At least 30,000 tons of scrap from the World Trade Center wreckage has been exported to India. Concerns over the potential contamination of the steel scrap has alarmed trade union and environmental groups in India and the United States who say that uninformed workers may be exposed to the harmful toxins while handling the scrap.

If the rest of the debris at Ground Zero is any indication, it cannot be ruled out that the WTC scrap may be contaminated with cancer-causing asbestos, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), dioxins, furans, mercury, lead and other heavy metals.

Environmentalists and unionists called for an immediate investigation into whether the shipments are contaminated and for a halt to further moving of the scrap until it is proven that the shipments are entirely safe for the workers handling it and the environment.

Dockers at Chennai, Kandla and Kolkata ports are refusing to handle any more shipments of WTC scrap. Muthuraman Kumaran, a trade union leader at Chennai port, said, “We do not want laborers to handle scrap containing harmful toxins. We will touch the scrap only after getting environmental and medical certificates from competent authorities including the Indian government.”

According to Greenpeace India, the WTC wreckage cannot be treated as ordinary steel scrap because everything in the Twin Towers – including the tube lights containing mercury, the asbestos insulation, PVC articles and computers – was incinerated after 91,000 liters of jet fuel ignited in the buildings.

“There are no safe levels of exposure to cancer-causing substances like asbestos, dioxins, and toxic metals like cadmium, mercury and lead,” Manu Gopalan, Greenpeace’s toxics campaigner in India, told India Abroad.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), currently run by Bush-appointed Christine Todd Whitman, who had a reputation of gutting the New Jersey EPA while governor, has consistently denied any high levels of toxins at Ground Zero in New York. But rescue workers and area residents have complained about air quality and respiratory problems. The WTC site may be designated as a Superfund site, meaning a highly contaminated area.

The Indian importers have sent samples of the scrap to SAS Global Services, a privately held software company well-connected to the EPA and other government agencies.

The steel scrap may not represent the same level of health threat as Ground Zero, according to CorpWatch.org, but given the amount of material involved and the short time frame for any decontamination process, it is possible the steel is contaminated with toxic materials.

Under the Basel Convention on the Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Waste, it falls to the Indian government to prevent the import of wastes if they are found hazardous. But that’s because the U.S. refuses to sign the Basel Convention and is, therefore, not bound by the treaty. This includes an amendment, known as the Basel Ban, prohibiting developed countries, like the U.S., from exporting hazardous material to industrializing nations like India.

SHARED VIDEOS - 

AUG (2002)

HM00IQ  

=============================

https://911digitalarchive.org/items/show/1675

“No takers for WTC scrap brought into India,” September 11 Digital Archive, accessed June 7, 2026, https://911digitalarchive.org/items/show/1675.

WTC steel to India

March 1, 2002 6:02 AM CST

At least 30,000 tons of scrap from the World Trade Center wreckage has been exported to India. Concerns over the potential contamination of the steel scrap has alarmed trade union and environmental groups in India and the United States who say that uninformed workers may be exposed to the harmful toxins while handling the scrap.

https://edition.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/east/01/23/china.wtcsteel/

BEIJING, China -- China's biggest steel firm says it will receive its first shipment of scrap metal from the World Trade Center wreckage soon and turn it into steel plates -- not, as some newspaper reports had suggested, souvenirs.

Chinese state newspapers had earlier reported that Shanghai Baosteel Group Corp. planned to turn 50,000 tons of Ground Zero steel into souvenirs -- including models of the twin towers.

The WTC towers dominated the New York skyline before two hijacked passengers slammed into them on September 11, triggering their collapse.

The towers' steel outer skeleton was formed of steel beams up to two feet thick.

Workers have been whittling away at the ruins since then, with hundreds of trucks carrying rubble out of the crater each day.

'Steel plates'

But a company spokesman told Reuters news agency on Wednesday that the shipment would not be treated any differently from ordinary purchases of scrap, and would be turned into steel plates.

The Beijing Youth Daily, one of the newspapers to report the purported souvenir plan, said Baosteel was one of the first companies in the world to contact the United States about the scrap and consequently made a good deal.

It bought 50,000 tons of steel scrap at a price of "less than $120 per ton," the newspaper quoted Baosteel executives as saying. It did not give an exact price figure.

The steel is to be baled into large cubes for shipping, and could be used to make office furniture and filing cabinets.

India scrap dealers have already ordered four steel consignments.

Two 33,000-ton consignments have already arrived in the southern port of Madras, a third is on its way and a fourth would arrive soon at the west coast port of Kandla.

• Terry Friel, "Dangerous Recycling Said to Be Poisoning India," Reuters, September 6, 2002:

"About 70,000 tons of scrap steel from the World Trade Center was shipped to India before it was stopped by objections from environmentalists and unions, says Greenpeace India. Greenpeace says the scrap is contaminated by asbestos, polychlorinated biphenyls, PCBs, plastics, and the lead, mercury, and other contaminants in the computers and fittings inside the twin towers destroyed on Sept. 11 last year. ... A preliminary study in India found no toxins, but Greenpeace and other environmental groups question the study's accuracy."

https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Destruction_of_Evidence_from_Ground_Zero_at_the_World_Trade_Center

http://www.ban.org/ban_news/dangerous_recycling.html

https://www.rediff.com/money/2002/sep/04recy.htm

https://www.hinduismtoday.com/hpi/2002/09/08/2002-09-08-india-considers-world-trade-center-steel-scrap-inauspicious/

India Considers World Trade Center Steel Scrap Inauspicious

September 8, 2002

891

GO TO SOURCE

NEW DELHI, INDIA, September 4, 2002: Indians are shying away from World Trade Center scrap steel shipped to the country to be recycled, afraid its history makes it “inauspicious.” But it may be more than that — it may be lethal. Critics say India has become the developed world’s dumping ground, rapidly poisoning itself and its billion-plus people with toxins from both the waste and the pollution from the sometimes dangerous methods used to recycle it. The world’s second-most populous country combines low wages, lax environmental laws and a huge domestic market for the recycled products, says Suneel Pandey, a researcher with the Tata Research Energy Institute. About 70,000 tons of scrap steel from the World Trade Center was shipped to India before it was stopped by objections from environmentalists and unions, says Greenpeace India. Greenpeace says the scrap is contaminated by asbestos, polychlorinated biphenyls, plastics and the lead, mercury and other contaminants in the computers and fittings inside the twin towers destroyed last year. A preliminary study in India found no toxins, but Greenpeace and other environmental groups question the study’s accuracy. Indian scrap dealers are now having trouble selling the WTC steel for other reasons. “People are having some reservations. It’s a sentimental matter,” said O. P. Bajpai, an adviser to the Indian Steel Alliance lobby group. “In India, it’s a matter of belief,” he said, refusing to comment on other issues about the WTC scrap.