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Did fire at ground zero increase health risk?

Air samples from around the building say no, but environmental advocates have doubts.

NEW YORK - Panicked residents fear a partially dismantled building where a recent blaze killed two firefighters and stripped away protective coverings may be releasing some of the toxic contaminants that blanketed the neighborhood on Sept. 11, 2001.

Some experts, however, aren't so sure.

The Aug. 18 blaze at the derelict former Deutsche Bank building began on a floor layered with asbestos, lead, mercury and other toxins blown in when the World Trade Center collapsed just across the street, even tiny bits of human remains. Demolition crews have reduced the 40-story tower to 26, but about 15 of those floors had yet to be cleaned, and the fire exposed some of those floors to the elements.

But hundreds of air samples from a dozen monitors posted around the building before, during and after the fire haven't shown contamination that exceeds federal limits called "target levels." More than 300 tests for asbestos have been negative, according to private analysts hired by the Lower Manhattan Development Corp., the government rebuilding agency that owns the tower and is heading its cleanup and dismantling.

Paul Lioy, a Rutgers University professor who has studied air quality near ground zero since the terror attacks, said the dust in the building is not substantial enough to pose a serious health threat.

"To get that layer of dust outdoors would take an awful lot of wind," said Lioy, the deputy director of the Environmental Occupational Health Sciences Institute, affiliated with Rutgers.

Any dust that did escape through the now-open windows would be diluted, he said. "Then you're asking it to come through the windows and into their homes, and it's not a very large source."

Environmental advocates are skeptical.

"We think that there should be something showing up in these samples," said Kimberly Flynn, co-coordinator of 9/11 Environmental Action. "This was a big fire. Black smoke was billowing off of that building, as everybody could see and everybody could breathe."

[Last modified August 26, 2007, 01:33:22]