Context of 'Early December, 2001: Asbestos Level Exceeded at School near Ground Zero'

The decision to reopen Stuyvesant High School in Lower Manhattan is made based on tests of indoor air samples taken by the EPA. Two EPA “On Scene-Coordinators” (OSCs) (see (8:50 a.m. EST) September 11, 2001) are present at the meeting and participate in the decision-making. One of the OSCs is Charlie Fitzsimmons. [Environmental Protection Agency National Ombudsman, 3/27/2002]

The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Region 2’s legal counsel advises in a draft document (obtained by the New York Environmental Law and Justice Project through a Freedom of Information Act): “[AHERA] was developed to determine whether school buildings where asbestos was used are safe. Under this test, an air monitor pumps room air through a special filter for a specified amount of time. Then the number of asbestos ‘structures,’ or fibers, on a square millimeter of the filter are counted. If there are fewer than 70 such structures, the air is judged to be acceptable. EPA has used this same school-based standard to evaluate the safety of outside air in downtown Manhattan.” [Jenkins, 3/11/2002 ] The EPA counsel’s statement is a misinterpretation of AHERA (see October 3, 2001-March 1, 2004).

The Environmental Protection Agency outside air monitoring station at Stuyvesant High School records an asbestos level of 124 fibers per square millimeter, which significantly exceeds acceptable background levels. [New York Daily News, 12/20/2001]

An environmental engineer tests Stuyvesant High School’s carpets and fabrics for contamination using the ultrasonication method and finds an extremely high concentration of 60,000 to 2.5 million structures of asbestos per square centimeter in the school’s carpets. The Department of Education claims the results are “inconclusive.” [H.A. Bader Consultants, 8/2/2002 ; Jenkins, 8/29/2002 ; Kupferman, 2003 ]