| Title Page Previous Next Contents | Part 2. The day after: How officials responded >Immediate environmental health issues |
In
the days immediately following the attack on the World Trade Center, just
getting a handle on the scope and scale of the environmental health issues at
hand in New York City was a huge challenge.
“This was big – everything you could think of
relative to environmental health--air quality, water quality, hazardous waste,
disposal, was there was here and more,” says CDC’s Ron Burger. “It seemed to be
the biggest environmental health incident the city had ever encountered.”
Among the immediate
challenges for environmental health professionals in endeavoring to protect the
city of 8 million people:
·
Unparalleled
worksite hazards at Ground Zero
·
The
huge amount of dust—later determined to be 1.2 million tons—pervading the city,
particularly lower Manhattan, and carried aloft to other boroughs
·
Characterizing
what was in the plume and where it went, and dust
·
Smoke
from ongoing fires—characterizing what toxins it might be laced with
·
Indoor
dust that made its way through windows, doors, crevices and rooftops
·
Resuspended
dust outdoors and in
·
Removing
toxin-laden debris and dust
·
The
final hazards of debris disposed at the Fresh Kill landfill in Staten Island
Besides
all these, as mentioned before, there were the host of environmental health
concerns that come with any disaster—insuring the safety of food, restaurants,
protection from rats and rodents and insects.