Robert Gulack, a senior attorney with the Securities and Exchange Commission, was in his office in the 7 World Trade Center building when terrorists hijacked the two commercial airlines and flew them into the Twin Towers. Gulack got out before his building collapsed. Just over a month later, he returned to the neighborhood to work in the SEC’s new offices in the Woolworth building, a few blocks from the World Trade Center site, after being told it was safe. But two days later, he developed asthma; then he fell ill with bronchitis and pneumonia. Testing showed abnormally high levels of asbestos in his office building and on the outside walls. By the time he was granted federal compensation last month for “an upper respiratory inflammation due to fumes and vapors” at the building, an X-ray showed he had already developed permanent scars on his lungs.
Now Gilroy and Gulack are serving as plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit against the EPA, claiming that the agency exposed them and thousands of others to health risks by prematurely announcing that it was safe to return to the buildings located near the World Trade Center site or in the path of the plume of dust that escaped from the rubble. “The EPA absolutely misled and misrepresented the conditions to people and lulled them into a false sense of security. And some of the information that was endorsed by the EPA has been extremely harmful to people,” says Sherrie Savett, one of the lawyers who filed the suit. “Part of the relief we asked for is dictated under legal doctrine. We are looking for them to do their job.”
The 113-page lawsuit, which was filed in Manhattan Federal Court on March 10, alleges that residents, workers and students were allowed to return to the area before proper testing and cleaning had been completed. It also accuses the agency of using inadequate asbestos testing measures, distributing ineffective–and in some cases, harmful–self-cleaning instructions to residents, and failing to provide professional cleaning for contaminated offices and residences. The filing lists 12 plaintiffs, including Gulack, and Gilroy and his daughter, and asks for unspecified damages, reimbursement for cleaning expenses and the establishment of a medical monitoring program for those who were exposed to the contaminated dust to examine both the physical and emotional effects.
The agency would not comment specifically on the lawsuit, but in a statement released Thursday, EPA regional administrator Jane Kenny said, “The suggestion that the EPA has not done everything within its power to protect people’s health in the face of this terrible disaster is preposterous.”
The agency released a report last May that concluded that the cleaning methods used in its indoor cleanup program and recommended to residents who cleaned their own places were “extremely effective.” Last week, the EPA announced the formation of a panel of experts chaired by EPA science advisor Dr. Paul Gilman, which will review the EPA’s indoor air clean-up efforts and determine any remaining risks to residents and workers in the area. In her statement, Kenny said the panel–“not a lawsuit”–will help residents and workers in lower Manhattan gain more certainly about the health risks.
The EPA has acknowledged that assurances it gave in the weeks after the attacks–that the air in downtown Manhattan was safe to breathe–may have been misleading. But whether or not the EPA is to blame for encouraging residents to come back to the area before it was safe, there is mounting evidence that many who returned to homes, offices or schools near the site have suffered lasting health problems from exposure to contaminants released from the collapsed buildings.
More than 25,000 people have enrolled in the World Trade Center Health Registry since it was established last September to track the health effects on those involved in the rescue and recover efforts at Ground Zero, those who were at the site on the day of the attacks, or who lived, worked or went to school in the immediate area.
And recently, a study published in this month’s Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology found that children with asthma who lived within five miles of the World Trade Center site saw a substantial increase in the severity of their symptoms in the year following the attacks. The retrospective study of Chinese-American children who received medical care at the Charles B. Wang Community Health Center in Chinatown, located about one-and-a-half miles from the World Trade Center, found that in the year before the September 11 attacks, 306 pediatric asthma patients made 1,044 visits to the health clinic. In the year after, 510 pediatric patients made 1,554 asthma-related visits. The researchers noted a similar increase among adult asthmatics.
The WTC Worker and Volunteer Medical Screening Program has seen more than 12,000 people, many of whom have developed respiratory illness from their exposure to the hazardous dust, smoke and debris from the World Trade Center site, says Dr. Stephen Levin, co-director of the Mount Sinai-Selikoff Center for Occupational and Environmental Medicine, which has screened at least two-thirds of those participants.
An initial study released last year of 250 rescue workers and responders participating in the screening program found that about half had experienced persistent respiratory symptoms and/or mental health problems 10 months to a year after the terrorist attacks. Levin says even among more recent enrollees, 40 percent or more have persistent upper airway symptoms like a chronic runny nose and sinus problems, while at least 30 percent are experiencing difficulty breathing and other respiratory problems–more than two years after the attacks. About 60 percent are also experiencing enough “psychological distress” to merit further treatment, he adds.
“This is a serious general public health problem,” says Levin. “There were lots of things that could have been done–making sure people were wearing the proper respiratory equipment, which many were not, and making sure everyone was checked regularly for their health… I think there was certain amount of denial on the part of some levels of government–there were other issues like getting Wall Street going again–and we paid a certain price for that.”
Lawyer Michael A. Barasch, whose firm is representing about 1,100 firefighters, says he fears the lasting damage from the hazardous dust particles will be far worse than many anticipate. “I really do fear this is going to be the silent killer that ends up taking more lives than we lost on 9/11,” says Barasch, who has met with about a dozen workers who’ve come down with different kinds of cancers as well as hundreds of other firefighters who have put in requests for early retirement because of health problems.
“I know they wanted to get Wall Street up and running and prevent a mass panic and mass exodus from lower Manhattan,” says Barasch. “But what they did by telling people it was safe to come back was let them feel they could take their masks off and that means a premature death for those who were rushing in and responding.”
The lawyers who filed the class-action lawsuit say they are not seeking punitive damages, but hope this suit will help to raise awareness of the issue and funds for monitoring and treatment of those who were affected by the contaminants. “It’s a terrible shame that this is occurring more than two years after 9/11. Much of the damage may have been done already,” says Bert Blitz, one of the lawyers representing the plaintiffs. “But there are certainly a lot of people that can still be helped.”
