On the clear, sunny morning of September 11, 2001 two hijacked planes crashed into the World Trade Center towers in New York City. Within hours both towers came crashing down; colossal waves of dust and debris turned the sky to night and hurtled through the streets with such force that even the inside surfaces of sealed buildings were covered with layers of powdery substance. Rescue workers, those who had escaped from the towers and people on the streets fled for whatever shelter they could find to escape from the onslaught. And when the dust cleared up a bit, some rushed right back to continue to search for survivors.
In all, about 40,000 people from various areas of the country, but mostly New Yorkers, worked search and rescue operations at Ground Zero, hauled debris from the buildings, and did cleanup and recovery work. Many more returned to live and work in the general area.
On September 18, 2001 Christie Todd Whitman, EPA Administrator, announced that:
results from the Agency’s air and drinking water monitoring near the World Trade Center and Pentagon disaster sites indicate that these vital resources are safe.
People were a tad skeptical, but anxious to believe, as well as to do anything they could to help out in the first weeks after the tragedy. To further ease their minds, on October 3, 2001 OSHA and the EPA issued a joint press release saying, among other things:
OSHA Administrator John Henshaw confirmed that workers on the site should take appropriate steps to protect themselves, but there is no threat to public health. “[…] “It is important for workers involved in the recovery and clean-up to wear protective equipment as potential hazards and conditions are constantly changing at the site; however, our samples indicate there is no evidence of significant levels of airborne asbestos or other contaminants beyond the disaster site itself.”
I wish I could say that they were just doing a heckuva job… but in reality they were just flat out lying.
Or, as Donald Faeth, an emergency medical technician, put it: “I think that there are several people who died that day and didn’t realize that they died that day. “
[read on…]
On November 4, 2001 CNN reported that:
Officials downplay risks of pollution near Ground Zero
NEW YORK (CNN) — Asbestos, fiberglass, benzene, dioxin, freon. All these pollutants and toxins were released into the atmosphere when the World Trade Center towers imploded and their remains burned.
After New Yorkers absorbed the shock of the tragedy, they started worrying about the long-term health effects, especially those who live near Ground Zero.
Government authorities responsible for monitoring air, water and soil say pollutant levels in the area still climb to hazardous levels some days. The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration calls it “the most dangerous work site in America.”
But beyond Ground Zero, they say the worst days are probably over.
“The further you get from the site, the data does not demonstrate significant risks to people,” said William J. Muszynski, acting regional administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.
[…]
But environmental watchdogs said they aren’t so sure.“It’s not safe, and what’s proof of this is that medical clinics have diagnosed people with occupational asthma already and other respiratory problems, people that not only work down there but live down there,” said Joel Kupferman, executive director of the New York Environmental Law and Justice Project.
Kupferman filed a Freedom of Information Act request to get data about the EPA’s monitoring of pollutants, data that the EPA said he takes out of context.
Apparently Kupferman did not see a rosy future after viewing what EPA documents he was able to obtain, regardless of context.
SACRAMENTO, California (AP) — Ground Zero tests by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in the days immediately after the World Trade Center collapse did not support the agency’s own statements the air around the site was safe to breathe, a newspaper reported.
A report by the EPA’s Office of Inspector General said the agency reached its conclusion on the safety of the air using a cancer risk level 100 times greater than what it normally considers acceptable for public exposure to toxic contaminants.
The status report, obtained by The Sacramento Bee, supports the views of some doctors and public health advocates who evaluated thousands of firefighters, volunteers, demolition workers and laborers working on the site.
“To say that it’s safe, which suggests no risk, we just knew that was wrong,” said Jonathan Bennett, a spokesman for the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health.
January 17, 2006 – 9/11 workers die after respiratory illnesses
NEW YORK (AP) — James Zadroga spent 16 hours a day toiling in the World Trade Center ruins for a month, breathing in debris-choked air. Timothy Keller said he coughed up bits of gravel from his lungs after the towers fell on September 11, 2001. Felix Hernandez spent days at the site helping to search for victims.
All three men died in the past seven months of what their families and colleagues say were persistent respiratory illnesses directly caused by their work at Ground Zero.
While thousands of people who either worked at or lived near the site have reported ailments such as “trade center cough” since the terrorist attacks, some say that only now are the consequences of working at the site becoming heartbreakingly clear.
“I’m very fearful,” said Donald Faeth, an emergency medical technician and officer in a union with two of the ground zero workers who died last year. “I think that there are several people who died that day and didn’t realize that they died that day.”
[…]
The city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, which is tracking the health of 71,000 people exposed to September 11 dust and debris, said last week that it is too soon to say whether any deaths or illnesses among its enrolled members are linked to trade center exposure.Both Keller and Hernandez, each with a decade on the job, were nonsmokers and had no previous health problems before September 11, Faeth said.
Zadroga, a 34-year-old New York detective, logged 470 hours at the site in 2001, including September 11, and died January 5. Family members and co-workers said he had contracted black lung disease and had high levels of mercury in his brain. Autopsy results have not been released. (Full story)
David Worby, an attorney representing more than 5,000 plaintiffs suing those who supervised the cleanup over their illnesses, said 21 of his clients have died of September 11-related diseases since mid-2004. He said he was not authorized to release their names, but represented people who toiled at ground zero, at the Fresh Kills landfill in Staten Island where trade center debris was moved, and at the city morgue.
Armed with the truth of just what a mishmash of toxicity they were surrounded by, would some have done the exact same thing anyway? I think so – there was still the hope of saving people, and still the lingering shock of the attack in the first place. Maybe there would have been more insistence on actual protective gear, however, instead of little face masks that work great when you are sanding wood, but not so much when breathing in lethal concoctions of chemicals and debris.
Sadly, the courage of those who rushed back into the billowing clouds of smoke, who conquered their fears in order to return to work in small shops and high rise buildings, who sent their children back into the schools, and who shopped, as urged – was not matched by a like courage, and honesty, from the Bush administration and the EPA.
Update [2006-2-3 19:13:54 by Nanette]: – Arcturus, in comments points to this story –
U.S. District Judge Deborah A. Batts refused to grant Whitman immunity against a class-action lawsuit brought in 2004 by residents, students and workers in lower Manhattan and Brooklyn who said they were exposed to hazardous materials from the destruction of the World Trade Center.
Actions actually may have consequences, this time. One can hope, anyway.
crossposted at Human Beams – Politics
This administration and its liars keep running up the death toll. . .They should be tried as the murders they are.
Hey shirls… good to see you. And that they should – everything they do is towards a political end (regardless of the costs in lives and other things) and they seem very safe and secure in the belief that nothing will ever come home to roost. Of their most egregious crimes, at least.
So far, it seems they are right.
Great diary, Nanette. This confirms what a lot of us have thought for the last 4+ years, that we weren’t told about the real dangers inherent with all that particulate matter sent out from the site. When you think about what you get from just “ordinary” particulate matter in NYC in “ordinary”times, this pales in comparison. Years ago when I lived in Paris, I was always amazed by the amount of “black stuff” that would collect so quickly on my windowsills. And that was just “ordinary” accumulations of soot, emissions and such … when faced with the magnitude of what… Read more »
Thanks IVG!
I think many people at least suspected… I remember actually reading an article pointed out by a friend of mine who lives in NYC, about some environmental group that did their own tests and came up with wayyyyy more toxins than the EPA was saying. Their findings weren’t exactly dismissed, but I think some just felt… what could they do?
Another long-term effect of the poisonous Bush Administration — the deliberate manipulation and sabatoge of government agencies that for decades have been trusted to investigate, research, collect and analyze scientific and statistical data and report the truth regardless of how those findings reflected on the work of either private industry or governmental organizations. Americans (and indeed, people around the world) have trusted the reports of those agencies, staffed by trained experts in their fields — FDA, OSHA, EPA, NIH, Army Corps of Engineers, NIST, even the Congressional Budget Office and General Services Administration — to be honest in their assessments.… Read more »
As this story shows, and the stories out of New Orleans show, among others, we can no longer trust the “findings” of EPA, of the FDA, of numerous other once-reliable governmental research agencies to be what they say they are. I am not sure that these agencies will ever regain their credibility, at least not in their current form. Then again, I am not sure that’s all a bad thing. The thing is that the Bush admin, and their all out war on actual effective policy, and their insistence on a political benefit to everything, has actually served to pull… Read more »
Got that right Nanette–isn’t it sad that it had to come to this for the rest of America to acknowledge that? will we ever get beyond this business of not caring about anything until we are directly hit by it?
Wish I could think otherwise, but it’s not looking good on that score from my perspective.
I am not sure the rest of America is quite there on acknowledging this yet. In fact, I’m pretty sure many just feel it’s an aberration that will be corrected when other groups get into office. Which it just well may be, for some. It’s my hope that, even if things change, a sufficient number will remember the feeling of the past five (or by then, eight or nine) years – the marginalization, media mainpulation of stories re the minority party vs the majority party, shouting into the storm while having the wind drown out your voice, having government agencies… Read more »
Thanks Nanette, this is such a sad thing. “People were a tad skeptical, but anxious to believe, as well as to do anything they could to help out in the first weeks after the tragedy.” I can’t help wondering what is it about us that makes us ignore what is obvious and accept a lie? Emily Dickinson knew: HOPE is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul, And sings the tune without the words, And never stops at all, And sweetest in the gale is heard; And sore… Read more »
One of my favorite poems :). Thanks.
While, as I said up there, I think many people would have done the same exact thing regardless of the dangers, we humans do seem to have an endless capacity for self-deception as well. Sigh.
Perhaps you forgot a few things in your rush to call them liars:
1) Its hard work.
2) They were busy planning an unnecessary war to kill tens of thousands more people.
3) They had to formulate an invaluable photo-op for the president.
4) They are incalculable monsters.
(thanks for the diary)
I also forgot Poland 🙁
4) They are incalculable monsters.
That covers it all, I think.
As someone present in NYC on 9/11 & the days following, I thank you very much for your post.
Personally, it was impossible to experience the environmental impact of the event & its long-burning aftermath as anything close to safe or acceptable. For as long as I remained in town & the attack sites burned & smoldered, the very air smelled like nothing but toxic death. It was horrendous.
Yet, there was no choice for us but to do what needed to be done — regardless of what we might sense instinctually or choose to believe.
Yet, there was no choice for us but to do what needed to be done — regardless of what we might sense instinctually or choose to believe. Exactly… I hope I don’t come across as blaming New Yorkers (or anyone who came to help) as being gullible or anything like that. Unless one had the ability to just get out of the city for months, there was no other choice but to deal with what was. Things needed to be done and most New Yorkers faced that head on, and just did them. I think many would have done that,… Read more »
Absolutely agreed about the EPA, Nanette. Their position here was utterly disgraceful — & somehow emblematic of the apparent disregard for basic humanity that seems thoroughly pervasive in terms of federal ‘leadership’ & responsibility, on every imaginable level. It’s as if this leadership structure is actually a solitary individual entirely without conscience, moral sense or human understanding. (Yes, I know, that’s actually the goal — overarching power in the hands of a single dumb-ass.) No, I certainly don’t read you as ‘blaming the victims’, so to speak. Likewise, I believe the citizens of any city similarly targeted would be compelled… Read more »
. . . agrees with you: U.S. District Judge Deborah A. Batts refused to grant Whitman immunity against a class-action lawsuit brought in 2004 by residents, students and workers in lower Manhattan and Brooklyn who said they were exposed to hazardous materials from the destruction of the World Trade Center. “No reasonable person would have thought that telling thousands of people that it was safe to return to lower Manhattan, while knowing that such return could pose long-term health risks and other dire consequences, was conduct sanctioned by our laws,” the judge said. She called Whitman’s actions “conscience-shocking,” saying the… Read more »
Oh, well done! Thanks for finding this… there may be some sort of justice after all. I hope they throw several books at her. And the rest of them, too.
Excellent overview Nanette. I wish I had some faith that Americans would shake themselves awake enough to punish these evil bastards, but it’s increasingly hard to get my hopes up.
Thanks madman. One good thing is that, according to the polls, more people at least seem more willing to consider punishing these guys in some way… but whether that would hold beyond the next terra alert is debatable.
But still… remember how one eats an elephant… one bite at a time.