This came over a mailing list I'm on and is relevent for anybody in NYC. Though I don't know the sender, I've verified that both senders are real accademics at their respective institutions.

From: David A. Klatell <dak25@columbia.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, September 12, 2001 8:52 PM
Subject: Health Precautions

From Professor Ross, who is on leave this year:

There is a serious health risk as well -- asbestos. The NYT I got this morning in Boston did not cover this at all, but plenty of walking wounded are being shipped to NJ for decontamination (Clara Mas on the west side of Newark has the only decon unit in North Jersey, I think) and health care professionals know the risk. They are wearing protective clothing, even at the hospital. Briefly:

The WTC was the LAST big building in the US to use blow-on asbestos insulation to protect the steel beams from fire's heat. The asbestos type specified for this purpose is chrysotile ("white" asbestos). This type is generally believed to be no more dangerous than any other fiber (the fiber in fiber glass, for instance). But crocidolite, another form of asbestos ("blue" asbestos) contaminates chrysotile in most asbestos deposits, and it has been known for 30 years that the asbestos used in the WTC has a lot of it. This stuff is now blown all over lower Manhattan. Crocidolite is a carcinogen, considered a POTENT carcinogen by many. (Mt. Sinai in Manhattan has long had a good research team on this issue.) There are plenty of documented cases of shipyard workers getting mesothelioma (a cancer of the chest lining, unique to asbestos) after only a few weeks' exposure to croc. Smoking raising the risk drastically. Almost 100% of all asbestos workers in the 60s and 70s who smoked have died of mesothelioma.

Asbestos fibers are caught in simple medical face masks, if the masks are worn properly (no beards!). I would not send a student who smokes down into lower manhattan without such protection. After a visit, they should shower and send clothing to the laundry (to avoid spreading dust to others).

BTW, most of the gray ash seems to be made up mainly of clay (from paper) and other construction materials, but there is asbestos there as well.

The Port Authority ignored advice on this issue when the towers were built. Also, contrary to NYC building codes at the time, the stairwells for emergency use did not open directly to the outside -- a serious bottleneck partially overcome by above-average attention to tenant training.

Steven S. Ross
Co-Director, Institute for Analytic Journalism
Boston University School of Communications
1-617-353-3296
ssr3@bu.edu

-- David A. Klatell
Academic Dean
Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism
2950 Broadway
New York, NY 10027
tel: (212) 854-3319
fax: (212) 854-3939
e-mail: dak25@columbia.edu ---

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-DA
> perl -MPOSIX -e'$ENV{TZ}="US/Eastern";print ctime(1000000000)'
Sat Sep  8 21:46:40 2001
[download]

2006-08-04 Retitled by planetscape, as per Monastery guidelines

Original title: 'Asbestos'