Bruce Lippy
The Heavy Equipment Operators of the International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE) played a critical role in the clean-up of the World Trade Center terrorist attack site. The amount of debris on the site was enormous but was significantly reduced by the round-the-clock efforts of the Operating Engineers and other dedicated craft workers on site. The amount of choking dust released on the site lessened as the cleanup progressed but the fires continue to release smoke through December 2001, sometimes more heavily than during the previous week. Operating Engineers continually moved their equipment, primarily grapplers, further onto the large debris pile and, therefore, experienced longer and more intense exposures to the smoke. The IUOE National Hazmat Program had a team of Industrial Hygienists collecting daily air samples of operator exposures beginning on Wednesday, September 19. The team collected over 50 samples of potential contaminants, including airborne asbestos, lead, total dust, organic vapors, and acid gases. The IUOE National Hazmat Program's technical office in Morgantown, West Virginia compiled the data every day and then disseminated it over the Internet to the New York City Department of Health, the EPA, and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. The team regularly reviewed the data collected by federal and state organizations. The following represents reporting from Ground Zero on September 27, 2001.