| Title Page Previous Next Contents | Part 3. Was environmental health protected on 9/11? Whistleblowers, watchdogs and wee little people >Post script |
Post script
 |
Photo: Paul Olivier |
When asked, Police Captain
Terrence Revella doesn’t feel that there was any attempt to mislead people but
admits, “Saying there was no hazard to people—that was a little much.”
So far, though, few officials are
willing to publicly acknowledge some of their blunders.
However, the much-publicized
final report of Environmental Protection Agency's inspector general (25), in an
investigation into official statements about air quality after the collapse of
the World Trade Center, has now found that White House officials instructed the
agency to downplay and reassure the public in the first few days after the
attack. The report says the agency "did not have sufficient data and
analyses" to make a "blanket statement" when it announced seven
days after the attack that the air around ground zero was safe to breathe.
" The report cites other competing considerations, such “reopening Wall
Street” and “national security,” as reasons for the spin.
The final report by EPA’s Office
of the Inspector General (OIG), released August 21, states, among other
criticisms, that the White House reviewed and even changed EPA statements about
public health risks to make them sound less alarming. The report charges that
the White House Council on Environmental Quality influenced “the information
EPA communicated to the public through its early press releases when it
convinced EPA to add reassuring statement and delete cautionary ones.”
It also concluded that EPA
presented “an overriding message that there was no significant threat to human
health” even though there was cause for caution. “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,” said the OIG, adding that
the agency lacked data on other pollutants, such as particulates and chemicals
like PCBs, and had samples of dust showing that 25 percent contained asbestos,
a potent carcinogen.
According to the report, on the
morning of Sept. 12, EPA former Administrator Christie Whitman issued a memo
stating, “All statement to the media should be cleared through the NSC
(National Security Council) in the White House before they are released.” A
contact person at the Council on Environmental Quality was named to vet all
press releases.
The Inspector General’s 165-page
report compares EPA’s own drafts of press releases to their final versions
after having been vetted by the White House. Here are some examples:
·
Although EPA’s position has been that WTC residents should
obtain a professional cleaning, the final press release” deleted this
information and instructed them to refer to the city’s Department of Health
instructions instead.
·
Although EPA had wanted to give specific warnings for
“sensitive populations”—i.e. asthmatics, parents of young children, the
elderly, etc.—those warnings were also removed.
·
One press release that would have said “recent samples of
dust gathered by OSHA show higher levels of asbestos in EPA tests” was changed
to state "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."
·
In another draft, the language would have said asbestos
levels in some areas were two to three times higher than national was changed
to “slightly above the 1 percent trigger for defining asbestos material."
·
A draft that would have said initial tests failed to turn
up dangers instead added the statement:
"Our tests show that it is safe for New Yorkers to go back to work
in New York's financial district."
·
A statement warning of potential lead and asbestos exposure
at Ground Zero was changed to state that while some contaminants had been
found, "the general public should be very reassured by initial
sampling."
EPA Acting Administrator Marianne
Horinko told MSNBC news that the press releases and how they might have been
changed ought to be balanced against an awareness of the dimensions of the
challenge on 9/11. Coordinating communication among agencies was a “huge
challenge for us,” she says.
In the early days and weeks
of the World Trade Center disaster, says Horinko, there was such chaos that
mistakes were inevitably made. “Did we rush out (too soon) with data? On
balance, I think we used our best professional judgment in an atmosphere where
people were clamoring for answers.” But the agency wasn’t trying to deceive the
public, she claims. (26)
In the future, Horinko told NEHA,
there will certainly be efforts to make sure people are not reassured wrongly
and that health risks are accurately described.
In the Inspector General’s report,
Tinsley tempers her criticism with a recognition of the unprecedented
challenges of the agency and the bravery and dedication of its employees. “This
report, initiated by the OIG early in 2002, found that EPA staff did a
commendable job reacting to the unprecedented disaster,” Tinsley concludes. “Nonetheless,
many problems were encountered and changes should be made so that EPA can
better respond to future disasters.
“Unfortunately, our country lives
under the threat of future terrorist attacks, and it is important that we use
what we have learned from the World Trade Center tragedy to make improvements
to our emergency response capabilities,” Tinsley concludes.
The report set off a political
firestorm, both in the local New York community and among Democrats in
Congress.
“This release of this report has
had a tremendous impact on those of us living around Ground Zero,” says
downtown New York resident Pat Dillon, who lives in a high rise six short
blocks of the former World Trade Center. “Many of us who had enormous
difficulty raising attention to these issues in the past now suddenly have an
ear from those who were at first skeptical of the environmental and health
effects.”
Many New Yorkers expressed outrage
at the report that the White House influenced environmental officials to
downplay hazards posed by the toxic dust that fell in an avalanche over the
city. Kim Todd,
longsuffering downtown resident, who still lives several blocks from the former
towers, says she’s angry. “I might not have stayed down here—with dust on me
for days—had I known of the dangers,” she told MSNBC. “We were all lied to, and
I’m afraid everybody is going to be seriously sick.”
Meanwhile congressional Democrats,
including Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, Representative Jerrold Nadler (D-NY),
and Committee Ranking Members John Dingell (D-MI), John Conyers (D-MI), George
Miller (D-CA), and Henry Waxman (D-CA) in September 2003 called on Speaker
Hastert to launch a Congressional investigation into EPA's response to World
Trade Center contaminants.
In their demand for
a Congressional investigation, the legislators cited studies that they
said “show that 78 percent of emergency
responders, who traveled from all over the country to work at Ground Zero,
reported at least one World Trade Center-related lung symptom as a result of
their work at the site. Doctors have also documented thousands of cases of New
York City residents and workers who have become sick after they returned to
their homes, offices and schools around Ground Zero.”
Democratic Leader
Nancy Pelosi stated, "The Environmental Protection Agency knew there were
air pollution risks and failed to act.”
The Senate
Environment and Public Works Committee recently released its oversight report
of how EPA handled the aftermath of September 11. According to the committee,
it “transcends the EPA Inspector General investigation, which, because of
limited jurisdiction, lacked authority to question officials from the
Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the Council on
Environmental Quality (CEQ), who were intimately involved in the decision
making process after September 11,” it wrote in a press release.
The report’s five
conclusions, according to the committee, include:
·
That
“EPA acted properly in its response to the World Trade Center collapse, as well
as in its communications with the public regarding exposure risks faced by
workers and residents near the catastrophe”;
·
That
the Administration “did not suppress any public health information or data.
EPA’s communications reflected the prevailing coordinated views expressed by
agencies weighing in on the risks posed by asbestos;
·
That
“EPA went beyond its statutory obligations in its attempts to protect public
health;
·
That
“the Council on Environmental Quality’s "influence" on EPA's
communications was a proper function delegated to it by the President for
coordinating environmental health and safety decisions and information between
EPA and OSHA.
·
And
that “On matters of indoor air in the fall of 2001, it was proper for EPA to
defer to New York City, which was assigned the lead role.”
Time will be the best judge of
whether or not the government did enough to protect the public health.
But Ground Zero
neighborhood advocates argue that the EPA’s insistence that exposure to World
Trade Center dust would not be likely to pose “short term or long term health
risks” has already been proved wrong.
Eric Goldstein, attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council,
calculates that at least 30,000 people were affected by short-term illnesses.
The New York Firefighters Union points to thousands of members suffering from
chronic illnesses, some of whom have even gotten sicker, not better, over time.
There is nothing that can be done
now to bring back the lives of those lost in the towers, nor to bring back the
health of those survivors or rescuers who were injured. But 9/11 should serve
as a “warning shot” for the future. And there’s one issue everyone should agree upon: As
long as environmental health is regarded as a disposable item, no lessons will
be learned for the future.
Footnotes:
(1) Palmer, Brian CNN Online, Oct 1,
2001
http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/10/01/rec.air.quality/]
(2) Palmer, Brian, CNN Online, 11/04/01
http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/11/04/rec.environmental.concerns/
(3) Lyman, Francesca, MSNBC Online
9/26/01
http://stacks.msnbc.com/news/634336.asp?0cb=-41552104&cp1=1
(3) Jackson, Brian, “Protecting Emergency
Responders” (California, RAND, 2002),
p. 16
(4) Gonzalez, Juan, “A Toxic Nightmare
at a Disaster Site,” 10/26/01
(5) France, David, Newsweek, “Is Ground
Zero Safe?”, 10/05/01
http://www.msnbc.com/news/638853.asp
(6) Gonzalez, Juan, "Fallout: The
Environmental Consequences of the World Trade Center Collapse" (The New
Press) http://www.thenewpress.com/newbooks/fallout.htm
(7) http://www.immuneweb.org/911/pr/100801.html
(8) Gotham Gazette http://www.gothamgazette.com/commentary/106.burger.shtml
(9) MSNBC, staff and wire reports http://landofpuregold.com/truth3.htm
(10) Palmer, Brian, CNN Online, Oct. 1,
2001
http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/10/01/rec.air.quality/
(11) “Ground
Zero Workers Safe,” Newsday, 10/26/01”
(12) Jenkins, Cate, Memo to EPA 12/03/01
http://www.nyenvirolaw.org/PDF/Jenkins-12-3-01-WTCasbestos.pdf
(13)
Yearning to Breathe in a Toxic Zone, MSNBC,
Jan. 11, 2002. http://landofpuregold.com/truth6.htm
(14) Congressional Research
Service Report. Federal Disaster Policies
After Terrorist
Strikes: Issues and Options for
Congress.
June 24, 2002. Coordinated by Keith Bea. CRS
Order
Code RL31464
(15) http://www.senate.gov/~epw/107th/Nadler_062502.htm
(16) http://www.nycosh.org/WTCcatastrophe/EPA%20White%20Paper%20Final%204_12.pdf
(17)
Goodman, Troy, “Ground Zero Air More Hazardous Than EPA Admits,” The Salt Lake Tribune,
November
10, 2002
(18) Assembly
Standing Committee on Environmental Conservation, on April 12, 2002
(19)
Gittrich, Greg, Daily News, 5/14/02
(20)
Julie Scelfo, Newsweek, 3/15/02
http://www.msnbc.com/news/724974.asp
(21) Scheuerman, Arthur
http://ericdarton.net/afterwords/fireandair.html
(22)
Senator George V. Voinovich
http://www.senate.gov/~epw/107th/voi_092402.htm
(23)
Department
of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control, “Assessment of
Injuries among Survivors of the Terrorist Attack on the World Trade Center—New
York City, September, 2001,” MMWR Journal Weekly, Jan. 11, 2002.
(24) http://www.comptroller.nyc.gov/
Press release, New York City
Comptroller’s office/ Comptroller William C. Thompson
(25)http://www.epa.gov/oigearth/ereading_room/WTC_report_20030821.pdf
(26) “Anger builds over 9/11
report,” MSNBC Online, 9/11/03
http://www.msnbc.com/news/963407.asp
(27) Other
comments from Congress:
Rep. John Dingell,
Ranking Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, stated, 'The White
House was wrong when it told EPA to ‘add reassuring statements and delete
cautionary ones’ in their report on the air quality in Lower Manhattan. This
put the heroes and victims of September 11th at further, and needless risk. We
need to investigate what EPA knew, and what it didn’t know. And we need an
objective look at how the White House influenced EPA’s report. We can then see
what needs to be done to ensure that the American public is not misled again.”
Rep. John Conyers,
Ranking Democrat of the House Judiciary Committee, stated, "From providing
the American public with faulty assurances to downplaying significant
environmental and health risks, the EPA's IG report clearly documents a pattern
and practice of corruption and cover-ups that has placed the lives of countless
emergency responders, rescue volunteers and New York city residents in harms
way. What's most disturbing is a majority of the actions undertaken by the
Administration were carried out all in the name of political
gamesmanship."
Rep. George Miller,
Senior Democrat of the House Education and Workforce Committee, stated,
"The men and women who put their lives on the line day and night for weeks
in the Ground Zero pit and at the Pentagon have a right to know who at the
White House Council on Environmental Quality whitewashed the EPA reports on the
hazards at the rescue sites, as documented by the EPA inspector general; a
right to know their health and safety was paramount in the minds of those
federal officials charged with protecting them; and a right to compensation for
the equipment they brought to protect their health, especially in light of the
serious underestimations of risk by the EPA and OSHA."
Rep. Waxman, Ranking
Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee, stated, "While
political meddling in EPA's work is a hallmark of this Administration, it is
outrageous that the White House would gag EPA from keeping the public
adequately informed after a terrorist attack on our country."
In a letter to
Speaker Hastert, the congress members asked that Congressional hearings be
convened immediately in relevant House committees, including the Committees on
Energy and Commerce, Education and the Workforce, Government Reform, and the
Judiciary, to know what further action must be taken to safeguard the health
and lives of those affected by the EPA's response to the terrorist attacks.