EPA Says WTC Pollution to Have Little Effect on New York Residents

NEW YORK (AP) -- Most lower Manhattan residents are unlikely to suffer long-term illnesses from inhaling airborne pollution in the weeks after the World Trade Center collapse, the Environmental Protection Agency said Friday.

Citing measurements taken in and around the collapse zone, the draft report said only rescue workers and other people exposed to high concentrations of pollution immediately after the trade center attack are likely to develop chronic illnesses.

It is unclear how many people inhaled smoke and dust from the collapse, some of which contained metals like lead and cadmium, PCBs, dioxin-like compounds, asbestos and other contaminants.

The agency noted that no air testing was done until Sept. 14, 2001, so no definitive conclusions could be drawn about the first three days after the towers collapsed. Extensive testing did not begin until Sept. 18, the agency said.

``It cannot be stated with certainty what effects resulted when people were engulfed in the initial cloud of dust or were subsequently exposed to the elevated concentrations that were found,'' the report said.

Some lower Manhattan residents have criticized the EPA's response to their health worries about the smoke and dust that blanketed much of the area after the trade center attack. The main firefighters' union has claimed the city failed to provide firefighters enough respirators, leading to high rates of illness.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., who has pushed for long-term health monitoring of rescue workers and downtown residents, said Friday that the report does not end the debate.

``We need to be diligent in continuing to monitor the short- and long-term health effects,'' she said. ``We clearly have an obligation to provide health tracking services to the valiant men and women who worked at the trade center site.''

The EPA report comes a week after a team of private researchers and scientists said the chemical composition of the dust near ground zero appeared to be less toxic than initially feared.

That study, to be published in the February issue of Environmental Science & Technology, also found that the particles collected were too large to lodge deep in people's lungs and cause long-term illness.