EPA Testing to Begin Despite Panel Critics

By Etta Sanders


The methods and scope of an Environmental Protection Agency plan to test Downtown apartments for remaining World Trade Center contaminants was widely denounced last month by the agency's own expert panel, elected officials and environmental activists.

In 2002 and 2003, thousands of apartments were tested and/or cleaned, including this one on Warren St. Photo: Carl Glassman

"We are back to a situation where the EPA appears to want to spend the money and walk away from the problem," said Morton Lippman, a professor of environmental medicine at New York University and a member of the EPA WTC Expert Technical Review Panel. "If this is what is proposed, nothing should be done."

In spite of the criticism, which included denunciations by Sen. Hillary Clinton and Rep. Jerrold Nadler, the agency said it will go ahead with its $7 million plan, first announced on Nov. 29 (see story in December 2005 Trib), to test Manhattan apartments below Canal Street for lead, asbestos, man-made vitreous fiber, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.

If any of them exceed the government's benchmark levels, the agency will do a free cleaning. An outreach plan to inform community residents is expected to begin soon.


"We think this is a scientifically defensible program notwithstanding the comments of some of the panel members," said the panel's chairman, Timothy Oppelt, director of the EPA'S National Homeland Security Research Center.

But some panel members said the plan was so flawed that they could not advise residents to participate. They criticized the testing methods and the exclusion of commercial spaces and parts of Brooklyn and Manhattan that were reached by the plume of acrid smoke. "I can't in good conscience tell anyone they should be part of this," said Mark Wilkenfeld, an environmental and occupational physician at Columbia University.

Catherine McVay Hughes, the panel's community liaison, agreed. As an example of a flawed testing method, she noted that contaminants in an HVAC system could be missed because only frequently-cleaned common areas in buildings would be tested.

In the panel's contentious final meeting on Dec. 12, members told Oppelt that after 21 months of work, their input was ignored by the EPA. "I really feel like I've wasted my time the past two years on this panel," said Jeanne Stellman, professor at the Columbia University School of Public Health.

One of the main areas of contention was whether it is possible to distinguish WTC dust from dust that contains contaminants from other sources. The expert panel had said that a so-called "signature dust" could be identified by the presence of slag wool from the trade center, and recommended a plan for testing 150 locations in Brooklyn and Manhattan to determine how far the dust had traveled. But a peer review panel rejected the slag-wool marker, leaving the EPA without a way to pinpoint contamination by WTC dust.

Oppelt said that the decision may be revisited and left an opening for future "signature dust" testing, but not linked to any cleanup plan.


Asked after the meeting why the testing area would be limited to Manhattan below Canal Street, Oppelt said, "We decided it was important to focus the resources we have on the areas that were clearly heavily contaminated outdoors and where the prospect of indoor contamination is highest."