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09/01/2003 Archived Entry: "More on bad WTC air..."
More on bad WTC air...
Another take on what happened with the EPA's public stance on air quality in Lower Manhattan. Dolman notes, quite correctly, that what little believability the White House has is quickly being shot to hell.
As we know now, the smoke that spiraled from the ruins of the World Trade Center - the air that wafted for months over a board swath of Brooklyn and Manhattan - was thick with a nasty mix of glass fibers, lead, concrete dust and asbestos. As we also know now, respiratory ailments became so common in the months after 9/11 that doctors began to speak of something called World Trade Center Cough.But these revelations were not a shock.
I can remember walking near Ground Zero two days after 9/11. Everything - from burned-out hulks of cars to deserted cobbled streets to the awnings over shuttered storefronts - was dusted with an odd white film, which I assumed was the granulated residue of the WTC and all that had been inside it. It looked toxic and it smelled toxic.
Inhalation of this ghastly stuff couldn't be good.
Yet here is what the EPA - at the behest of the White House - was reporting at the time:
Sept. 13, 2001: Monitoring and sampling have been "very reassuring" regarding potential exposure - among rescue crews and the public - to environmental contaminants.
Sept. 16, 2001: Quoting an assistant labor secretary on the day before the New York Stock Exchange reopened: "Our tests show that it is safe for New Yorkers to go back to work in New York's financial district."
Sept. 18, 2001: Quoting EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman: "I am glad to reassure the people of New York and Washington, D.C., that their air is safe to breathe."
This information, as you may have recognized, comes from a report released last week by the EPA inspector general. It's a scathing document whose impact is still reverberating through New York's political world. In essence, it charges that the White House told the EPA to put a reassuring face on a cataclysm about which little was known.
[...]
Maybe the White House was worried about a panic after 9/11. But, really, with part of the city in flames, fighter jets circling in the skies and thousands of our friends and relatives dead or missing, it's hard to see how a cautionary position on air quality could have made things worse.
More likely, as many in New York suspect, the White House simply wanted the New York Stock Exchange to reopen without a hitch on Sept. 17, as a symbol of America's resilient economy.
I think it was crucial for the NYSE to get back on its feet fast. But I think Washington is going to regret its lack of candor on this issue for years.
The next time it needs to offer reassurance on a complicated matter of public health - the next time it needs to calm people down or alert them to a present danger - who's going to believe it?
Replies: 5 people speak up
I went down a month or two later, because I was having weird dreams about the Exchange Place station, and the whole place was covered with about half an inch of what looked like dryer lint, which the tourists had been writing their names in.
But, you know, I think that we all knew when the EPA demanded a full team in decontamination suits to clean up their offices downtown before they would go back in.
Posted by julia @ 09/01/2003 10:35 AM NY
I've never gone down to Ground Zero (K went at the request of a friend from S. Africa who was visiting and wanted to see it), but I remember going into the Village in the first week of October, 2001 for dinner with another friend who was visiting.
I'll never forget the smell, like a gigantic model train transformer which hadf overheated. It was everywhere.
Here's hoping they re-test. People deserve to know the truth. Oh, what am I saying?
Posted by editor @ 09/01/2003 12:38 PM NY
Not suprising or out of the ordinary. Back in the '70's there was a warning in Michigan, along the St. Clair River, about mercury in the water & everyone was told not to eat fish until a study could be done to test the levels; Lo, and behold, then came the statement that levels were 'not harmful to human health'; in reality, a gag was put on the reports because levels were so high that the powers that be didn't want to deal with a public outcry, i.e. who was accountable? The U.S.? Canada?
Posted by Allison @ 09/01/2003 05:05 PM NY
Why was it so necessary to get the NY Stock Exchange opened quickly?
NY was in a state of shock and so was the country and all the clowns of the world think about was the New York Stock Exchange being opened. Proof to the world we are the capitlaist god and nothing can stop us from making a buck. So add to the three thousand that died that day the many who will suffer and die from the effects of hurry up and get the NYSE open.
Posted by hal @ 09/04/2003 02:36 PM NY
Something I have not heard mentioned is mercury- mercury is a component of flourescent light bulbs- it acts as the filament when the bulb is energized- and no doubt plenty of it wafted though the air after the buildings collapsed and settled everywhere. I never bought the EPA bull about the safety of the debris- been in the enviro/safety field- and I brainstormed a list of stuff that those buildings could contain. The lies were nothing short of a crime.
Posted by Yasmin @ 09/06/2003 12:38 AM NY
