-9/11: What Did the EPA Know and When Did It Know It?

Note from Paul

Just a few days ago there was an article about a 20 or 30 year health study, I think by NYC and NY State on people who were around the World Trade Center. Is this going to be a
clandestine effort by the Pentagon to see what the effects of asbestos and other agents were on people, presumably to use the data in manufacturing their own weapons, will it actually serve to protect people in the future by helping to create better building standards? Note
that the Environmental Protection Agency withheld information and still does at the behest of the Bushites. (See below). Note too that after Hiroshima the U.S. military conducted extensive tests on victims probably to plan for the next bombings in order to maximize the terror caused.

Institute for Public Accuracy
915 National Press Building, Washington, D.C. 20045
(202) 347-0020 * http://www.accuracy.org * ipa@accuracy.org

OEL KUPFERMAN, envjoel@ix.netcom.com, http://www.nyenvirolaw.org
Kupferman is the executive director of the New York Environmental Law and
Justice Project. He said today: “On September 19, 2001, one day after the
EPA declared that the ‘air was safe to breathe,’ we took samples in lower
Manhattan and sent them to two respected labs — the results came back with
alarmingly high levels of toxins such as asbestos and fiberglass. We filed
a Freedom of Information Act request to the EPA, resulting in 800 pages of
raw data which revealed that — in spite of their assurances to the
contrary — EPA, OSHA and the various other health and environmental
agencies knew of the dangers present at Ground Zero and beyond, on the
ground and in the air.” Kupferman said the documents showed that:

* “Analyses prepared for the EPA by scientists were held back from
publication, though their findings were highly relevant to health care
providers trying to diagnose and treat those with acute symptoms, to say
nothing of the public at large, which deserved to know its own risks.”

* “High concentrations of dangerous contaminants remained even three weeks
after the towers collapsed — after, at EPA’s urging, people were back in
the area, living and working full-time.”

* “In the three weeks following September 11, the agency was testing the
ambient air but not releasing the results, and it was not testing settled
dust with the highest-scrutiny techniques available — choosing, instead,
cheaper and non-aggressive techniques that, predictably, yielded lower
results. Nor was it testing air inside offices or apartments near Ground
Zero, where people were told it was safe to return within three days of the
disaster.”

* “EPA also failed to reveal that, for its own headquarters cleanup, it
used a particular type of high-sensitivity sampling method, called
micro-vacuum. EPA then took a position that micro-vac testing was
unnecessary for schools and residences in lower Manhattan. EPA cleaned up
its own headquarters using professional abatement methods while directing
residents to follow the city’s Department of Health instructions which
recommended using ‘a wet rag or wet mop.’ EPA also actively discounted
results obtained when the micro-vac was used independently in the
neighborhood.”

Kupferman added: “In April 2002, the Uniformed Firefighters Association,
concerned about members’ exposure, asked my organization to conduct testing
on fire engines; our testing showed up to 5 percent chrysotile
asbestos, five times the level at which the law requires immediate
de-contamination, on vehicles that had already been ‘decontaminated’ by a
city contractor.”

TOM BRAZAITIS, tbrazaitis@starpower.net,
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0831-05.htm
Brazaitis, formerly a Cleveland Plain Dealer senior editor, wrote an August
31 column titled “Promises Turn to Toxic Dust.” He said today: “A report
released by the Office of the Inspector General of the EPA … [states
that] ‘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….’ The National Security Council operatives played a
similar role in an earlier scandal involving the false assertion … that
Saddam Hussein had tried to acquire uranium in Africa for weapons of mass
destruction.”

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 332-5055 or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167