Juan Gonzalez - Time to stop the toxic lies of 9/11: Federal, city leaders should be owning up to WTC health risks
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/col/jgonzalez/story/450822p-379421c.html
Daily News
Juan Gonzalez
Time to stop the toxic lies of 9/11
Federal, city leaders should
be owning up to WTC health risks
The very leaders who failed to protect countless New Yorkers from the toxic pollution after Sept. 11 are now trying to blame each other.
What they should be doing is owning up to their lies and deceits.
In the weeks after the World Trade Center collapse, this column repeatedly warned that federal, state and city leaders were all hiding the true extent of environmental hazards in lower Manhattan.
Instead of admitting the truth, city and federal officials attacked those columns as alarmist and irresponsible - and they exerted enormous pressure on the Daily News to stop publishing them.
Some samples of the supposedly "irresponsible" work:
- - On Sept. 28, 2001, I reported that testing of dust samples around lower Manhattan by the New York Environmental Law and Justice Project had revealed more widespread asbestos contamination than Christie Whitman, then the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, had led the public to believe. I also reported that city officials were not enforcing the use of proper safety equipment by workers at Ground Zero.
- - On Oct. 9, 2001, I reported that private testing done by a widely respected Virginia environmental firm had revealed unusually high levels of asbestos inside two office buildings near Ground Zero. Many of the fibers had been pulverized into such unusually microscopic size by the towers' collapse that they went undetected by much of the equipment federal agencies were using.
- - The story accused of being the most "alarmist" piece ran Oct. 26, 2001, in a front-page story headlined "A Toxic Nightmare at Disaster Site." I revealed for the first time that hundreds of pages of the EPA's own tests showed the agency had detected such toxic substances as dioxins, PCBs, benzene, lead and chromium in the air and soil around the WTC site - sometimes at levels far exceeding federal standards.
The EPA's regional administrator immediately blasted the report as "one of the worst kind you can write." He conceded there had been some "elevated readings" near the site but the agency's overall testing "indicates people are safe."
"Sometimes the odor is terrible," former Mayor Rudy Giuliani said then, "but what I'm told is that it is not dangerous to your health."
That column led furious City Hall aides and federal officials to pressure The News to stop these reports.
The next voice on this subject belonged to Whitman, who wrote an op-ed piece for The News defending her agency's response to air-quality monitoring.
But there were too many complaints from sick residents and workers to ignore, and The News continued to publish more of my reports challenging the official story.
Five years later, there is a mountain of evidence that all levels of government issued misleading information and outright lies about air quality in those early days.
Whitman now wants to blame Giuliani for lack of safety enforcement at the WTC site. The city was in charge of Ground Zero and the EPA "didn't have the authority to do that," she says.
Another deceit.
Yes, Giuliani and the city failed miserably to enforce federal safety rules at the site. For weeks, the city did not ensure that every worker used proper respirators and decontamination methods - something federal inspectors noted in a highly critical report on Oct. 6, 2001.
But Whitman's agency had the legal power to step in at any time and take control, under a 1998 presidential directive that puts the EPA in charge of cleaning up contaminated sites after a terrorist attack.
More importantly, the EPA created a false sense of security among rescue workers and the public after 9/11. Whitman herself said the agency's early testing of air and dust showed "no reason for concern."
That reassuring message had its roots in the White House.
Three years ago, the EPA's inspector general revealed that White House aides rewrote the agency's initial press releases to lull both the public and rescue workers into thinking everything was okay.
For example, in an EPA draft of a Sept. 13, 2001, press statement, the White House removed the following words - "Even at low levels, EPA considers asbestos hazardous" - and inserted a more benign statement: "Monitoring and sampling ... have been very reassuring about potential exposure of rescue crews and the public to environmental contaminants."
City Hall, however, didn't need the EPA or the White House to reveal a major contamination problem.
A city Department of Environmental Protection spokesman told The News on Sept. 17, 2001, that "no levels of asbestos or any pollutants that raise concern" had been found.
Another lie.
In February 2002, the agency finally released the results of its own early testing. It turned out that 27 of DEP's first 38 outdoor tests detected asbestos levels higher than the agency's safety threshold.
You'd think that five years after that horrible day, our leaders - from the White House on down - would stop the lies.
Originally published on September 9, 2006
==========================
http://www.nydailynews.com/09-09-2006/news/story/450755p-379408c.html
Daily News
I also became sick, sez top Rudy aide
BY DAVID SALTONSTALL
DAILY NEWS SENIOR CORRESPONDENT
In the days after 9/11, former Deputy Mayor Joe Lhota was among the highest-ranking city officials at Ground Zero - a place he visited often during eight months of cleanup.
But now Lhota, like so many others who responded to the tragedy, is sick with a life-threatening disease that he believes was caused by his time at Ground Zero.
"Do I think it was linked? Yeah, I do," Lhota, 52, told the Daily News...
"...It is the responsibility of government - city, state and federal - to work together to take care of the men and women who worked on that Pile," Lhota said. "We shouldn't be fighting on this issue."
Lhota also hit back at charges - lobbed by former Environmental Protection Agency head Christie Whitman on this Sunday's "60 Minutes" - that the city knew air quality on the pile was unsafe and should have forced rescuers to wear respirators.
"The comments she has made to '60 Minutes' are grossly inconsistent with the comments she made in 2001," said Lhota, referring to Whitman's repeated assurances then that the city's air was safe to breathe.
Originally published on September 9, 2006
Daily News
Juan Gonzalez
Time to stop the toxic lies of 9/11
Federal, city leaders should
be owning up to WTC health risks
The very leaders who failed to protect countless New Yorkers from the toxic pollution after Sept. 11 are now trying to blame each other.
What they should be doing is owning up to their lies and deceits.
In the weeks after the World Trade Center collapse, this column repeatedly warned that federal, state and city leaders were all hiding the true extent of environmental hazards in lower Manhattan.
Instead of admitting the truth, city and federal officials attacked those columns as alarmist and irresponsible - and they exerted enormous pressure on the Daily News to stop publishing them.
Some samples of the supposedly "irresponsible" work:
- - On Sept. 28, 2001, I reported that testing of dust samples around lower Manhattan by the New York Environmental Law and Justice Project had revealed more widespread asbestos contamination than Christie Whitman, then the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, had led the public to believe. I also reported that city officials were not enforcing the use of proper safety equipment by workers at Ground Zero.
- - On Oct. 9, 2001, I reported that private testing done by a widely respected Virginia environmental firm had revealed unusually high levels of asbestos inside two office buildings near Ground Zero. Many of the fibers had been pulverized into such unusually microscopic size by the towers' collapse that they went undetected by much of the equipment federal agencies were using.
- - The story accused of being the most "alarmist" piece ran Oct. 26, 2001, in a front-page story headlined "A Toxic Nightmare at Disaster Site." I revealed for the first time that hundreds of pages of the EPA's own tests showed the agency had detected such toxic substances as dioxins, PCBs, benzene, lead and chromium in the air and soil around the WTC site - sometimes at levels far exceeding federal standards.
The EPA's regional administrator immediately blasted the report as "one of the worst kind you can write." He conceded there had been some "elevated readings" near the site but the agency's overall testing "indicates people are safe."
"Sometimes the odor is terrible," former Mayor Rudy Giuliani said then, "but what I'm told is that it is not dangerous to your health."
That column led furious City Hall aides and federal officials to pressure The News to stop these reports.
The next voice on this subject belonged to Whitman, who wrote an op-ed piece for The News defending her agency's response to air-quality monitoring.
But there were too many complaints from sick residents and workers to ignore, and The News continued to publish more of my reports challenging the official story.
Five years later, there is a mountain of evidence that all levels of government issued misleading information and outright lies about air quality in those early days.
Whitman now wants to blame Giuliani for lack of safety enforcement at the WTC site. The city was in charge of Ground Zero and the EPA "didn't have the authority to do that," she says.
Another deceit.
Yes, Giuliani and the city failed miserably to enforce federal safety rules at the site. For weeks, the city did not ensure that every worker used proper respirators and decontamination methods - something federal inspectors noted in a highly critical report on Oct. 6, 2001.
But Whitman's agency had the legal power to step in at any time and take control, under a 1998 presidential directive that puts the EPA in charge of cleaning up contaminated sites after a terrorist attack.
More importantly, the EPA created a false sense of security among rescue workers and the public after 9/11. Whitman herself said the agency's early testing of air and dust showed "no reason for concern."
That reassuring message had its roots in the White House.
Three years ago, the EPA's inspector general revealed that White House aides rewrote the agency's initial press releases to lull both the public and rescue workers into thinking everything was okay.
For example, in an EPA draft of a Sept. 13, 2001, press statement, the White House removed the following words - "Even at low levels, EPA considers asbestos hazardous" - and inserted a more benign statement: "Monitoring and sampling ... have been very reassuring about potential exposure of rescue crews and the public to environmental contaminants."
City Hall, however, didn't need the EPA or the White House to reveal a major contamination problem.
A city Department of Environmental Protection spokesman told The News on Sept. 17, 2001, that "no levels of asbestos or any pollutants that raise concern" had been found.
Another lie.
In February 2002, the agency finally released the results of its own early testing. It turned out that 27 of DEP's first 38 outdoor tests detected asbestos levels higher than the agency's safety threshold.
You'd think that five years after that horrible day, our leaders - from the White House on down - would stop the lies.
Originally published on September 9, 2006
==========================
http://www.nydailynews.com/09-09-2006/news/story/450755p-379408c.html
Daily News
I also became sick, sez top Rudy aide
BY DAVID SALTONSTALL
DAILY NEWS SENIOR CORRESPONDENT
In the days after 9/11, former Deputy Mayor Joe Lhota was among the highest-ranking city officials at Ground Zero - a place he visited often during eight months of cleanup.
But now Lhota, like so many others who responded to the tragedy, is sick with a life-threatening disease that he believes was caused by his time at Ground Zero.
"Do I think it was linked? Yeah, I do," Lhota, 52, told the Daily News...
"...It is the responsibility of government - city, state and federal - to work together to take care of the men and women who worked on that Pile," Lhota said. "We shouldn't be fighting on this issue."
Lhota also hit back at charges - lobbed by former Environmental Protection Agency head Christie Whitman on this Sunday's "60 Minutes" - that the city knew air quality on the pile was unsafe and should have forced rescuers to wear respirators.
"The comments she has made to '60 Minutes' are grossly inconsistent with the comments she made in 2001," said Lhota, referring to Whitman's repeated assurances then that the city's air was safe to breathe.
Originally published on September 9, 2006
posted by peaceandjustice2005 at 11:43 AM
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