For an index to all NYCOSH in the News articles, click here.

• Cars Trapped at WTC Now Stuck in Another Mess: City Had Planned to Release Contaminated Vehicles Until Congressman Called in Federal Environmental Officials - Newark Star-Ledger, March 29, 2002
  
  
• New York Appeals Court Bars State Agency From Redacting Information From OSH Logs - Bureau of National Affairs, March 25, 2002
  
  
• A Red Flag on Air Tests at WTC - Daily News, March 21, 2002
  
  
• City Delays Plan to Return Cars from World Trade Center Site - Associated Press, March 18, 2002
  
  
• Return of WTC Cars Hits EPA Roadblock - Daily News, March 18, 2002
  
  
• What To Do With An Auto Graveyard - Newsweek Web Exclusive, March 15, 2002
  
  
• Waiting to Inhale: Six Months Later, Thousands of New Yorkers Still Suffer Health Ills - MSNBC, March 11, 2002
  
  
• Bush Proposes Change in Workplace Safety Outreach - Gannett News Service, March 7, 2002
  
  
• A Year Later and Still Waiting for Action on Ergonomics - OccupationalHazards.com, March 4, 2002
  
  
• WTC Health Van Closes - Newsday, March 2, 2002
  
  
• Senate Hearing Reveals the Dark Side of the American Dream - Occupational Hazards, March 1, 2002

Cars Trapped at WTC Now Stuck in Another Mess: City Had Planned to Release Contaminated Vehicles Until Congressman Called in Federal Environmental Officials

By Rudy Larini
Newark Star-Ledger
March 29, 2002

http://www.silive.com/news/advance/index.ssf?/xml/story.ssf/
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The letters went out earlier this month, informing the owners of almost 400 cars and trucks recovered from in and around the World Trade Center disaster site that the vehicles could be reclaimed at the Fresh Kills landfill.

All the owners had to do was cover them "with a tarp or other impervious material" and haul them away on a flatbed.

That was the easy part.

Then the owners had to have them cleaned with special equipment designed to prevent the inhalation of asbestos and other contaminants in the dust that blanketed Lower Manhattan after the Twin Towers collapsed.

None of which sounded too environmentally safe to a congressman who represents the district covering Lower Manhattan.

"Requiring average citizens to clean their own cars of asbestos, and possibly other hazardous materials, is reckless and irresponsible and presents a threat to public health," wrote Rep. Jerrold Nadler in a letter asking the federal Environmental Protection Agency to step in and halt the release of any vehicles until the health and environmental risks could be examined.

Now the plan to return the vehicles to private owners and insurance carriers that paid claims on them has been halted indefinitely, while city officials meet with the EPA to determine if and how the vehicles can be cleaned and decontaminated before being released.

"At this point we're in a holding pattern," said Kathy Dawkins, a city Sanitation Department spokeswoman. Her agency was responsible for recovering and disposing of the cars.

"We haven't yet decided what the most prudent thing is to do with the cars," said Mary Mears, a spokeswoman for the New York EPA office. "Every option is on the table, including not returning them."

More than 1,000 dust-covered vehicles were recovered from parking lots and garages and other locations in and around the World Trade Center complex, but most belonged to either the city or the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

Earlier this month, the city sent letters to 177 private owners of vehicles and to insurance carriers that had paid claims on 221 others, notifying them that they could retrieve the vehicles at the Fresh Kills landfill, where debris from the World Trade Center collapse is taken and examined.

The letters said the vehicles had to be removed from the landfill on a flatbed hauler and covered "with a tarp or other impervious material."

The city advised the owners to "assess your vehicle for operational safety and have it thoroughly cleaned before operating it," recommending that it be cleaned with vacuums equipped with HEPA (high efficiency particulate air) filters to contain the asbestos-tainted dust.

But Nadler recommended that the EPA either have the cars cleaned before they are released or have the Federal Emergency Management Agency reimburse owners if cleaning was economically or environmentally unfeasible.

"Clearly the burden should not be on the vehicle owners to make their cars safe, particularly when the remediation of hazardous materials and waste must be conducted by properly trained personnel and must follow all applicable government regulations," he wrote in his letter to the EPA.

Jonathan Bennett, spokesman for the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health, a nonprofit coalition of labor unions and safety advocates, said EPA testing of dust from the World Trade Center collapse found some asbestos in three-quarters of the samples and more than 1 percent in a quarter of them. He said the thorough removal of dust-borne asbestos from the upholstery, carpeting and other surfaces of so many vehicles represents an unprecedented and possibly insurmountable challenge.

"This is not a situation that we have ever dealt with," he said. "We don't really know what you would do with a car to make it asbestos free, but we certainly don't think it should be left up to the owners."

Mark Johnson, an emergency response team adjuster for State Farm, said his company was prepared to hire a contractor to clean and test roughly 15 salvageable vehicles awaiting claim from the city. He said the vehicles would be sold with a salvage ownership title identifying them as having been recovered from the World Trade Center site.

Sheila Breeding, a spokeswoman for Allstate Insurance Co., said her firm had about 50 vehicles to be recovered, but the company was awaiting guidance from the government agencies before deciding what to do with them.

Copyright 2002 Staten Island Live

New York Appeals Court Bars State Agency From Redacting Information From OSH Logs

By Gerald B. Silverman
Bureau of National Affairs
March 25, 2002

http://subscript.bna.com/SAMPLES/ohd.nsf/125731d8816a84d385256297
005f336a/3246cb94e6f9561285256b850003df55?OpenDocument

ALBANY, N.Y.--A mid-level state appeals court March 14 ruled that the New York State Department of Labor cannot censor information from the occupational safety and health logs provided to a state employees' union representative (Goldstein v. New York State Indus. Bd. of Appeals, N.Y. App. Div., No. 90385, 3/14/02).

The New York State Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Third Department, said there is nothing in the state's Public Employee Safety and Health Act or in state regulations that permits the department "to redact what it unilaterally has deemed to be confidential information."

The court said state regulations implementing the recordkeeping provisions of the act refer only to the time required for the department to provide requested information.

"We are not persuaded that the department, under the guise of exercising the discretionary authority generally vested in an administrative agency to construe and interpret its own statutes and regulations, is entitled to redact information otherwise available for inspection under 12 NYCRR 801.8(b)," the court said.

The case stems from a request made by Ronald Goldstein, an executive board member of the Public Employees Federation. Goldstein requested that the state Labor Department provide him with the occupational injury log for 17 work sites in New York City.

The department provided the log but blacked out employee names and said it would release the unit numbers and occupations of the workers only if confidentiality could be maintained. Goldstein and the PEF appealed the decision to the state Industrial Board of Appeals, which upheld the department's decision.

The Appellate Division rejected the state's argument that privacy provisions of the state's Freedom of Information Law supersede the recordkeeping requirements of PESHA.

"We find this argument to be nothing short of specious," the court said in a unanimous opinion by Judge D. Bruce Crew III.

Disclosure Without Exceptions Required

"As a starting point, the subject regulation provides for disclosure of the log without any exceptions and even a cursory review of Labor Law Section 27-a fails to disclose any language suggesting that the Legislature intended either the statute or the implementing regulations to be construed in compliance with FOIL," the court said.

The court also rejected the state's argument that recent amendments to the federal Occupational Safety and Health Act validate the state Labor Department's actions. The court said recent OSHA amendments show that the department's remedy lies with the state Legislature and an amendment to PESHA. In addition, it said the recent amendments illustrate that there were no previous provisions authorizing the redacting of information from the logs.

The case was closely watched by a number of unions. The Communications Workers of America, the Transport Workers Union of America, and the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health all were friends of the court.
Judges Thomas E. Mercure, Edward O. Spain, Anthony J. Carpinello, and John A. Lahtinen joined in the decision.

Eliot Spitzer, attorney general, Albany, and Robert Goldfarb, of counsel, represented the state. Elizabeth R. Schuster, New York State Public Employees Federation, Albany, represented Goldstein.

Copyright © 2002 by The Bureau of National Affairs, Inc., Washington D.C.

A Red Flag on Air Tests at WTC

By Juan Gonzalez
Daily News
March 21, 2002

http://www.nydailynews.com/2002-03-21/News_and_Views/
City_Beat/a-145062.asp

In the days after Sept. 11, EPA officials used standards to determine dangerous asbestos contamination that were never intended to measure health risks, according to a new 43-page memo by a dissident Environmental Protection Agency scientist.

Cate Jenkins, a 22-year veteran with the agency's Hazardous Waste Identification Division in Washington, charged that the agency "misrepresented safety levels and standards for asbestos" and failed to accurately detect possible health risks to the public.

Jenkins first criticized her agency's handling of the World Trade Center disaster in late November, arguing that EPA officials effectively "waived" federal asbestos guidelines by endorsing lenient cleanup methods.

Her latest memo raises new allegations that the standards the EPA publicized as benchmarks for judging asbestos contamination in both dust and air were intended only to measure the presence of asbestos in building materials.

An EPA spokeswoman roundly rejected Jenkins' charges yesterday and defended the agency's work.

"We have a number of scientists in the agency who looked at Cate's approach and none of them agree with her view," said spokeswoman Mary Mears.

In the days after Sept. 11, federal officials repeatedly referred to two "standards," one for asbestos in dust and debris and another for asbestos fibers in air.

For dust and debris, the agency standard was 1% asbestos content. For air, it was usually 70 asbestos fibers per square millimeter of a testing filter.

The "EPA has performed 62 dust sample analyses for the presence of asbestos and other substances. Most dust samples fall below EPA's definition of asbestos- containing material [1% asbestos]," EPA Administrator Christie Whitman announced Sept. 18.

Whitman was correct about one thing. Most dust samples were below the 1% standard, but a significant portion were not. Around 35% of those taken in the first few days were above 1%.

But as Jenkins explains in her memo, federal regulations never meant the 1% figure to be considered a health standard or even to be applied to measure dust.

The standard was developed as a way to gauge whether any building material such as floor tiles or pipe insulation contained asbestos and should be considered hazardous waste requiring professional abatement.

But any dust released by the breakup of such materials must be considered hazardous, Jenkins claims, because it came from asbestos-containing products in the Trade Center.

"She's absolutely correct, this is not a health-based standard," said Joel Shufro, an industrial hygienist with the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health. [Note by NYCOSH: The report's identification of Joel Shufro is mistaken. He is the Executive Director of NYCOSH, not an industrial hygienist.]

"People exposed to 1% or less can have significant exposure with adverse health impacts," he said.

"We have never said it was a health standard," said the EPA's Mears about the 1%. "We're only using it as a guideline. We say clean up the dust and get rid of the dust regardless of whether it's 1% or below 1% — it doesn't matter."

According to Mears, the agency sent its vacuum trucks to clean all dust off area streets.

"It's real easy to be a Monday morning quarterback," Mears said.

One Supporter

One person Jenkins has convinced is Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-Manhattan).

"A lot of New Yorkers have been exposed to very bad health risks, possibly even deaths years from now because EPA put out these standards as if they had anything to do with health risks," Nadler said.

Jenkins also charges the EPA misused the 70-fiber federal test. It is meant to clear public schools for reentry after an asbestos cleanup, but it was applied to outdoor air tests collected under very different test conditions.

"We didn't have a standard in air for a collapse of this type," Mears said. "The 70 fibers is a conservative estimate our risk assessors used."

City Delays Plan to Return Cars from World Trade Center Site

By Karen Matthews
Associated Press
March 18, 2002

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/ny-bc-ny--attacks-vehicles0318mar18.story

NEW YORK -- City officials have delayed a plan to return hundreds of cars towed from near the World Trade Center site to their owners and will first meet with the Environmental Protection Agency to determine whether the vehicles present a health threat.

"We are going to be meeting with the federal EPA and we are going to review all of the procedures," Kathy Dawkins, a spokeswoman for the city Department of Sanitation, said Monday.

The department had planned to start returning the cars, now parked at the Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island, starting Monday. Owners received letters telling them how to retrieve and clean the vehicles.

But the return of the vehicles, towed in the days following the terrorist attack that destroyed the trade center complex on Sept. 11, was delayed after concerns were raised about asbestos-tainted dust in the cars.

U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a Democrat who represents the World Trade Center area, in lower Manhattan, sent a letter to EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman last week urging her to use her authority to prevent the return of the cars.

"Clearly, the burden should not be on the vehicle owners to make their cars safe, particularly when the remediation of hazardous materials and waste must be conducted by properly trained personnel and must follow all applicable government regulations," Nadler said.

The Daily News reported March 8 that tests showed the dust in the cars contained as much as 3 percent asbestos, more than three times the amount that would require cleanup according to federal law.

Jonathan Bennett, a spokesman for the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health, said it may not be possible to clean the cars adequately.

"We don't know if the upholstery and the carpet in the cars could be remediated for asbestos," he said. "We don't know if the rest of the car could be remediated for asbestos."

But Kelly McKinney, an associate commissioner at the city health department, told Newsweek that the city's earlier decision to release the cars was based on a careful review of numerous tests.

"There is no significant risk to human health," McKinney said. "People will not get sick by taking these cars."

Mary Mears, a spokeswoman for the EPA, said the agency needs to get more information about the cars before they are released to their owners.

"Certainly the dust does contain asbestos, that's why we want to make sure we know what we're doing in terms of returning the cars," she said.

The meeting between the sanitation department and the EPA was scheduled for this week, but it was unclear when the cars would be returned.

Letters from the sanitation department explaining the retrieval process were sent to 177 private owners; 221 were sent to insurance companies.

Joanna Rose, a spokeswoman with the state Insurance Department, said the majority of the cars are owned by insurance companies because they already paid claims to the original owners.

Copyright © 2002, The Associated Press

Return of WTC Cars Hits EPA Roadblock

By Greg Gittrich
Daily News
March 18, 2002

http://www.nydailynews.com/2002-03-18/News_and_Views/
City_Beat/a-144749.asp

Concerns about asbestos-tainted dust have slammed the brakes on the city's plan to return hundreds of cars towed from streets around the World Trade Center to their owners.

The city planned to start giving back the dust-covered vehicles today. But a Daily News report about the dangerous coating of asbestos on the cars prompted federal environmental officials to step in.

"No cars will be released [today]," Kathy Dawkins, a spokeswoman for the city Sanitation Department, said yesterday.

Instead, Environmental Protection Agency and city officials will meet this week to discuss what to do with the cars, parked at Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island.

"We are going to review all the procedures," Dawkins said.

In a March 8 article, The News revealed that tests on the vehicles show that as much as 3% of the dust is asbestos, more than three times the level that triggers federal cleanup rules.

Many of the cars have little body damage — and nothing would stop scheming owners from rinsing them off and selling them to unwitting buyers.

A New Jersey company that examined seven cars estimated it would cost $3,600 to professionally clean each one.

The Department of Sanitation mailed letters to owners last month notifying them that they could pick up their vehicles starting today.

The letters came with a three-page tip sheet from the city Health Department explaining how to remove asbestos-tainted dust. The letters also told drivers they couldn't simply drive their vehicles away — and instead had to cover them with tarps and haul them away on flatbed trucks because of health concerns.

On Thursday, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-Manhattan), citing The News' findings, urged EPA chief Christie Whitman to invoke an emergency injunction against the city to stop the cars' release. On Friday, EPA officials asked city officials to meet with them before determining whether the cars should be returned.

The New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health, a coalition of public health advocates, argued yesterday that car owners shouldn't be asked — or trusted — to clean the vehicles.

"We are not at all sure that these cars can be cleaned to make them safe," said committee spokesman Jonathan Bennett.

In December, then-city Health Commissioner Neal Cohen said the cars were so badly contaminated that they probably could not be returned. But after meeting with insurance companies and under threat of a class action lawsuit by irate owners, the city agreed to give them back.

What To Do With An Auto Graveyard: At the Last Minute, the EPA Prevents the Return of Cars Damaged in the World Trade Center Collapse

By Julie Scelfo
Newsweek Web Exclusive
March 15, 2002

http://www.msnbc.com/news/724974.asp

Six months after they were crushed, burned or covered with debris, New York City is ready to dispose of the more than 1,000 vehicles recoved from the World Trade Center attacks. The city had planned to hand the cars and trucks over to insurance companies or owners as early as Monday. But at the last moment, the federal government stepped in and called a halt to the transfer.

FOR WEEKS, local, state and federal officials have squabbled over whether the vehicles—most of which are coated with fine powder of World Trade Center debris—are safe. "We know the dust contains lead, zinc, mercury, asbestos, not to mention organic materials," says New York Congressman Jerrold Nadler. "To release cars to owners is highly irresponsible." On Thursday, Nadler wrote a letter to the Enivronmental Protection Agency's Christie Todd Whitman urging her to file an emergency injunction against the city to prevent their release. On Friday, the EPA asked the city to meet with its officials before releasing the cars.

Officials at the New York City Department of Health told Newsweek it will honor the EPA's request, but that their decision to release the autos was based on careful review of numerous environmental tests. "The data indicates that there is no significant risk to human health," says Kelly McKinney, the NYC Department of Health's Associate Commissioner for Environmental Health. "The fundamental way we work is to gather as much data as we can, to look at that data, compare it with whatever standards are available, compare it with our knowledge of the issues, and that's what we did with this issue as we have with every World Trade Center issue."

In December, New York's then-health commissioner Neal Cohen said the cars were contaminated with dangerous World Trade Center debris and would not be returned. Two months later, after owners of the vehicles sued the city for their return, city officials reversed themselves and said they would release the autos—along with written instructions on how to clean them.

What to do with these damaged vehicles is the latest chapter in an ongoing debate about contamination in and around World Trade Center . The New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health (NYCOSH), an environmental safety group, claims that government agencies are ignoring basic standards for environmental contamination in the massive cleanup effort. "If any of the dust in these cars is more than 1 percent asbestos, and the car was a building, you wouldn't be able to touch it unless you had an asbestos handler's license from the state and a permit for that job," says Jonathan Bennet, a spokesman for NYCOSH. "We think returning the cars is a public hazard. They'll go to body shops, they'll go to garages... the workers who are cleaning these cars are not even going to know they will be faced with the hazard."

Insurance companies have already made plans to pick up their cars from the Fresh Kills landfill in Staten Island and sell them at auction, or in cases where the vehicle is inoperable, they can recycle salvageable parts.

Some investigators who have worked on the recovery effort, speaking on the condition of anonymity, say they are relieved that the cars will not be returned to the general public. One local law-enforcement source says investigators who worked on the cars have also been worried about another potential hazard: despite careful cleaning by an FBI evidence team, the vehicles could contain human body parts "We found arms, legs, a ribcage" inside cars and trucks, says the source. "Imagine if we missed something?"

Waiting to Inhale: Six Months Later, Thousands of New Yorkers Still Suffer Health Ills

By Francesca Lyman
MSNBC
March 11, 2002

http://www.msnbc.com/news/721154.asp

It took months to arrive at a realistic estimate of the number of dead at Ground Zero, but it will take years to assess the damage to people's health from the World Trade Center attacks, say medical experts. Six months after Sept. 11, though, a picture is emerging of thousands still suffering from persistent respiratory ailments, headaches and more serious illnesses. Although some are healing, others fear they never will.

Gone is the smoke that once pervaded downtown Manhattan. But, as spring approaches, fires still explode out of the massive wreckage where thousands of workers sift through rusted remains.

Workers at "the pile" are still strained by battle fatigue, says Sgt. David Duffy of the New York Police Department. "We just pulled out another two bodies, and those families are going to have to relive those traumas in more funeral services," he says, pausing to cough.

"Yes, everyone at the PD has some kind of nagging cough, with some worse than others — young guys hacking like two-pack smokers, and some cases of pneumonia."

The air is far cleaner and the dust largely gone today, but many people living and working downtown feel that the neighborhood is far from back to normal. Some continue to stay away until their health fears are resolved.

"There's no way you can say that the air is clear here. You see particles everywhere, and there are still things flying in your eyes," says Dana Conte, an asthma sufferer.

Conte is looking forward to returning to her job as a bartender/server, when the Marriott Financial Center Hotel reopens its lobby cocktail lounge on Monday. But she is also fearful. "I'm playing with fire going to work here," she says. Her allergies, chronic sinusitis and asthma worsen as soon as she comes downtown.

Just as people once traded tragic stories about lives lost in the terror attacks — the secretary who went back to her office to get her flats so she wouldn't have to run in heels, then never returned; the man who escaped the building only to find out that his sister was in the plane that hit his building — New Yorkers now circulate stories about people whose health has been injured in the line of duty.

One of the most poignant is the tale of Carolyn Rogers, a case worker for the New York Coalition for the Homeless, at Chambers Street near the World Trade Center, who was taken to Beekman Hospital by ambulance and treated for acute asthma on Sept. 11. Her dedication drove her back to work within a few days, says Mary Brosnahan, director of the nonprofit group. Rogers collapsed on the floor of an asthma-induced heart attack and died, Brosnahan says.

Public health specialists are just beginning to study the impacts of the most devastating attack on American soil since the Battle of Antietam — and New York City's worst environmental calamity — but the first reports reveal widespread health effects affecting thousands.

In a new report, the Natural Resources Defense Council, a non-profit environmental organization, estimates that the huge cloud of debris and dust that engulfed Lower Manhattan released hundreds, if not thousands of contaminants into the air — with "short-term health impacts for at least 10,000 persons."

That estimate comes from looking at health reports from three downtown neighborhoods, records from area hospitals and firefighter and other worker registries, says lead author Eric Goldstein. "We think this is almost certainly an undercount and that [the health toll] could well be double that," he says.

Doctors still see patients for a wide variety of ills related to the events. "They're still coming in at regular rate. While it's not a flood, I see at least several people a week with respiratory problems that date back to Sept. 11," says Neil Schachter, medical director of respiratory care at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York.

"Besides physical symptoms, there's a lot of anxiety," says Schachter. "My patients are afraid of what it might mean. Is that a cough or is a sign of something deeper?" Even untrained people know that a respiratory condition should only last a few weeks, not months, he says.

Part of the anxiety may derive from the fact that the Ground Zero air pollution was so unique. Because of the unusual mix of chemicals and their synergistic effects, even environmental medicine specialists can't say low long some illnesses may last. Sensitivities may be different for children, elderly and workers, says Marjorie Clarke, an adjunct professor of environmental science at Hunter College.

Another aspect of some people's anxiety, say some, is lost faith in the agencies that were supposed to protect them. For example, some say that the government declared too soon it was safe for people to return to the area without having sufficiently tested indoor dust.

"The agencies are now acknowledging some of the problems they overlooked," says Joel Kupferman, director of the New York Environmental Law and Justice Project, referring to the fact that the Environmental Protection Agency is setting up a task force to look more carefully at indoor environments, following concerns expressed by downtown residents at a hearing held by Sen. Hillary Clinton in February.

"But the agencies shouldn't have said, ‘Everything's okay' [as quickly as they did]," he says. "Because people went back to work in offices not properly cleaned, in apartments covered in dust."

"The credibility gap played into people's worst fears," agrees Joel Shufro, director of the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health. Now, says Shufro, residents aren't sure if their apartments are clean enough, or even what the standard should be.

EPA MORE CAUTIOUS NOW

The EPA's New York regional office, which had declared downtown Manhattan safe to reinhabit, now is a bit more cautious. "What we've been saying is that based on all our readings there are no significant long term hazards here," says EPA's Bonnie Bellow. "But workers must wear respirators, and people returning to dusty apartments and offices need to take special precautions, like getting them professionally cleaned or using special gear, like masks and HEPA vacuum cleaners. We're working with other local authorities and agencies to address people's ongoing concerns."

Bellow said that EPA administrator Christie Whitman has set up a task force to address indoor environments so that people can get help evaluating whether their homes and offices are safe. EPA's monitoring has found that about 35 percent of the outdoor dust samples contained asbestos, she adds.

The largest group affected are those already suffering from pre-existing allergies, asthma and respiratory problems, says Dr. Clifford Bassett, an allergist affiliated with Long Island College Hospital who operates an office at Liberty and Broadway, located across the street from the former World Trade Center.

ON THE SCENE

But worst afflicted, say doctors, are those working directly at Ground Zero — firefighters, police officers, rescue workers and volunteers. Dr. Suhail Rahoof, chief of pulmonary and critical care medicine at Nassau University Medical Center in East Meadow, N.Y., is partly finished with a study to look at the health of these so called "first-responders."

His initial findings reveal that the first signs of an asthma-like disorder caused by exposure to irritants are beginning to show up in people who worked as little as an hour at Ground Zero. Rahoof, who has so far studied 60 rescue workers who put in as many as 400 hours at the site, says more than half have had abnormal pulmonary tests results. More than 85 percent failed to wear protective gear.

Today, more of the ironworkers, electricians, salvage workers and others at Ground Zero are trying to wear respirators, says NYPD's Duffy. "But it's hard to do," says Duffy, "because with all the heavy machinery, front-end loaders, tractor-trailers, cutting saws, you can't be heard and can't leave your respirator up all the time."

Totally unprotected by respirators were many day laborers hired by landlords, says Dr. Steven Markowitz, director of the Queens College Center for the Biology of Natural Systems, Latin American Workers Project and NYCOSH, who ran a mobile van offering health care.

"We were surprised by how many flocked to use for free medical advice, many of whom were sick months after having stopped cleanup work," says Markowitz. He says he treated 400 workers for nearly identical symptoms: upper respiratory irritations, headaches and dizziness.

As for the general public, some doctors say that downtown residents are healthier than expected, considering the scale of the destruction and sheer volume of dust. And many say at least a few of their patients are getting better.

"It could have been Bhopal — where they was a high percentage of very hazardous chemicals — terrible eye injuries, burns and blindness and a chronic lung diseases," says Mt. Sinai's Schachter. "What we've seen here is nothing by comparison."

Bush Proposes Change in Workplace Safety Outreach

By Brian Tumulty
Gannett News Service
March 7, 2002

http://www.thejournalnews.com/newsroom/030702/07worksafety.html

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration is proposing to eliminate an $11.4 million program that aims to bring workplace safety information to non-English speakers and other hard-to-reach workers.

Instead of making direct contact with these workers in partnership with labor unions and other groups, Bush's 2003 budget advocates a new $4.2 million grant program that would encourage nonprofits and faith-based groups to set up Internet sites about workplace safety.

Labor Department spokeswoman Sue Hensley said the proposed Web-based curriculum would "reach more individuals, make more effective use of resources and train more individuals."

Critics argue that non-English-speaking immigrants are unlikely to use the Internet.

"I want you to come out to a trailer park and tell me where you are going to put these computers for people who make $8 an hour," said Jackie Nowell, director of occupational safety and health for the United Food and Commercial Workers union.

Nowell spoke to Gannett News Service yesterday while visiting Raeford, N.C., with a Spanish-speaking workplace safety trainer whose salary has been funded as part of a four-year, $800,000 Susan Harwood Training Grant for the UFCW.

The trainer was giving classes this week to Mexican immigrants who work at a turkey processing plant. The classes were held in a union hall because plant managers wouldn't allow the federally paid trainer inside, Nowell said.

The message the Mexican workers are getting, according to Nowell: "If you see something hazardous you need to tell your supervisor and not to be afraid of retaliation. If there is retaliation, call the union."

Under federal law, employers have an obligation to teach workplace safety to employees and make certain they have the proper safety equipment to do their jobs.

Nowell said her union — which represents workers ranging from meat cutters at Midwest packing plants to cashiers at East Coast supermarkets — has found some employers such as ConAgra who are willing partners in promoting workplace safety while others view it as an intrusion.

Seventy groups are current Susan Harwood Training Grant recipients. The workplace safety grant program, which began in the 1970s, had been eliminated during the 1980s by the Reagan administration. President George W. Bush's father reinstated the face-to-face approach to workplace safety in 1992 because of concerns about the need to educate health care workers about AIDS prevention.

The New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health (NYCOSH), a coalition of 250 labor unions in the eight-county New York metropolitan area, has been using its Susan Harwood grant for medical exams of immigrant day laborers in lower Manhattan. Workers who have complained of breathing problems from dust around the site of the former World Trade Center are tested in a nearby mobile van and those with serious medical problems are referred to Mount Sinai Occupational Health Center in Manhattan.

"We have an administration that is talking about voluntary compliance and yet is giving up on a program that gives workers the tools to make informed decisions in the workplace," said Joel Shufro, executive director of NYCOSH. "They have gotten a huge bang for the buck. How many day laborers will go home and tap into the Internet? This is the height of cynicism and naivete."

Meanwhile, the Bush administration is placing greater emphasis on voluntary compliance programs in which progressive-minded employers use the Occupational Safety and Health Administration as a resource.

Eric Frumin, health and safety director of UNITE, the union representing many garment industry and textile plant workers, said the administration's approach provides political cover for employers who have taken a low-road approach to workplace safety.

"Well-trained workers know how to file OSHA complaints and exercise their rights and challenge negligent supervisors," said Frumin, whose union got $170,000 this year under the Harwood grant program.

Copyright 2002 The Journal News, a Gannett Co. Inc. newspaper serving Westchester, Rockland and Putnam Counties in New York.

A Year Later and Still Waiting for Action on Ergonomics

By Sandy Smith
OccupationalHazards.com
March 4, 2002

http://www.occupationalhazards.com/news/news_loader.asp?articleid=47847

One year after the repeal of the standard by Congress and still no word on the government's promised plan for ergonomics.

March 6, 2001 was the beginning of the end for the ergonomics standard. On that date, the U.S. Senate voted to repeal the standard, using what was then the little-known Congressional Review Act (CRA). Members of the House of Representatives followed suit on March 7.

Under the CRA, Congress can pass a joint resolution of disapproval of regulations even if the regulations are already in effect. The president can veto the resolution, but that did not happen in the case of the ergonomics standard. President George W. Bush signed the legislation repealing the standard on March 20, 2001.

In June 2001, Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao said she planned to hold hearings on the issue of ergonomics in the workplace. At that time, Chao said she was "bringing everyone to the table to get this important issue moving forward and resolved."

She said she would identify a final course of action on the issue by September 2001. She held the promised hearings, but the events of Sept. 11th delayed work on the administration's ergonomics policy. Nearly six months after the deadline Chao set for herself, workers and the business community alike wait to hear what the department plans to do.

Meanwhile, some members of Congress have grown tired of the delay.

"Despite repeated promises they have failed to provide new protections for America's workers," says Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) of the DOL. "The American people deserve to know why the administration has failed to act."

On March 14, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee chaired by Kennedy will hold hearings on the Labor Department's promise to take action on ergonomics.

To prepare for that hearing, Kennedy and Democratic Senators Tom Harkin of Iowa, chairman of the Appropriations Committee's Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and Education, and Paul Wellstone of Minnesota, chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee's Subcommittee on Employment, Safety and Training, sent Chao a letter, asking for information on the steps taken by the Labor Department to fulfill its commitment to "pursue a comprehensive approach to ergonomics."

Saying that ergonomics is a "very high priority" for the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, the senators asked for:

• A description of the information gathering, review and decision-making process the department has employed in developing its comprehensive plan on ergonomics. The letter asked Chao to "identify the department, White House and other executive branch agencies and offices that have been involved in the decision-making process," as well as a "list of individuals, including title and agency, who have been involved in the development of recommendations and options and the decision-making process" from the Labor Department, the White House and other executive agencies.
• Copies of all relevant correspondence and memorandums, including e-mails, prepared by Labor Department employees or received by Labor Department employees since Jan. 21, 2001 pertaining to ergonomics and the development of an ergonomics plan.
• Any analysis of injury and illness data or workers' compensation data on ergonomic injuries and work-related musculoskeletal disorders prepared by or for the Labor Department since Jan. 21, 2001.

The Labor Department is reviewing the letter, says spokeswoman Sue Hensley. No determination has been made as to what, if any, documents will be released to the committee.

The senators asked for the documents by March 11, in time to review them for the March 14 hearing. Chao will testify before the committee.

Meanwhile, labor groups are turning up the heat on the ergonomics issue, with Eric Frumin, safety director for the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE) complaining, "Bush has done nothing about ergonomics but tell workers to trust their own bosses…. We need to fight for safe jobs every place we can: on the shop floor, at the bargaining table and in the halls of Congress."

Elizabeth Kelleher, the health and safety specialist for the New York Committee on Occupational Safety and Health (NYCOSH), says that when the the ergonomics standard was repealed last year, the Bush administration "tried to conceal their ill-will toward worker safety by claiming that they would act very quickly to provide some alternative method of protecting workers from ergonomic hazards."

They had to admit the issue was urgent, continues Kelleher, because they acknowledged that ergonomic hazards cause about 50,000 lost-time injuries every month.

"Here it is a year - and 600,000 lost-time ergonomic injuries later - and the Labor Department hasn't produced a plan or even the outline of a plan. They certainly have a lot to answer for," Kelleher believes.

A year ago, Chao identified the following set of principles that the DOL will use as a starting point for creating a new ergonomics approach:

• Prevention - The approach should place greater emphasis on preventing injuries before they occur.
• Sound Science - The approach should be based on the best available science and research.
• Incentive Driven - The approach should focus on cooperation between OSHA and employers.
• Flexibility - The approach should take account of the varying capabilities and characteristics of different businesses.
• Feasibility - Future actions must recognize the costs of compliance to small businesses.
• Clarity - Any approach must include short, simple and common sense instructions.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) predicted the standard could help prevent as many as 4.6 million ergonomic-related injuries in a 10-year period and save businesses some $9 billion a year in healthcare, workers' compensation and other costs.

Business groups weren't impressed by OSHA's promise of savings, claiming the standard could cost as much as $100 billion to implement.

by Sandy Smith (ssmith@penton.com)

Copyright © 2002 Penton Media, Inc.

WTC Health Van Closes

By Margaret Ramirez
Newsday
March 2, 2002

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/newyork/ny-van0301.story

More than 400 day laborers, building maintenance workers and housekeepers who were examined at a Ground Zero medical van are suffering nearly identical symptoms of respiratory distress related to toxic substances in World Trade Center dust and debris.

The preliminary results came Friday from medical staff of the mobile unit on their last day of operation.

Since Jan. 15, the medical van parked at Broadway and Barclay Street in lower Manhattan has been providing free examinations for clean-up workers who scoured soot-filled offices and apartment buildings in the days after the Sept. 11 terrorist attack.

Dr. Ekaterina Malievskaia, who examined most of the workers at the van, said hundreds reported the same symptoms including persistent coughs with phlegm, chest and sinus congestion, and the complaint repeated over and over of "My lungs hurt."

"They have common symptoms, which is really quite remarkable given the variety of workers that we saw," said Malievskaia, an internist at Queens College. "We need to do more detailed analysis. But, given the significant number of people who reported the same symptoms, we can only assume it is related to exposure at the site."

The medical van was established jointly by the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health (NYCOSH), the Queens College Center for the Biology of Natural Systems and the Latin American Worker's Project.

The van was designed mainly to serve the many immigrant workers who were hired to clean up the site without receiving respiratory protection or safety training. All workers who visit the van are given respirators.

Jose Roberto Tobar, of NYCOSH, said medical results from the van could eventually be used to build worker's compensation cases against employers who failed to protect workers.

Malievskaia said the other symptoms — including headaches, fatigue, dizziness and nausea — could possibly be traced to a specific contaminant in the dust or air. But, until further analysis of blood and urine is done, those symptoms have no explanation.

Malievskaia, along with Dr. Steven Markowitz, expects final results at the end of April.

A 54-year-old worker who identified himself as "Manuel" was at the van for an examination Friday morning and said he was suffering from a lung irritation and a mysterious urinary infection.

"I knew there was a risk when I took the job to clean up Ground Zero. But, I never realized the magnitude," said Manuel, who immigrated from Ecuador.

Barbara Young was a live-in housekeeper for a family who lived in lower Manhattan. She said that after Sept. 11, her employers pressed her to clean up their dusty apartment so they could move back within a week. Soon after, she came down with a cough that still keeps her up at night. In November, Young left her job working for the family and moved into her daughter, Jillian's, Corona apartment.

"I don't worry about the health problems much. But, I still get emotional when I think about that day. I saw everything."

At that, she broke down and wept.

Copyright © 2002, Newsday, Inc.

Senate Hearing Reveals the Dark Side of the American Dream

By James Nash
Occupational Hazards
March 1, 2002

http://www.occupationalhazards.com/default.asp?section=AArchive

A Senate hearing devoted to how cultural and language problems can hurt workplace safety for immigrants ended as it began, with two speakers saying precisely the same words:

"Immigrants have a disproportionate rate of accidents and fatalities in the workplace," the speakers said. "We are considered disposable and therefore easy to exploit."

Omar Henriquez, coordinator of immigrant and youth programs for the New York Committee for Occupational Health and Safety (NYCOSH), penned the words for his testimony as a witness at the Feb. 27 hearing.

Sen. Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.) chaired the hearing (which was attended by Occupational Hazards) and he found the testimony, particularly the word "disposable," so compelling he used it in his opening statement.

Henriquez supported his statement with Bureau of Labor statistics as well as his personal experience of the hazards faced by workers cleaning up dust and debris - that may contain asbestos and other hazardous materials - in buildings adjacent to the World Trade Center.

Other witnesses talked about their experiences in the workplace.

"We are treated like garbage," said former garment industry worker You Di Liao, through an interpreter. Liao told of how she worked in sweatshop conditions, working 14-hour days before suffering a stroke and injuries in 1997 that kept her in the hospital for 40 days.

Liao complained about low wages, mandatory overtime and the fact that she and others like her have to wait four, eight, or even 12 years to receive workers' compensation benefits.

In part because it drew a large crowd, Sen. Wellstone's Employment, Safety and Training Subcommittee's hearing was unusually informal in a number of respects. Wellstone encouraged people to sit in empty seats on the dais usually reserved for senators. The standing room-only-audience frequently burst into applause. And Wellstone interrupted the testimoney of John Henshaw, administrator of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and politely asked him to wrap it up because of the long list of other witnesses.

Henshaw defended the administration's approach to immigrant workers' health and safety by pointing to the recently announced Hispanic initiative. (For more details on this program, see the article "OSHA's Hispanic Worker Initiative: Lots of Bark, No Bite?")

The three senators attending the hearing, Wellstone, Michael Enzi (R-Wyo.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), praised the administration's effort.

But Clinton, picking up on a point made by several witnesses, said she thought the administration's initiative needed to be "deepened" to include immigrant groups speaking languages other than Spanish.

Enzi, who serves on the Senate's Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, expressed concern that small businesses may have difficulty obtaining the help they need in dealing with immigrant workers.

Wellstone told Henshaw it was a "profound mistake" for the administration to cut funding for Susan Harwood Training Grants from $11 million to $4 million. Henriquez said these grants have been used to reach immigrants and other, often overlooked, groups of workers.

Henshaw explained that the "wartime budget" made the cuts necessary.

It is all but impossible for Henshaw to appear on Capitol Hill without the subject of ergonomics coming up, and this hearing was no exception.

In response to a question from Wellstone, Henshaw assured the senator the administration's long-promised "comprehensive approach" to ergonomics would be coming out soon.

These words did not satisfy Wellstone, who referred to the fact that it has been almost one year since the administration and both houses of Congress nullified OSHA's ergonomics standard. At the time, the Bush administration and Labor Secretary Elaine Chao promised a new and comprehensive approach to ergonomics.

"We've become impatient and we want to see some action," said Wellstone.
Copyright © 2000 Penton Media, Inc.

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