In the weeks preceding the second anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks, a federal report charged the Environmental Protection Agency with covering up the dangers to workers and residents near Ground Zero.

Another report, made public in September 2003 by a team of US scientists who studied air contamination in the area after the attacks, confirmed that the debris-laden air was indeed hazardous.

"The debris pile acted like a chemical factory," according to University of California at Davis professor Thomas Cahill, who co-authored the academic study. "It cooked together the components of the buildings and their contents, including enormous numbers of computers, and gave off gases of toxic metals, acids, and organics for at least six weeks."

In late August 2003, the EPA's Inspector General's office released a report that roundly criticized the agency's handling of the World Trade Center disaster. Among other things, the report charges that the agency misrepresented the danger to the public from the toxic debris.

The EPA's initial press releases on air quality near Ground Zero, it said, were first screened by the White House Council on Environmental Quality. The agency then bowed to White House pressure to downplay the potential dangers by adding "reassuring comments and deleting cautionary ones" from early press releases, according to the report.

"For the general public, the EPA's overriding message was that there was no significant threat to human health," asserts the Inspector General's report -- although, it adds, the data did not support this message.

The EPA also misled anxious residents in thinking that they could safely clean the hazardous dust from the debris from their homes and buildings, according to the federal report. It points to two press releases in particular, sent out in September and October 2001. The agency assured residents and business owners that "they could clean their own spaces if they used 'appropriate' vacuum filters, and followed 'recommended' and 'proper' procedures" -- without defining what those terms meant.

According to the Inspector General's report, those instructions were wrong: They should have recommended that residents and business owners obtain professional cleaning. Partly as a result of such press releases, the report added, many workers cleaning homes did not wear respirators and use professional cleaning equipment.

The delays in a government-organized cleanup "resulted in unnecessary exposure to asbestos and other contaminants," according to the report.

EPA Acting Administrator Marianne Horinko called the EPA Inspector General Nikki Tinsley's report "a mystery." She further charged that the report was "divorced from the reality of 9/11, so oblivious to the chaos, fear, and uncertainty that defined those early days at Ground Zero."

At the same time that the EPA was telling the public that there were no risks to health, a team of academic scientists was collecting thousands of air samples from the thickened black smoke that blanketed lower Manhattan after the World Trade Center collapse.

The condition of the air would have been "brutal" to the lungs of those working without protective respirators at Ground Zero and only "slightly less so" for workers and residents in buildings in the immediate area, according to UC Davis's Cahill, a professor emeritus of physics and an atmospheric scientist. Cahill presented his team's findings at an American Chemical Society Meeting in New York on September 10, 2003.

From air samples, Cahill and his researchers were able to determine how small the particles were, what they were made of and how abundant each particle was at any given time. The very fine particles or aerosols included metals, sulfuric acid, and silicon. Because they're very fine particles, they can more easily be breathed in, especially if someone is not wearing a protective respirator.

The aerosols identified by Cahill's team have specific ways of harming health. Metals, for example, interfere with lung chemistry; sulfuric acid attacks cilia and lung cells; and very fine glass particles travel through the lungs to the bloodstream and heart. In addition, many components of high-temperature organic matter are known to be carcinogenic, according to Cahill.

In May 2002, more than eight months after the World Trade Center disaster, the EPA finally announced to residents and building owners in lower Manhattan that they could apply for testing and professional cleaning of their buildings.

But according to EPA scientist Cate Jenkins, the federal agency is still not going far enough in testing and cleaning buildings so that they're safe. "The cleaning that they're doing now is rudimentary. It's not effective," Jenkins told Consumer Health Interactive in an exclusive interview.

A September 3, 2003 memo that Jenkins sent to US Rep. Gerrold Nadler (D-New York) at his request includes an example of a botched clean-up at 114 Liberty St., just across the street from Ground Zero. The report asserts that the contractor working for the EPA and the New York City Department of Environmental Protection "did not remove all visible dust even after two cleaning events."

Frustrated residents hired their own consultant to analyze the remaining dust. The results, according to Jenkin's report, "demonstrated high levels of asbestos." The EPA, however, maintained that its own test results indicated "all the primary clearance levels were achieved."

Illnesses from exposure to the smoke and debris at Ground Zero have been well-documented. In the first six months following 9/11, for example, 3 to 8 percent of the firefighters who were at Ground Zero within two days after the collapse suffered from coughing so severe that they required a medical leave, according to a recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine.

In addition, at least a quarter of the 10,800-strong New York City-based rescue force reported "cough and shortness of breath on exertion," and medical leaves had increased two-fold, according to congressional testimony by the Chief Medical Officer of the New York City Fire Department, Dr. Kerry Kelly.

Had the Environmental Protection Agency been more forthcoming about potential health hazards following the attacks on the World Trade Center, an untold number of people who have developed disabling conditions may not have, suggests a physician with Mount Sinai Center for Occupational and Environmental Medicine in New York City.

"My feeling is that many of my patients might have avoided developing disabling conditions had the EPA been clearer in their description of air quality," says Dr. Robin Herbert, a physician and medical co-director of the Mount Sinai center. "We would have changed what we told people early on. We had patients who should not have been working there, who should have been transferred to another area."

Herbert works as the director of Mt. Sinai's WTC Medical Monitoring Program’s Clinical Center and Treatment Program. Since the twin tower tragedy, her center has screened thousands of people who have worked or lived around Ground Zero. They've suffered a host of illnesses, mostly respiratory, some with such severe symptoms that they are no longer able to work. Among the post 9/11 illnesses was asthma that had been reactivated in people "who haven't suffered any symptoms for years," explains Herbert.

Illnesses that have symptoms are at least recognizable and often treatable. The harder question is, will exposures to the WTC air and dust cause illnesses in people years from now? "We have concerns," says Herbert. "We certainly hope that people won't be at risk for cancers or for long-term diseases, but frankly, we don't know."

-- Laurie Udesky is an award-winning San Francisco-based journalist and a frequent contributor to Consumer Health Interactive.

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First published September 12, 2003
Last updated February 19, 2008
Copyright © 2003 Consumer Health Interactive