World Trade Center (WTC) Dust

Details

• Personal Author:
  Chen L-C ; Cohen MD ; Lippmann, Morton
• Description:
  On the morning of September 11, 2001, two passenger jet planes separately impacted on the 100-story WTC North and South Towers in New York City (NYC), and both towers collapsed within just 2 h. As a result, dense clouds of dust were generated by successive collisions of collapsing concrete floor slabs, with a resultant crushing of concrete, wallboard, and glass/slag-wool insulation into dense clouds of airborne particles that were deposited over wide areas of southern Manhattan Island (south of Canal Street), as well as portions of westernmost Brooklyn and northernmost Staten Island. In the vicinity of the towers, dust layers on the streets/sidewalks and within buildings with shattered/open windows reached, in some cases, inches in thickness. Ultimately, due to dust resuspension by air currents or mechanical disturbance during on-site/local activities, there were additional exposures of rescue/recovery workers, clean-up workers, office/various other types of workers in affected buildings and of local residents. These dusts generated by the collapse of the WTC Towers, and subsequently resuspended, designated herein as "WTC Dust," were unique in terms of particle size distribution and composition. Of the total mass in the settled WTC Dust, <1% was deemed fine (<2.5 um in aerodynamic diameter), and >90% was coarse/supercoarse (2.5.100 um) (Lioy et al., 2002, 2006; McGee et al., 2003; Yiin et al., 2006). [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Air Pollutants, Occupational Dust Emergency Responders Environmental Exposure Occupational Health Particulate Matter Risk Assessment Risk Factors Safety September 11 Terrorist Attacks
• Keywords:
  Airborne Dusts Airborne Particulates Diseases Dust Exposure Dusts Exposure Levels Health Effects Particle Size Particulates Rescue Workers Risk Factors World Trade Center WTC

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• ISBN:
  9781119438809
• Publisher:
  John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
• Document Type:
  Text
• Funding:
  Grant
• Genre:
  Book
• Place as Subject:
  New York ; OSHA Region 2
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20064452
• Citation:
  Environmental toxicants: human exposures and their health effects, fourth edition. Lippmann M, Leikauf GD eds. Hoboken NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2020 Feb; :973-997
• Editor(s):
  Lippmann M; Leikauf GD
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2020
• Performing Organization:
  New York University School of Medicine
• Peer Reviewed:
  False
• Start Date:
  20090701
• Source Full Name:
  Environmental toxicants: human exposures and their health effects, fourth edition
• End Date:
  20140630
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:c32df1c7e7afd497d56ccf4bb8d78df72094a9bad624b3b8b508585c95deaa607255960114e8d115b432f2796b72e455003fda1cbbf723e38f13bcec49c20449
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/222908/cdc_222908_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 139.20 KB ]