Ground Zero Workers: The Continuing Cost Of A Cover-Up

[Omaha Steve]

FULL story: http://spewingforth.blogspot.com/2006/08/ground-zero-workers-continuing-cost-of.html

Ground Zero Workers: The Continuing Cost Of A Cover-Up

"I am glad to reassure the people of New York and Washington, D.C., that their air is safe to breathe and their water is safe to drink." - Christie Whitman, U.S. EPA administrator, September 19, 2001

`It's one thing when people are exposed to hazardous conditions in the heat of a crisis, or because no one is aware of the hazard. In the case of World Trade Center ground zero workers, plenty was known early on about the toxicity of the dust they were inhaling, and little was done to ensure that workers were protected -- especially by those agencies -- the City of New York, OSHA and EPA -- who were responsible for worker safety. One only hopes that, should something like this ever happen again, we've learned our lesson.



Now documents and memos obtained by Newsday reveal that New York city officials, pressured by building and business owners to open up downtown New York in the vicinity of the collapsed World Trade Center buildings following 9/11, ignored advice from experts, possibly dooming thousands to illness, shorter lives and death. The documents show that city officials may have opened up hazardous areas prematurely, even though they were warned by other officials at the New York Department of Environmental Protection that the air may have still been hazardous.

The documents revealed that:

* City, state and federal officials failed to enforce workplace safety laws - for example, fining or expelling workers who did not wear respirators. Use of respirators remained below 45 percent for most of the recovery project.

* The city's Department of Environmental Protection, which conducted tests for asbestos in the days immediately after Sept. 11 that showed dangerously high levels of the fibers, did not reveal those test results to the public. The results were later disclosed by the state in response to a Freedom of Information request.

* A U.S. Geological Survey study found that the dust was as caustic as drain cleaner. That study was not disclosed to the public until February 2002.

And the failure to enforce the use of respirators becomes even more troubling. Associate Commissioner Kelly McKinney

suggested that the health department should start issuing violations to enforce the safety rules. The idea went nowhere. It wasn't until February 2002 that the city's Department of Design and Construction began to issue fines to companies whose workers disregarded the safety rules, records show.