies are handling asbestos from the collapse is exacerbated by the government's long-fought internal disputes over what kind of asbestos is dangerous and how many fibers of what size it takes to sicken or kill.

Lower Manhattan residents feel abandoned

Nothing can be done about the enormous amount of asbestos and other toxic substances in the choking dust that terrified survivors and rescue workers gulped down as they fled from the collapsing towers.

The dust storm that crashed through Manhattan like a sonic boom on Sept. 11 blew in windows and doors many blocks from ground zero. Air conditioning units on rooftops and in windows sucked pounds of dust into apartments and building ventilation systems.

Some apartments had inches of gray dust covering everything. Most others within blocks of the attack had floors, walls, window coverings and furniture covered in a talclike film.

Those continuing the recovery effort at ground zero have hundreds of environmental and occupational health specialists hovering nearby, trying to keep the workers in the pit safe and diminish future exposure to asbestos and other dangerous material.

But many of the 340,000 or so people who live in the lower part of that island feel they were abandoned and, at the least, fed conflicting information by federal, state and city officials on how to avoid asbestos exposure.

"It's like all of us who live down here really don't matter to anyone in any government. We've pretty much been left to fend for ourselves," said Steve Swaney, who, with his wife, lived in a Battery Park apartment.

The World Trade Center, two blocks away, which once filled his view, has been reduced to a huge hole in the ground. It spews an acrid dusty stench, nothing like the time-honored bouquet of roasting chestnuts which used to permeate lower Manhattan through the fall and winter.

The Swaneys' patio doors were open when the buildings collapsed. Their one-bedroom apartment, like many of the 238 others in their 15-story building, was covered in dust.

Those with insurance paid as much as $10,000 to have professional asbestos crews clean their apartments, Swaney said.

The landlord cleaned the rest.

"But there was still dust all over the place, and we couldn't get anyone to tell us how much asbestos was still there," he said.

The tenants paid to have the dust analyzed, and the dust contained levels of asbestos above 1 percent, which the EPA considers unsafe.

The landlord sent in another cleaning crew.

On the streets nine floors below Swaney's balcony, men in air tanks and moon suits slowly waddle behind and beside huge gushing mobile water tanks and purring SuperVac vacuum trucks.

The bizarre ballet was precisely orchestrated to wash out, suck up and capture the most minute pocket of dust from Battery Park's promenade, playgrounds, sidewalks, and even children's sand boxes in the park.

Swaney, a 58-year-old computer consultant, has a sick wife. Her ribs are sore from hours of gagging, coughing and choking from the same dust that EPA crews are so carefully removing on the street out front.

He wonders why the crews working on the street are so meticulous, using special micro-filter vacuums, wearing special protective clothing and respirators. But in his apartment, the three-person pickup band of day laborers the landlord hired used brooms, dustpans, old mops and buckets and everyday vacuum cleaners.

"They didn't even have masks," he said. "My wife had to find masks for them."

He wondered what government officials knew about the dust that they weren't sharing.

"To those of us in the middle of this, it's obvious that there is a conscious effort not to put out the facts," said Swaney, who heads his building's tenant association. "I don't know whether it's the White House, or the governor's mansion or the mayor's office, but someone doesn't want this truth about asbestos getting out.

"They don't want to close down lower Manhattan. We're talking about a lot of money, a lot of jobs. That's OK, but is it safe to live here?"

Swaney and his wife moved out of lower Manhattan.

"Christie Whitman says it fine to return to our homes," he noted. "She's the EPA boss. Should we not believe her when she says our apartments are safe? But how does she know?"

That's a question that many are starting to ask.

EPA says it can't test apartments and offices

None of the thousands of tests that the EPA cites as showing the asbestos risk is minimal were taken inside the buildings and rooms where people live, study and work.

"That's just not our job, and we have no policies or procedures for doing that type of testing," said Bonnie Bellow, spokeswoman for the EPA's region II office in New York. "We've never had to worry about asbestos in houses before."

Many people within the government said that when the buildings collapsed, the agencies grabbed the only "how to handle asbestos" book they had off the shelves. But those regulations haven't been updated for years, regardless of the need repeatedly demonstrated by field investigators for a half-dozen different agencies.

"To ignore testing the indoor environment for asbestos defies logic," said Granger, the Virginia toxicologist. "Outside, the normal air movement dilutes and dissipates asbestos concentration. Inside, the fibers are trapped by four walls. They constantly get resuspended just by occupants walking on carpets, closing the drapes or having the air conditioner or heat go on or off."

Bad information from the start

Politicians, administrators of state and federal agencies and their spokespeople gave conflicting information and suggestions, sometimes in the same statement or news conference. Newspaper, radio, television and Web sites were filled with questionable guidance.

In October, the EPA and OSHA were still putting out information to residents saying that if dust from the collapsed towers was in homes or offices "people should be sure to clean thoroughly and avoid inhaling dust while doing so."

State and federal agencies warned about the toxic material and asbestos in the dust and quickly told people to wear masks, if they found dust when they returned to their homes.

Plain paper or cloth masks were worn by more then 1,800 volunteers from the Southern Baptist Church, the Salvation Army and other groups who cleaned hundreds of apartments.

No one told them that of the 29 most available brands of masks on the market, only one contained filters fine enough to stop the microscopic asbestos fiber.

The EPA and the state and city told residents who knew they had asbestos to "mop it up, wash it down and throw it away" and "avoid inhaling dust while doing so."

But throughout the nation, asbestos removal is intensely regulated by state and federal law. The laws, which carry steep penalties, demand that the cleanup be done by personnel wearing special respirators, full head-to-toe protective suits and gloves, and the waste disposed of only at authorized sites.

The EPA and New York health departments point fingers at each other as the source of the misleading information.

Bellow admits that the EPA's web site linked to incorrect guidance for office and apartment landlords and renters.

"It wasn't our information. It was from the (New York) state or city health department, and we removed it from our Web site last month," the spokeswoman said. "Obviously, our asbestos program was overwhelmed by a catastrophe of this magnitude. We are usually only concerned with asbestos from renovations and building demolition."

However, a check of EPA's web yesterday found the same links were being used.

Old medical ideas cloud asbestos decisions

When it came to the bureaucrats issuing medical information on asbestos, the contradictions were even more glaring.

The New York City Department of Health told residents that "asbestos-related lung disease results only from intense asbestos exposure experienced over a period of many years, primarily as a consequence of occupational exposures."

But the EPA's own experts as well as physicians at the CDC and private research centers have shown that a "single burst, heavy dose" of asbestos could be enough to cause the lethal disease. Last month, the EPA issued a report documenting that casual exposure to asbestos has caused disease.

The EPA, OSHA and New York health and environmental experts repeatedly told the public that the health risks are minimal because the asbestos fibers are so small.

Asbestos fibers are measured in microns, which are about 1/100th the thickness of a human hair. They are so tiny that they will stay aloft for hours or days. The collapse of the towers exacerbated the problem by pulverizing the fibers into even smaller, thinner fragments.

Years ago, asbestos researchers believed fibers larger than 5 microns long presented the only health hazard which would produce asbestosis, lung cancer and mesothelioma. This was due, in part, to the fact that the microscopes of that period couldn't easily detect fibers that small. Also, government asbestos regulations, which have always been heavily influenced by the asbestos industry, discounted the toxicity of short fibers.
"I don't even know whether EPA knows the very small fibers are there, but to say that small fibers are not dangerous defies logic," Granger said. "In most of the autopsies on asbestos victims, the predominance of fibers we see are small, are under five microns."

All the agencies play down the importance of test results that found dust samples that contained less then 1 percent asbestos.

"They keep calling it a trace. This implies to the public that there is no hazard from it," said Dr. Jerrold Abraham, director of environmental and occupational pathology at Upstate Medical University in Syracuse.

"If you're talking about pure chrysotile asbestos, there are 10 billion or more fibers per gram, or about a fifth of a teaspoon.

"Their whole measuring and reporting system needs to be made more honest."

The EPA's Bellow tried to answer the criticism.

"We didn't see ourselves as the primary source for information on what the health implications were. We're not a health agency," she said, adding that these are national issues that EPA headquarters should be addressing.

But headquarters has repeatedly declined to discuss these policy issues, even though before Sept. 11, the EPA was in turmoil over how to handle several asbestos problems throughout the nation.

Granger, who has studied the importance of risk communication, said the ball was dropped.

"We are talking about the very lives of these people and those they love," he said. "Because of the misleading or completely inaccurate government information and guidance, people don't know where to turn or whom to trust."

Meanwhile, starting Monday, NYCOSH, the unions' medical group, will make doctors and proper asbestos safety equipment available to the day laborers who are cleaning many buildings and apartments.

Later in the week, the city health department is expected to release its findings on the safety of apartment residents. Those who have seen the draft predict that the report will do little to end the controversy on the risk New Yorkers face from asbestos.

Migrants Did Dirty & Dangerous Work: WTC cleanup crews not protected, often not paid

By Albor Ruiz and Greg Gittrich
Daily News
January 11, 2002

http://www.qc.edu/CBNS/DailyNewsWTCcleanup.pdf

Contractors have plucked up to 600 illegal immigrants off street corners to scrub potentially toxic dust out of buildings near the World Trade Center — without giving the workers safety training or protective equipment, the Daily News has learned.

State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's office is investigating labor law violations allegedly committed by several cleaning companies near the disaster site, a spokeswoman told The News yesterday.

A News investigation uncovered complaints from mostly Spanish-speaking immigrants and labor rights groups who said the questionable hiring practices and poor working conditions were rampant in the days after the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

Among their charges:

• The immigrants said they were offered $7.50 an hour — but many said they were stiffed after being sent on wild goose chases for their pay.
  
• Virtually none of the workers was warned about potential health risks.
  
• Most were not given respirators or other safety equipment — and some who brought their own said bosses would snatch them away for themselves.

"The most outrageous thing is that these are the workers who enabled lower Manhattan to go back to work," said Luna Yasui, a lawyer at the National Employment Law Project, which has been examining the alleged abuses.

"These workers literally put their lives on the line," Yasui said. "I spoke to hundreds of them, and not one was told that the work they were doing could be dangerous to their health."

As the demand for cleanup workers near Ground Zero has decreased, day laborers have been pushed to the sidelines by trained asbestos workers.

While the day laborers' presence has faded, many said their respiratory ailments have not.

'Coughing and Nosebleeds'

"I've had fevers, and I have a lot of coughing and nosebleeds," said Maria Theresa Pardo, an undocumented worker who cleaned apartments on Chambers and Fulton Sts.

Nailing down exactly who hired the laborers is tricky because of the use of middlemen and the lack of a paper trail.

Most of the workers who were paid said they got cash at the end of each week. Some said they were told to go to storefronts in Queens, where anonymous men or women would pay them — or didn't show.

"There are people who didn't even know who their bosses were," said Omar Henriquez, a project manager for the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health, a coalition of 200 unions and more than 400 doctors, lawyers and safety activists.

Undocumented workers began gathering along lower Broadway within a week of the attacks. Henriquez and other advocates said there were 400 to 600 of them.

Jostling for position on the sidewalks, the laborers would swarm when potential employers approached.

Standard agreements were $60 for eight hours and $90 for 12 hours — or $7.50 an hour. The jobs ranged from a quick mopping of a deli floor to weeks of cleaning apartment carpets.

"Not many were using masks, and they were getting sick," said Luz, 45, a worker who asked that her last name not be printed. "The Red Cross gave me my mask. There was dust everywhere in the rooms."

Toxic Substances in Dust

The dust likely contained low concentrations of toxic substances, including asbestos, fiberglass and lead, said David Newman, an industrial hygienist for the committee.

When asbestos levels in dust are above a 1% "action level," the federal Clean Air Act requires strict removal and cleanup procedures to be followed, and trained asbestos cleanup companies to be used.

Any fine dust, even if it does not contain toxic substances, can cause respiratory irritation and trigger asthma.

Groups such as the Latin American Workers Project and the Tepeyac Association are helping the workers find jobs and health care. A mobile medical unit will open Monday at Broadway and Barclay St. to provide free exams for the workers.

The project is a collaboration of the Latin American Workers' Project, the Center for the Biology of Natural Systems at Queens College and the committee. "I want to get better," said a 43-year-old laborer from Ecuador. "I have a bad cough, and I want to get better."

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