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000010956feb12.story?coll=la%2Dheadlines%2Dnation
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Toxic clouds billowed above twin tower site
Expert says particles were worst ever measured
David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor
Tuesday, February 12, 2002
�2002 San Francisco Chronicle
URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-
bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2002/02/12/MNPARTICLES12.DTL
The terrorist attack that destroyed the World Trade Center last
September exposed New Yorkers downwind to the most hazardous plumes
of extremely fine chemical and metal particles that experts have ever
seen, University of California scientists reported yesterday.
As the twin towers collapsed into flaming rubble after they were hit
by two hijacked airliners, wind gusts continued sending up thick
clouds containing millions of the particles for weeks afterward.
The unprecedented pollution was far worse than that from the Kuwait
oil field fires set by Iraq during the Gulf War or the soot-filled
air from Beijing's wintertime coal- burning furnaces, said UC Davis
researcher Thomas Cahill, a specialist in analyzing airborne
particles who led a team investigating the catastrophe's consequences
for the Department of Energy.
"Those particles downwind over New York were like nothing we've ever
seen anywhere," Cahill said in an interview yesterday as he and his
colleagues released a preliminary report on the team's findings.
Cahill heads the UC Davis DELTA Group -- the term stands for
Detection and Evaluation of Long- Range Transport of Aerosols -- that
has analyzed particulate hazards all over the world.
The particles "were really weird: They came in great big spikes when
the wind blew, then they'd die down, then spike up again. And the
particles that aren't soluble -- like silicon from burning glass --
are the ones that can lodge in your lungs and irritate them badly --
and stay there," he said.
Emphysema, asthma, other lung diseases and even heart disease are
among the health problems that can be aggravated or caused by
pollutant particles that lodge in the lungs. Workers at the site have
complained of a variety of maladies.
To pin down the nature of the particles from the burning twin towers
rubble,
Cahill recruited researchers from UC's $100-million Advanced Light
Source facility at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory for
precise X-ray images of the tiny particles, and UC's Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory for that facility's ion microscopy and
proton scattering devices.
Last Oct. 2, the team mounted a particle-collecting air monitor on a
rooftop at 201 Varick St. in Manhattan, a mile north-northeast of the
trade center complex, and samples were shipped back regularly to UC
Davis through the end of December. Yesterday's report covered the
period through the end of October.
Although standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency for
analyzing particle size, their density, their composition and their
hazards differ somewhat from the DELTA Group's, the differences are
largely technical.
Cahill's team collected particle samples ranging in size from
"coarse," or 12 microns -- about the diameter of the period at the
end of this sentence -- to "ultra-fine," or less than a tenth of that
diameter. Their weight was measured in "nanograms," or billionths of
a gram.
"The ruins of the twin towers became a screamingly hot chemical
reactor," Cahill said, "and for weeks, even as the flames eased and
the core of the towers cooled below 1,200 degrees, the steel was
still glowing red at 800 degrees by November, and clouds of particles
were still rising.
"Those particles simply shouldn't have been there, because it rained
heavily for six days in September after the attack, and the coarse
particles should have settled down. But they were probably still
being generated from the heat in the pile of debris."
Among the fine and very fine metal particles rising from the rubble,
for which the EPA has set no health guidelines, are iron from the
girders, titanium from the concrete, vanadium and nickel -- possibly
associated with burning fuel oil -- as well as copper and zinc.
Lead particles, most likely from the thousands of computers in the
towers, and mercury from the building's electrical circuits were
detected in low concentrations, Cahill reported.
The analysts found relatively few pulverized asbestos fibers from the
debris, he said -- probably because the twin towers contractors
stopped using asbestos half-way through construction of the 110-story
buildings, which were completed in 1972 and 1973.
By now, Cahill said, the evidence indicates that the air over New
York City is no longer affected by the World Trade Center disaster
because the fires are out and the debris pile has cooled.
California state and local officials already had been surveying
members of the state's Urban Search and Rescue Teams after receiving
reports of health problems among some of those members after they
returned from New York.
According to Menlo Park Fire Protection District Capt. Harold
Schapelhouman,
of the 67 team members who went to New York, 70 percent had reported
being sick upon their return. Of those, 42 percent reported a chronic
cough, and 3 percent reported pneumonia.
The team is now conducting more in-depth surveys, and Schapelhouman
says he is working with FEMA to coordinate a nationwide health survey
of rescue team members.
Schapelhouman says he plans to send information about the UC Davis
study to his own affected team members as well as to other teams
across the country. "All these guys want is to be kept in the loop. .
. . They want to know what it is," he said. "They would all do it
again, but . . . they took the chances, and they deserve to know the
truth."
Chronicle staff writer Matthew B. Stannard contributed to this
report. / E-mail David Perlman at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
�2002 San Francisco Chronicle Page A - 1
End<{{{
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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-
000010956feb12.story?coll=la%2Dheadlines%2Dnation
RESPONSE TO TERROR
Danger Found in Trade Center Air
Science: Researchers discover extremely high levels of pollution. 'Situations like
this just don't exist' in most of the world, project leader says.
By GARY POLAKOVIC
TIMES STAFF WRITER
February 12 2002
Smoke and dust from the destroyed World Trade Center buildings exposed residents of
lower Manhattan to weeks of some of the highest levels of air pollution ever studied,
a team of California scientists reported Monday.
Carefully analyzed samples of air collected about a mile from the World Trade Center
site in the weeks after the attacks show extraordinarily elevated levels of tiny
particles laced with soot and metals, the researchers s
aid. Fires smoldering in the rubble turned glass, concrete and computer equipment into
an aerosol fallout that was far more intense and persistent than expected, they added.
"No one has ever reported a situation like the one we see in the World Trade Center
samples," said Tom Cahill, an atmospheric physicist at UC Davis and the leader of the
project. "In New York City and in most of the world
, situations like this just don't exist." Cahill and his colleagues report finding
almost no asbestos and very little lead in the air--two pieces of good news for
worried New Yorkers. They also found that the pollution le
vels had dropped sharply by late October. But those reassurances for many in the city
may be outweighed by the intensity of the pollution the researchers did find: weeks of
very high levels of sulfur and sulfuric acid, ti
tanium, nickel and minute particles of silicon from pulverized glass and concrete.
For many of the pollutants, the exact health effects are unknown. But recent studies
have shown that tiny particles can penetrate lungs and be absorbed into the
bloodstream. Exposure to particles has been linked to elevat
ed rates of cancer, heart attacks and asthma.
The condition of New York's air in the aftermath of the trade center disaster has been
the subject of heated political debate for months. The federal Environmental
Protection Agency has said their studies showed air in Ma
nhattan was safe. But many New York residents and politicians and the EPA's own
ombudsman have suggested the agency has improperly downplayed health concerns.
Independent Study Widens Debate
The new research represents the first publicly available assessment from independent,
university-based researchers. The findings quickly exacerbated an already irate debate.
"We now know enough to be alarmed and outraged at the federal government's response to
the environmental impact of 9/11," said Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), whose district
covers much of the affected area.
"The EPA has created a full-scale crisis of public confidence," Nadler said at a
Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing called to examine the
government's response to New York's pollution exposure.
EPA spokeswoman Bonnie Bellow declined to comment on the findings, saying agency
officials had not been able to read and review the research.
"We recognize people have concerns, and we are concerned about people's safety,"
Bellow said.
Cahill, however, said the EPA failed to identify more air pollutants over a wider area
because the techniques and equipment it used do not capture the tiniest particles,
which the agency's own scientists have acknowledged
are the most hazardous.
"The EPA could have identified these particles within a couple of days if they looked
for them, but they didn't," Cahill said.
The researchers from California, who have extensive experience analyzing airborne
pollutants, collected air samples in Manhattan at the request of the Energy Department
from Oct. 2 to mid-December. Rainstorms washed out m
ost of the large particles, they found. But large masses of tiny specks remained
airborne until the fires were extinguished in late October.
Scientists collected particles continuously for three months and used seven tests to
sort them based on color, size and chemical composition. They scanned particles with
lasers and electron microscopes at Davis and the En
ergy Department's Lawrence Berkeley and Lawrence Livermore national laboratories to
determine their chemical compositions.
The results showed that the level of particles in New York's air outdid even the worst
pollution from the Kuwait oil field fires.
The main problem was tiny particles, which can penetrate deep into the lungs and enter
the bloodstream. New York particle pollution concentrations were 50 times greater than
those found in California's San Joaquin Valley,
one of the smoggiest places in the nation, Cahill and his associates reported.
Harmful Particles Slip Indoors
While the widespread pollution from the fires has ended, scientists who conducted the
research say danger has in many cases moved indoors.
The particles, many of them more than 100 times smaller than the diameter of a human
hair, easily slip past windows and doors and collect on drapes and carpets. Confined
inside apartments or offices, they can pose a long-
term health risk unless properly removed.
"These particles are ultra-fine and can suspend in the air for a long, long time. They
behave more like a gas and are hard to remove," Cahill said.
While the exact health risk is uncertain, many New York residents have refused to move
back into apartments or offices. Parents have refused to send children back to schools
near the trade center site until they are convi
nced the air is safe.
The researchers endorsed recommendations from the New York City
Health Department that New Yorkers wipe all interior surfaces with
wet cloths and avoid vacuuming or sweeping.
"I would be extremely careful moving into indoor space or else you
will re-suspend these particles for a very long time," Cahill said.
If you want other stories on this topic, search the Archives at
latimes.com/archives. For information about reprinting this article,
go to www.lats.com/rights.
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