[1] It has two clinics: Downtown Medical on Fulton Street, two blocks from the site of the World Trade Center, and another at Williston Park, Long Island.

[9] Tom Cruise explained his motivation for setting up the project in a Scientology promotional video that leaked onto the internet in January 2008.

I can't sleep another night.In an appearance on CNN's Larry King Live, Cruise said that he founded the project out of concern that 9/11 survivors would suffer leukemia, Parkinsonism, multiple sclerosis or cancer as a result of toxins lodged in their fatty tissue.

[5] It claims to flush poisons from the body's fat stores using exercise, saunas, and the consumption of oil and high doses of vitamins, particularly niacin.

[2][22] According to tax filings, the project pays some of its money to two bodies that promote the Purification Rundown, both related to the Church of Scientology.

Margarita López, a former member of the New York City Council, endorsed the program and helped it to win public funding.

[24] Dr. Bob Hoffman of the New York City Poison Control Center warned that the Purification Rundown is potentially dangerous, calling it "hocus pocus".

[1] Firefighter Union President Patrick Bahnken said his members' lives had benefited from the program, and that it had involved no religious rhetoric.

According to its director, Jim Woodworth, during the Purification Rundown firefighters had passed odd-colored bowel movements and sweated out mercury, aluminium and magnesium.

[20] The Fire Department's chief medical officer, Dr. Kerry Kelly, criticized the lack of objective evidence, saying, "I have trouble believing in these purple-stained towels.

[20] University of Georgia bioterrorism expert Cham Dallas also denied that the procedure could detoxify, saying "It sounds great and they mean well, but it just doesn't work.

[8] They questioned the premise that World Trade Center rescue workers needed detoxification, citing studies that had found that their blood concentration of toxins was no greater than normal.

[W]ith few exceptions, people's body burdens of PCBs and other 'dioxin-like compounds' are determined almost exclusively by the food we eat, not by the air we breathe.

Firefighters may occasionally receive on-the-job exposures to PCBs and PCDFs, but these would be from having fought PCB-containing electrical transformer fires, not from 9/11.The paper argues that the project never properly tested its outcomes and concludes that application of the "potentially dangerous" Purification Rundown to the health problems of 9/11 workers is "unconscionable".

[34] One Fire Department lieutenant was quoted describing colleagues as desperate for help with the distress they felt in the aftermath of the attacks, to the point that they would try anything.

[3][34] Fire Department officials raised concerns about the project, saying that firefighters were being required to give up inhalers, pills and other orthodox medication.

[20] A former worker at Downtown Medical told reporters that staff were discouraged from calling for an ambulance even in an emergency, and that one of them had been required to break off contact with her boyfriend because he had left Scientology.