Documents Show Feds Downplayed Ground Zero Health Risks

[babylonsister]

Documents Show Feds Downplayed Ground Zero Health Risks

Posted on Sep 11, 2011

FEMA News / Andrea Booher

Workers attempt to clear debris at the World Trade Center site on Sept. 13, 2001.

By Anthony DePalma, ProPublica

This article was published earlier by ProPublica and The Guardian.


In the dark and uncertain days after Sept. 11, 2001, the sight of thousands of shaken New Yorkers returning to their apartments, offices and schools in Lower Manhattan seemed to signal a larger return to normalcy.

Now new documents have emerged showing that federal officials in Washington and New York went further than was previously known to downplay concerns about health risks, misrepresenting or concealing information that ultimately might have protected thousands of people from the contaminated air at ground zero.

In one instance, a warning that people should not report to work on a busy thoroughfare in the financial district—Water Street—was rewritten and workers instead were urged to return to their offices as soon as the financial district opened on Sept. 17. In another, federal officials declared that testing showed the area was safe when sampling of the air and dust—which ultimately found very high levels of toxic chemicals—had barely begun.

The documents do not reveal how—or whether—federal officials explicitly weighed the competing goals of ensuring New Yorkers’ safety and projecting an image of a city and nation unbowed. But taken as a whole, the records—which include email messages from the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality to the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, as well as interagency correspondence—give the most detailed account yet of how officials kept potentially disturbing data about health risks from the public.

more...

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/new_docs_detail_how_feds_downplayed_ground_zero_health_risks_20110911/

[liberal N proud]

1. And the GOP says the EPA does more harm than good

Who would reassure the people if there were no government agency telling us all is well?




:sarcasm:

[no_hypocrisy]

2. They didn't downplay. They lied.

Insider: EPA Lied About WTC Air

A scientist for the Environmental Protection Agency is charging that the agency lied when it claimed the air at ground zero was safe to breathe in the weeks after the 9/11 attacks.

In an exclusive interview, Cate Jenkins. Ph.D., tells The Early Show national correspondent Tracy Smith that wasn't so, and EPA officials knew it, but covered up the truth.

-snip-

On Sept. 13, 2001, then-EPA head Christine Todd Whitman told reporters at ground zero, "We have not seen any reason — any readings that have indicated any health hazard."

Asked by Smith if EPA officials lied, Dr. Jenkins responded, "Yes, they did."

-more-

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/09/08/earlyshow/main1985804.shtml

[SoCalDem]

3. The day I saw Christie Whitman announce that the air was safe,

I yelled ASBESTOS at the tv.. :grr:

anyone who stayed & breathed that, signed their own death warrant...maybe not right away but certainly earlier than necesary.

[babylonsister]

4. Yes, I remember her, and how 'reassuring' she was.

:eyes:

[pintobean]

5. kick