Fallout: The Hidden Environmental Consequences of 9/11

On Sept. 17, 2001, less than one week after the World Trade Center collapse, tens of thousands of office workers returned to their jobs near Ground Zero after receiving the go-ahead from federal and local safety officials.

Federal and city government wanted New York and the rest of the nation, which had been virtually paralyzed in the days after the September 11 terrorist attacks, to return to normal as quickly as possible. President George W. Bush, New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and other leaders needed to show the world that the United States would not be intimidated by terrorism.

There was another more pressing imperative at work, however: The longer that Wall Street and the nation's chief financial markets remained closed, the greater the likelihood of a stock meltdown and perhaps long-lasting damage to investors and the U.S. economy.

To achieve a rapid return to normalcy the government needed to persuade a jittery public that it was safe for civilians to reoccupy the scores of commercial skyscrapers and residential buildings in Lower Manhattan. With uncontrolled fires still raging in the debris of the towers, with thousands of bodies still buried in the rubble, and with the trauma of the terrorist attacks still fresh in their minds, many New Yorkers were understandably reluctant to return so quickly. Nonetheless, Wall Street and much of Lower Manhattan reopened for business on September 17.

The nation's top environmental official, Christie Todd Whitman, head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), who had given her preliminary endorsement of the reopening a few days earlier, issued an official statement of approval on Sept. 18. "I am glad to reassure the people of New York ... that their air is safe to breathe and their water is safe to drink," she announced.

Similar assurances were given by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, and the New York City Department of Health. Even as they made those statements, however, officials knew that their own preliminary environmental tests of the air, dust and water in Lower Manhattan had revealed some troubling readings.

The tests found that considerable amounts of asbestos and heavy metals had been detected in dust samples throughout the area. Within a few weeks, officials would also receive the first results of aerial surveys conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) pinpointing the precise locations of hundreds of asbestos "hot spots" on rooftops, buildings and streets throughout the area, including some that were half a mile or more from the collapsed buildings. Before the end of September, the USGS would also report that dust on the ground and in the air downtown was highly caustic, with alkalinity levels that made it as potent as household drain cleaner. Health officials withheld this information from the public for several months.

Given the scale and unprecedented nature of the World Trade Center catastrophe, it is understandable that during the first few days after Sept. 11, everyone, including public health officials, was focused on guarding against any further attacks and on rescuing the thousands of victims buried beneath the rubble. Surely, no American city has ever confronted a calamity of this scale, nor has any nation faced the simultaneous release of such a complex array of toxic substances into a densely populated downtown area.

Despite their initial safety assurances on Sept. 18, officials were scampering to compile a comprehensive inventory of what contaminants or hazardous materials had been stored inside the mammoth Trade Center complex before the attacks. They needed the information to know what materials were feeding the dozens of fires burning at temperatures as high as 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit and persisting despite all efforts to extinguish them.