The R.J.Lee Group conducted $33 million worth of testing on the property on 130 Liberty Street, the Deutsche Bank building. The group conducted sampling for different contaminants known to be present in World Trade Center dust in both the Deutsche bank building and other Class A office buildings for comparison. One of the reports released for public review examines both 130 Liberty Street and 4 Albany Street. While this is just one study, it does shed a significant light on what is at 4 Albany Street.

The S1 Tech Memo (available at www.nyenvirolaw.org/wtc-index.htm#130liberty) tests how different activities would resuspend the contaminants already in 130 Liberty Street and 4 Albany building. For the 4 Albany building they conducted testing while they were doing the following activities:

Aggressive Air Test: Samples were collected during aggressive air tests, which employed the use of a lea-blower to generate a stream of air that was applied to surfaces to liberate the suspendable fraction of particles into the air.

Post Aggressive Air Test. Samples were taken after a twenty-four hour settling period following the aggressive air test.

Ceiling Demolition. Samples were collected during ceiling tile and ceiling grid removal activities.

Wall Demolition. Samples were collected during wall demolition activities.

Outdoor. Outdoor samples were collected with cascade impactors in the vicinity of both Buildings to establish baseline concentrations. The baseline concentrations provided a reference point for which to compare the indoor levels at both Buildings.

The test results show that:

• Outdoor airborne respirable asbestos concentrations averaged 0.005 S/cm3.
• Concentrations of airborne respirable asbestos during indoor activities in the 4 Albany Street building averaged 0.172 S/cm3. The average indoor airborne respirable asbestos concentration is nearly 35 times the average outdoor airborne respirable asbestos concentration. (Indoor concentrations of airborne respirable asbestos during all work activities in the 130 Liberty Street building averaged 0.224 S/cm3. )
• 2.6% of all asbestos fibers detected in airborne samples were greater than 5µm in length.
• WTC Dust Markers, such as asbestos, lead, gypsum and mineral wool were observed in the indoor air samples from both Buildings.
• The presence of these WTC Markers indicates that WTC Dust is the source of the respirable asbestos.

In connection with these results, it should be noted that the 4 Albany Street building had been remediated during November, 2001 (prior to the testing) using abatement practices prevalent at the time in the WTC area for buildings impacted by the WTC Event. The results show then, despite the remediation, that the 4 Albany Street may possess resuspendable asbestos dust / WTC dust with levels comparable, although probably less, to the contamination in 130 Liberty Street. More testing results should be available to determine what’s actually in the 4 Albany Street and understand the impact of its demolition.