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EPA Misled Public on 9/11 Pollution

White House ordered false assurances on air quality, report says

A statement about discovery of asbestos at higher than safe levels in dust samples from lower Manhattan was changed to state that "samples confirm previous reports that ambient air quality meets OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) standards and consequently is not a cause for public concern."

wankers.

fucking wankers.

NEW YORK -- In the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center, the White House instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to give the public misleading information, telling New Yorkers it was safe to breathe when reliable information on air quality was not available.

That finding is included in a report released Friday by the Office of the Inspector General of the EPA. It noted that some of the agency's news releases in the weeks after the attack were softened before being released to the public: Reassuring information was added, while cautionary information was deleted.

"When the 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," the report says. "Furthermore, the White House Council on Environmental Quality influenced . . . 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."

BUSH ADMINISTRATION: NYC AIR 'SAFE TO BREATHE'

The Statue of Liberty stands in the foreground as New York is shrouded in smoke and pollution in New York image made from television, Tuesday Sept. 11, 2001. (ABC via APTN)

On the morning of Sept. 12, according to the report, the office of then-EPA Administrator Christie Whitman issued a memo: "All statements to the media should be cleared through the NSC (National Security Council in the White House) before they are released." The 165-page report compares excerpts from EPA draft statements to the final versions, including these:

The draft statement contained a warning from EPA scientists that homes and businesses near ground zero should be cleaned by professionals. Instead, the public was told to follow instructions from New York City officials.

Another draft statement was deleted; it raised concerns about "sensitive populations" such as asthma patients, the elderly and people with underlying respiratory diseases.

LEVELS OF ASBESTOS

A statement about discovery of asbestos at higher than safe levels in dust samples from lower Manhattan was changed to state that "samples confirm previous reports that ambient air quality meets OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) standards and consequently is not a cause for public concern."

Language in an EPA draft stating that asbestos levels in some areas were three times higher than national standards was changed to "slightly above the 1 percent trigger for defining asbestos material."

This sentence was added to a Sept. 16 news release: "Our tests show that it is safe for New Yorkers to go back to work in New York's financial district." It replaced a statement that initial monitors failed to turn up dangerous samples.

A warning on the importance of safely handling ground zero cleanup, due to lead and asbestos exposure, was changed to say that some contaminants had been noted downtown but "the general public should be very reassured by initial sampling."

The report also notes examples when EPA officials claimed that conditions were safe when no scientific support was available.

New York's leaders responded with dismay.

Rep. Jerry Nadler, a Manhattan Democrat, called for a Justice Department investigation. "That the White House instructed EPA officials to downplay the health impact of the World Trade Center contaminants due to 'competing considerations' at the expense of the health and lives of New York City residents is an abomination," he said in a news release.

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said in an interview it was "understandable that in the midst of a crisis the White House did not want the EPA to sound alarmist." But, he warned, "If the public loses faith that things are safe when the government says so, we'll have done more damage than a pointed statement the week after 9/11 would have."

The White House did not respond to requests for comment.

EPA CHIEF

Acting EPA Administrator Marianne Horinko, who sat in on EPA meetings with the White House during the attack's aftermath, said in an interview that the White House had played a coordinating role, assembling information from various federal agencies.

"It was a role someone had to play," Horinko said. "There was a potential for a Tower of Babel, and we needed to speak with one voice."

The National Security Council played the key role, filtering incoming data on ground zero air and water, Horinko said. "I think that the thinking was, these are experts in WMD (weapons of mass destruction), so they should have the coordinating role."

The focus at EPA, she continued, was on gathering data and making it public as rapidly as possible.

"Under unbelievably trying conditions, EPA did the best that it could," she said.

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it sort of makes sense actually. logically thinking, how can the air NOT be contaminated after all that rubble from the twin towers? There was an article published somewhere (let me see if i can find it) and how women who became pregnant after 9/11 had more defective births and complications than normal. this is pretty much common sense. it's sad though, because at least they could have been honest and people would have taken precautions, wearing masks like they did in asia with SARS or whatever. but truly, this is really wrong.

World Trade Center History

Magnificent buildings graced skyline

by David Johnson

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The twin towers of the World Trade Center were more than just buildings. They were proof of New York's belief in itself. Built at a time when New York's future seemed uncertain, the towers restored confidence and helped bring a halt to the decline of lower Manhattan. Brash, glitzy, and grand, they quickly became symbols of New York.

Rockefeller Brainchild

The World Trade Center was conceived in the early 1960s by the Downtown-Lower Manhattan Development Association to revitalize the seedy radio row dominated by electronic stores. Chase Manhattan Bank chairman David Rockefeller, founder of the development association, and his brother, New York governor Nelson Rockefeller, pushed hard for the project, insisting it would benefit the entire city.

In 1962, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey began plans to build the center. Minoru Yamasaki and Associates of Michigan was hired as architect. Eventually, Yamasaki decided on two huge towers. Critics charged that a modern monolith would rob New York of character, ruin the skyline, disrupt television reception, and strain city services. However, the project was approved and construction began in 1966.

In order to create the 16-acre World Trade Center site, five streets were closed off and 164 buildings were demolished. Construction required the excavation of more than 1.2 million cubic yards of earth, which was used to create 23.5 acres of land along the Hudson River, now part of Battery Park City in lower Manhattan. During peak construction periods, 3,500 people worked at the site. A total of 10,000 people worked on the towers; 60 died during its construction.

The memorial park included in Daniel Libeskind's design

Instant Landmarks

The north tower was opened in Dec. 1970 and the south tower in Jan. 1972; they were dedicated in April 1973. They were the world's tallest buildings for only a short time, since the Sears Tower in Chicago was completed in May 1973. However, the towers were ranked as the fifth and sixth tallest buildings in the world at the time of their destruction on Sept. 11, 2001.

Four smaller buildings and a hotel, all built nearby around a central landscaped plaza, completed the complex. The mall at the World Trade Center, which was located immediately below the plaza, was the largest shopping mall in lower Manhattan. The six basements housed two subway stations and a stop on the PATH trains to New Jersey.

Some 50,000 people worked in the buildings, while another 200,000 visited or passed through each day. The complex had its own zip code, 10048.

Previous Bombing

In 1993 terrorists drove a truck packed with 1,100 lbs of explosives into the basement parking garage at the World Trade Center. Despite the size of the blast—it left a crater 22 ft wide and five stories deep—only six people were killed and 1,000 injured. The towers were repaired, cleaned, and reopened in less than a month.

Although the World Trade Center had been leased to New York real-estate developer Larry Silverstein just prior to the attacks, control over what happens now to the site will rest largely with the Port Authority and the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, which was established by Governor Pataki to coordinate the various agencies and advisory committees involved in the rebuilding efforts.

In February 2003, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation chose architect Daniel Libeskind's design for rebuilding the 16-acre site of the former World Trade Center. The design includes a hanging garden, a memorial, a cultural center, and is topped by a spiral tower reaching 1,776 feet tall, which will make it the tallest building in the world. Libeskind estimates it will cost 330 million dollars and take more than ten years to rebuild the site. This design is from a second set of plans shown to the public; the first group was critized for its overemphasis on office space.

ok, so according to this article, the wtc was built during the 1960's. makes perfect sense, considering asbestos concerns came up during the late 1970's- early 1980's...

Asbestos Exposure

Asbestos Exposure synonyms and related conditions: mesothelioma, pneumoconiosis, pulmonary fibrosis, lung disease, bronchogenic carcinoma, malignant mesothelioma

Asbestos exposure increases a persons risk to a number of asbestos related diseases including mesothelioma and asbestosis.

Asbestosis - Asbestosis is a serious threat to one’s health because it can cause severe forms of lung disease. Asbestosis is one form of asbestos disease. Asbestosis is a scarring of the lung tissue. Scarring of the lung tissue by asbestosis decreases the ability of the lung to exchange these gases.

Mesothelioma - Second, one’s chances of developing a tumor or cancer of the lung is five times greater than normal if exposed to asbestos. Malignant mesothelioma, a rare form of cancer caused by exposure to asbestos, is a disease in which cancer cells are found in the sac lining the chest, the lining of the abdominal cavity, or the lining around the heart. Malignant mesothelioma is an uncommon cancer that is difficult to diagnose and poorly responsive to therapy. Malignant mesothelioma is the most serious of all asbestos-related diseases.

How do you get Mesothelioma? Most people with malignant mesothelioma have worked on jobs where they breathed asbestos. Others mesothelioma victims have been exposed to asbestos in a household environment, often without knowing it.

but it seems like they put peoples' lives at stake for the sake of maintaining a certain facade for the american people and the world.but at what price?

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there's no doubt that the air must have been more polluted for some time (not that its ever clean in NYC). But there has not been any evidence that this "cover-up" really happened. The article has no identity. It just says, "Report says, ...... New York-" What report?? where did it come from?

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Originally posted by marksimons

by this:

EPA Misled Public on 9/11 Pollution

White House ordered false assurances on air quality, report says

A statement about discovery of asbestos at higher than safe levels in dust samples from lower Manhattan was changed to state that "samples confirm previous reports that ambient air quality meets OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) standards and consequently is not a cause for public concern."

wankers.

fucking wankers.

NEW YORK -- In the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center, the White House instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to give the public misleading information, telling New Yorkers it was safe to breathe when reliable information on air quality was not available.

That finding is included in a report released Friday by the Office of the Inspector General of the EPA. It noted that some of the agency's news releases in the weeks after the attack were softened before being released to the public: Reassuring information was added, while cautionary information was deleted.

"When the 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," the report says. "Furthermore, the White House Council on Environmental Quality influenced . . . 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."

BUSH ADMINISTRATION: NYC AIR 'SAFE TO BREATHE'

The Statue of Liberty stands in the foreground as New York is shrouded in smoke and pollution in New York image made from television, Tuesday Sept. 11, 2001. (ABC via APTN)

On the morning of Sept. 12, according to the report, the office of then-EPA Administrator Christie Whitman issued a memo: "All statements to the media should be cleared through the NSC (National Security Council in the White House) before they are released." The 165-page report compares excerpts from EPA draft statements to the final versions, including these:

The draft statement contained a warning from EPA scientists that homes and businesses near ground zero should be cleaned by professionals. Instead, the public was told to follow instructions from New York City officials.

Another draft statement was deleted; it raised concerns about "sensitive populations" such as asthma patients, the elderly and people with underlying respiratory diseases.

LEVELS OF ASBESTOS

A statement about discovery of asbestos at higher than safe levels in dust samples from lower Manhattan was changed to state that "samples confirm previous reports that ambient air quality meets OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) standards and consequently is not a cause for public concern."

Language in an EPA draft stating that asbestos levels in some areas were three times higher than national standards was changed to "slightly above the 1 percent trigger for defining asbestos material."

This sentence was added to a Sept. 16 news release: "Our tests show that it is safe for New Yorkers to go back to work in New York's financial district." It replaced a statement that initial monitors failed to turn up dangerous samples.

A warning on the importance of safely handling ground zero cleanup, due to lead and asbestos exposure, was changed to say that some contaminants had been noted downtown but "the general public should be very reassured by initial sampling."

The report also notes examples when EPA officials claimed that conditions were safe when no scientific support was available.

New York's leaders responded with dismay.

Rep. Jerry Nadler, a Manhattan Democrat, called for a Justice Department investigation. "That the White House instructed EPA officials to downplay the health impact of the World Trade Center contaminants due to 'competing considerations' at the expense of the health and lives of New York City residents is an abomination," he said in a news release.

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said in an interview it was "understandable that in the midst of a crisis the White House did not want the EPA to sound alarmist." But, he warned, "If the public loses faith that things are safe when the government says so, we'll have done more damage than a pointed statement the week after 9/11 would have."

The White House did not respond to requests for comment.

EPA CHIEF

Acting EPA Administrator Marianne Horinko, who sat in on EPA meetings with the White House during the attack's aftermath, said in an interview that the White House had played a coordinating role, assembling information from various federal agencies.

"It was a role someone had to play," Horinko said. "There was a potential for a Tower of Babel, and we needed to speak with one voice."

The National Security Council played the key role, filtering incoming data on ground zero air and water, Horinko said. "I think that the thinking was, these are experts in WMD (weapons of mass destruction), so they should have the coordinating role."

The focus at EPA, she continued, was on gathering data and making it public as rapidly as possible.

"Under unbelievably trying conditions, EPA did the best that it could," she said.

No wonder Igloo's brain is fried.

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Originally posted by sassa

hmmmmmm...i wonder why igloo and the rest of the republican teletubbies aren't responding to this?

They are:

a) blowing up abortion clinics

B) blowing up mosques

c) beating up gays

d) lynching blacks

e) attending a KKK rally

f) getting brainwashed by watching Fox News

h) watching the 700 club

i) watching the teletubbies

j) getting their brains fried by breathing the shit.

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