Reply #29: From the Salon article: [View All]

[dmr]

http://archive.salon.com/news/feature/2003/08/15/dust/print.html

The snippet below is a discussion concerning just Deutsche Bank:

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The dust, 3 feet deep in places, filled the hallways. A dangerous toxic mold spread from the two damp basement levels, shooting sticky black vines like alien fingertips through the elevator shafts to the upper floors. On the north side of the building a 24-story-tall gash exposed the dust and mold to the wind, sun and rain. Most of the windows were gone.

The building was directly downwind of the plume of toxic debris pumped through Manhattan and Brooklyn by the force of the Trade Center collapse, and it provides one of the best records of what made up the cloud. For months after the attacks, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency insisted that the dust contained few contaminants and posed little health risk to anyone but those caught in the initial plume from the towers' collapse. "Everything we've tested for, which includes asbestos, lead, and volatile organic compounds, have been below any level of concern for the general public health," Christine Todd Whitman, then the Bush administration's EPA chief, told PBS "NewsHour" in April 2002. Even last December, assistant regional EPA administrator Kathleen Callahan reiterated that assessment before the New York City Council: "I think the results that we're getting back show that there isn't contamination everywhere."

But Deutsche Bank's owners, curious to know the extent of their liability and to properly evaluate the potential danger to their own employees, privately conducted their own extensive tests. The findings: Astronomical levels of asbestos and a long list of toxic ingredients that pose a significant risk of cancer, birth defects, nerve damage and other ominous health problems.

More than 2,000 buildings in lower Manhattan were exposed to the same wave of debris and dust, and many were filled with residents and office workers within days after the attacks. Today, the Deutsche Bank findings and an emerging body of studies by private agencies and the EPA itself sharply contradict the initial EPA assessment and suggest that the federal government overlooked a substantial threat that could ultimately harm more people than the terrorist attacks.

The cloud of pulverized debris was a virtual soup of toxic substances: Cancer-causing asbestos. PCBs -- one of the most toxic and dangerous industrial chemicals -- from a giant electrical transformer and waste oil. Mercury, which can cause nerve damage and birth defects, from the thousands of laptop computer screens that were atomized that day. Thousands of tons of pulverized concrete, which can sear the soft membrane of the lungs. Dioxin, which can damage the central nervous system and cause birth defects. The EPA's final report on air quality released in January 2003 called the Trade Center collapse the largest single release of dioxin in world history -- more than enough, on its own, to establish lower Manhattan as a federal Superfund site.

Immediately after the towers collapsed, and as fires burned for days afterward, that cloud filtered its way through window seals and ventilation ducts of thousands of buildings, even those thought to be undamaged and safe. It accumulated in the corners of homes, behind bookcases and under beds. Even today, it is in the carpeting of schools and on the desktops of offices, in the ventilation systems of many buildings that have not been cleaned.

More ...

There's more devasting information out there that include other damaging chemicals. Just look at the links added in this thread. You can listen to some devastating discussions here: http://www.democracynow.org/search.pl?query=world+trade+center+asbestos