Who's to Blame for 57 Dead from Ground Zero Pollutants?

Not we, say the City of New York, the Port Authority and their contractors:

Fifty-seven Ground Zero workers have died and thousands of others have been sickened by exposure to a noxious mix of chemicals released when the World Trade Center was reduced to smoldering rubble, their lawyer said yesterday.

But in a courtroom blocks from the site, the city denied responsibility, saying its contractors were acting in the nation’s defense as they worked to restore Ground Zero in the months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

So if it wasn’t the City of New York’s fault, nor the Port Authority’s, who is responsible for the deaths and illnesses caused by these toxic chemicals? Maybe it’s the one culprit who isn’t a party to the lawsuit: The Bush administration through the offices of the Environmental Protection Agency:

EPA’s early public statements following the collapse of the WTC towers reassured the public regarding the safety of the air outside the Ground Zero area. However, when EPA made a September 18 announcement that the air was “safe” to breathe, it did not have sufficient data and analyses to make such a blanket statement. At that time, air monitoring data was lacking for several pollutants of concern, including particulate matter and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Furthermore, The White House Council on Environmental Quality influenced, through the collaboration process, the information that EPA communicated to the public through its early press releases when it convinced EPA to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones. […]

Information and the analyses of available data did not fully support the statement made in the September 18, 2001, release, which quoted the EPA Administrator as saying the air was “safe” to breathe. Four factors in particular posed limitations on the conclusions that could be made at that time about air quality:

• A lack of data results for many pollutants,
• An absence of health benchmarks for asbestos and other pollutants,
• Imprecise optical asbestos sampling methodologies, and
• Over 25 percent of the bulk dust samples collected before September 18 showed the presence of asbestos above the 1 percent benchmark.

EPA did not have monitoring data to support reassurances made in press releases up to September 18 because it lacked monitoring data for several contaminants, particularly PCBs, particulate matter, dioxin, and PAHs.

Just remember that the next time you hear Republicans going on about how only the President’s strong leadership has kept our Nation safe. This is the same President who had no qualms about lying to the citizens of New York and the thousands of police, workers and volunteers who came to assist with the cleanup effort at the Ground Zero site about the safety of the air they would be breathing. Now 57 people have died from exposure to toxic chemicals which contaminated the Ground Zero site, and thousands more have fallen ill.

You might wonder why there had to be such a hurry to clean up the site, and why they had to lie about the hazardous conditions of the World Trade Center site. And you might wonder why the White House was stepping on the EPA to downplay the dangers to the health of thousands of people. Well here’s the official explanation that was given, for what it’s worth:

President Bush’s senior environmental adviser yesterday [Note: article was dated August 23, 2003] defended the White House involvement, saying it was justified by national security. […]

The day after the attacks, former EPA Deputy Administrator Linda Fisher’s chief of staff e-mailed senior EPA officials to say that “all statements to the media should be cleared” first by the National Security Council, which is Bush’s main forum for discussing national security and foreign policy matters with his senior aides and Cabinet, the inspector general’s report says.

National Security. The last refuge of scoundrels, rogues and murderers.

EPA