Toxic gases rise from fires
Students, workers near ground zero at risk
Special to Workers World
New York
The fires that started in the World Trade Center area Sept.
11 are still burning, and will probably continue until nearly
all the debris is removed, a task that will take months.
The smoke, according to an Environmental Protection Agency
report, contains dioxins, PCBs, benzene, lead, copper and
chromium--all chemicals considered extremely dangerous at
levels far lower than the EPA has recorded. Soils in the area
have also been contaminated. The few times run-off into the
Hudson River was tested, it also showed extreme
contamination.
While the jet fuel was burned off shortly after the initial
explosions, the resulting fire reached an estimated temperature
of 2,300 degrees, melting the building's steel supports. The
collapses left smoldering crevasses and hot spots that cannot
be reached by firefighters until the overlying debris is
cleared. Clearing debris exposes the hot spots to oxygen,
causing flare-ups where plastics, wood, paper, and even office
machinery start to burn and release the noxious chemicals
identified by the EPA. (Newsday, Oct. 25)
The Environmental Law & Justice Project (ELJP), whose
freedom of information request got the EPA report released,
paid for its own analysis of the dust blowing around ground
zero. It found unhealthy amounts of fiberglass, asbestos, PCBs
and dioxins. Fiberglass is generally coated with a thin layer
of resin containing formaldehyde. This is probably the source
of the eye and throat irritation reported by many of the
250,000 people who work and live in the area.
There are two major schools in the area--the academically
elite Stuyvesant High School and Borough of Manhattan Community
College. The students at BMCC are overwhelmingly African
American and Latino. These schools are basically across the
street from each other.
Both were used as staging areas by the authorities in the
early rescue efforts. Stuyvesant was returned to the school
authorities fairly early, but it took a lot of political
pressure to get the rescue workers out of BMCC so classes could
resume. Cleanup took an additional week.
Teachers at both institutions told Workers World that they
and their students cough a lot and suffer from eye, throat and
respiratory irritation. By the end of the day, they are
unusually fatigued.
BMCC has had to erect temporary classrooms because one of
its classroom buildings was severely damaged in the collapses.
They get a lot of the dust and noise from the steel beams and
other debris that are loaded onto barges just yards away across
West Street. This dust is also sucked into the air-intake ducts
for BMCC's main building. The Teachers' local representing
BMCC's teachers and staff has demanded the loading site be
moved, but the administration has not responded.
The college has lost a lot of income and expects a big
falloff in attendance next semester. Adjuncts--part-time
teachers who carry much of the load--know that a major drop in
attendance will cost them their jobs.
It does not appear that those who run the city of New York
are really concerned about what is happening. The city is
facing a financial crisis whose roots predate the World Trade
Center disaster. The politicians want to clear the way for real
estate developers to begin work as quickly as possible.
Reprinted from the Nov. 8, 2001, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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