City of Dust
by Anthony DePalma

—Reviewed by Adam Fleisher

When the twin towers of the World Trade Center collapsed and disintegrated on September 11, 2001, a cloud of dust and ash billowed through the streets of lower Manhattan and into Brooklyn. Despite the fumes emanating from the site, authorities in New York and the federal government insisted there was no serious danger to the surrounding population, and they also downplayed–or at least voiced minimal concern about–the risk to those working at ground zero. The firefighters and rescue workers didn’t stop to worry either: they wanted to save anybody who could possibly be alive, with or without respirators on hand. And anyway, they kept hearing that the air was safe from political leaders preoccupied with quickly getting Wall Street–and America–open for business again. But, as Anthony DePalma shows in City of Dust, the air atop the pile was indeed dangerous-a “wicked concoction of dust, ash, and toxic materials” that landed “deep inside the heaving lungs of responders.” Rescue workers were developing coughs “almost immediately.” And they “simply could not stop coughing.”

With colorful prose (ground-zero firefighters had “sinus passages so inflamed they were a deeper red than the trucks they drove”), DePalma, who covered the environmental and health aspects of the aftermath of 9/11 for the New York Times, delves into the medical, legal and political issues that resulted from exposure to the toxins-not just asbestos, but also fiberglass, benzene, lead dioxin and more-that emanated from the pile after the towers came down.

Only after several weeks did an awareness of possibly serious health risks begin to sink in, and only after a number of months did city and federal authorities concede that more testing, particularly of indoor air quality, was necessary. As it turned out, buildings-residences, schools, and workplaces-around Ground Zero had to be scrubbed. Though the EPA was dismissive, the New York fire department’s chief medical officers succeeded in organizing and implementing a comprehensive medical monitoring and treatment program for everybody exposed to the dust. A formal screening program with federal funding was finally established at Mount Sinai hospital in July of 2002.

The Bush administration and Congress were years behind in providing funding support for these efforts, while stubbornly sticking to the story that the air was safe. According to DePalma, the entire bureaucracy, from New York’s city hall all the way to the executive branch, continued to assert that there had been no known environmental danger to those near Ground Zero. Any acknowledgement to the contrary could amount to an admission of liability. Plus, the administration also saw the health problems as matters for workers’ compensation or private insurance, with the federal government involved only as a last resort.

In addition to the medical battles, the firefighters, police officers and other ground zero workers also fought financial battles against New York City and the state and federal government. In November of 2001, Mayor Giuliani acquired a $1 billion commitment from FEMA to insure the city from lawsuits arising from the cleanup. He was spurred to act by city contractors worried about liability. While Manhattan’s Democratic representatives in the House meanwhile began to press for federal money for medical care for the Ground Zero workers, initial successes were small: in 2005, $75 million was set aside for the screening programs at Mount Sinai and $50 million in reimbursements for state workers’ compensation was spent on ground zero claims.

Then, in 2006, media coverage of sick workers intensified and James Zadroga, a Ground Zero worker who seemed to have been sickened by the dust, died and became a cause célèbre. (Though the initial autopsy supported this conclusion, a later investigation by the city’s Chief Medical examiner found-rather controversially-that Zadroga had died from injecting prescription drugs.) The city’s representatives in the United States Congress introduced a bill that would open the September 11 Victim Compensation Fund to more of those who had been harmed during the cleanup. But the bill floundered before finally being introduced in the Senate for the first time in summer 2009. (Even then, the bill finally passed mainly thanks to prodding by Jon Stewart and The Daily Show.)

Finally, there were the legal battles that commenced in September 2004 with the filing of a class action suit on behalf of all the employees involved in the cleanup and rescue against private construction companies that had handled the work for the city, the Port Authority, Larry Silverstein (leaseholder of the felled twin towers and owner of WTC 7), and the city itself, alleging that 128 responders had died because of the dust, with many others sick or at risk. The biggest problem for the suit, however, was meeting the legal standard for establishing a causal link between exposure and disease, always a formidable challenge in a court of law. Another difficulty, less severe but still significant, was that workers had undeniably thrown a number of ordinary precautions aside in their attempts to rescue survivors. Even if the authorities had been negligent, Ground Zero workers, by eschewing masks (for instance), bore some responsibility for their condition, however heroic their deeds. Ultimately, the plaintiffs decided to settle with the city for up to $712.5 million, with the money coming from the $1 billion FEMA had set aside for just such a contingency.

DePalma seems to find some measure of justice in this outcome, and one imagines that he feels the same way about the passage of the Zadroga Act. But what seems to truly animate City of Dust is a concern that we “figure out how to respond to an environmental disaster without first throwing environmental safety overboard.” And on that front, a lot of work remains.

Excerpt: “The gasping firefighters who reluctantly dragged themselves away from the pile to see Drs. Kerry Kelly and David Prezant had responded immediately, and bravely, to the largest disaster they had ever experienced. On the enormous mound of twisted steel, shrouded in the choking smoke and ash of super-hot fires below ground-standing like sentries at the gates of hell-they became symbols of the city’s resolve. But in truth, with their buckets and pickaxes, they were no match for the devastation left by the terrorists. If there was anybody left to rescue, the firefighters needed big help reaching them.”

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*Photo courtesy of wallyg.