nfd2004 said:
Pretty sad, but I live only 120 miles from Ground Zero, and most people think 9/11 was over nine and a half years ago. Many are NOT at all aware of those still paying such a Terrible Price. Some are STILL paying the price with their breathing and sinus problems, and THEY are REMINDED of that Terrible Day, "EVERY DAY of their Life".
Some of the blame also has to be laid on the EPA who went out right after 9/11 and declared that the air was SAFE to breathe, people TRUSTED the EPA and so many did not wear any kind of respirators or even dust masks despite the heavy dust and smoke full of toxic metals, asbestos and chemicals.
The EPA lied and people died, the pressure was to get Wall street back up ASAP no matter what, absolutely sickening.
I remember the video about James Zadroga, terrible! This entire cleanup situation was full of fraud, waste and mishandling from day one, money talks, just follow the money trail and it becomes clearer.
In August 2003 it was revealed that the Government ordered the EPA to give the public misleading information, telling New Yorkers on September 12 it was safe to breathe when reliable information on air quality was not available and Asbestos levels were known to be three times higher than national standards.
Further documents were obtained by CBS news last September, revealing that Lower Manhattan was reopened a few weeks following the attack even though the air was not safe.
The two devastating memos, written by the U.S. and local governments, show they knew. They knew the toxic soup created at Ground Zero was a deadly health hazard. Yet they sent workers into the pit and people back into their homes.
"Not only did they know it was unsafe, they didn't heed the words of more experienced people that worked for the city and E.P.A.," said Joel Kupferman, with the group Environmental Justice Project.
Public Misled on Air Quality After 9/11 Attack, Judge Says
Published: February 3, 2006
Christie Whitman, when she led the Environmental Protection Agency, made "misleading statements of safety" about the air quality near the World Trade Center in the days after the Sept. 11 attack and may have put the public in danger, a federal judge found yesterday.
The pointed criticism of Mrs. Whitman came in a ruling by the judge, Deborah A. Batts of Federal District Court in Manhattan, in a 2004 class action lawsuit on behalf of residents and schoolchildren from downtown Manhattan and Brooklyn who say they were exposed to air contamination inside buildings near the trade center.
As a legal matter, the ruling established that the suit's charges were well-documented and troubling enough to meet a legal standard to go forward. But Judge Batts also criticized Mrs. Whitman's performance in the days after the collapse of the towers unleashed, by the E.P.A.'s estimates, one million tons of dust on lower Manhattan and beyond.
Three days after 9/11, following questionable air sampling techniques, a spokesperson for the EPA said that levels of asbestos were either at low levels, negligible, or undetectable.
?I am glad to reassure the people of New York and Washington, D.C., that the air is safe to breathe and their water is safe to drink,? Whitman said one week after 9/11.
?You smell it, and you feel there must be something wrong,? Giuliani said. ?But what I?m told is that it is not dangerous to your health.? Days later he encouraged New Yorkers to ?go back to normal.?
Once praised for his heroic response, Giuliani has now made New York City vulnerable to a billion-dollar lawsuit that addresses many haphazard health violations that occurred under his watch. Fewer than 30 percent of Ground Zero workers, for example, wore respirators. After repeated phone calls and e-mails, Giuliani would not return calls or send comments.
Nina closed her windows and shut her air conditioner flues. As a former jeweler, she?d worked around dangerous chemicals before and understood the hazards of toxic fumes. From her apartment seven blocks north of the World Trade Center, she sat transfixed until a second explosion jolted her into action.
?The whole neighborhood was blanketed in a gray snow,? she recalls. ?Some people were walking by in moon suits.?
Although Nina could not have known it at the time, she had just entered one of the most dangerous atmospheric conditions ever to occur on American soil, and she suffers the consequences. She had chronic bronchitis until 2003 and still has esophagitis and sinusitis. Many health professionals believe others like her won?t experience the harsher, suffocating symptoms for several more years.
Up to 70 percent of first responders are ill as a result of 9/11 contamination. If a similar rate of illness holds true for those who lived and worked near the Twin Towers, the number of seriously ill New Yorkers could climb to 300,000 in the near future. About 70,000 New Yorkers so far have listed themselves with the World Trade Center Health Registry, a database that tracks the health impact of the 9/11 attacks. The registry has been criticized for excluding large numbers of those potentially sickened outside a designated one-square-mile area.
Despite the insistent denials of city and federal officials, tens of thousands of New Yorkers were unnecessarily exposed to a chemical brew without even the most rudimentary precautions. Today New York City is still mired in a fog of cover-ups and half-truths regarding its environmental welfare.
Civil rights attorney Felicia Dunn Jones, who worked a block from the towers, was caught in the initial deluge of dust when the towers fell. Although her family rejoiced upon her return home, Dunn
Jones developed a serious cough the following January. She died barely five weeks later of sarcoidosis, an immune disorder caused by toxic exposure.