The Ghost of Asbestos Still Haunts Manhattan

A lot of the news on the eighth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks made reference to asbestos and other pollutants that were released into the air in Manhattan on that day. I wrote extensively about it here.

The issue was essentially this: the Environmental Protection Agency, under direction from White House staffers, downplayed the potential health effects of high levels of asbestos and other chemicals released when the Twin Towers were destroyed. One can only speculate as to why this happened. It may have been as simple as not wanting to send the general population of New York City into a panic. But the result was companies such as W.R. Grace & Co. using the EPA’s lowered standards in Manhattan to justify lowered standards elsewhere, including in Libby, Montana.

In early 2002, for example, Grace used the Manhattan precedents to fight an emergency health declaration in Libby, which would have theoretically helped the EPA remove Grace’s Zonolite Attic Insulation, which was contaminated by Libby tremolite asbestos, from attics in that town. It would have also sent out a warning about the product nationwide, where it was used in millions of homes.

William M. Corcoran, vice president of Grace, sent a letter to then EPA head Christine Todd Whitman, from which the following quotes are excerpted:

The purpose of this letter is to continue Grace’s dialogue with EPA regarding [Zonolite]… Contrasted to Region 8’s [the EPA region governing Libby] disregard of established norms, EPA’s pronouncements and activities regarding the World Trade Center collapse reaffirm those norms. Thus, EPA’s website reiterates that:

- EPA is using the 1% definition of an asbestos-containing material in evaluating dust and bulk samples.

- Air samples are the accurate measure of actual exposure potential, whereas the presence of asbestos in dust is not necessarily a significant health hazard.

- Asbestos exposure becomes a health concern when high concentrations of asbestos fibers are inhaled over a long period of time.

We believe that sound science dictates that the same peer reviewed methodologies for assessing risks at the WTC should be applied across the board, including in Libby, Montana.

The emergency health declaration was ultimately shut down in 2002, and finally approved in June of this year, although it did not actually provide any new money to Libby, nor did it ever mention Zonolite or W.R. Grace. (Read more here). In 2004, the EPA officially declared that the 1 percent rule Corcoran referenced in his letter was not protective of health.

Of course, many of the people who were at Ground Zero were hurt by the EPA’s failure to warn them of the chemicals. Columinist Marie Cocco writes a column this week that captures a lot of the ongoing health problems 9/11 responders face. The fact, I believe, that still needs to be faced is that the attacks on 9/11/2001 are still having a rippling effect on people who were in the vicinity that day. The planes and the towers in essence became a dirty bomb, spreading dangers pollutants across a major city, whose population was never properly warned. The effects rippled all the way across the country, to Libby, and are still being felt.

by Paul Peters