Lung Problems Plague 9/11 Workers
Study: Nearly 70% Of Ground Zero Workers Had Respiratory Issues
Findings highlighted by the study include:
Thanks to the Bush Regimes EPA refusal to do a hazards assessment, those who went to clean up were not warned of the toxic hazards. And in fact Bush himself was the poster boy for how safe it was, when he stood on the rubble of the WTC without Personal Protective Equipment...Respirator, etc.
Five years later; Chickens, Home, Roost.
9/11: Katrina Started at Ground Zero
Here's how it worked: First, Karl Rove and George Bush saw an opportunity -- mounting the pile of World Trade Center rubble -- for a public-relations coup in devastated Manhattan that could instantly reverse the President's distinctly unpresidential day on 9/11 and his administration's previously weak polling numbers. Second, Washington pushed New York Mayor Rudolf Giuliani and local officials to get with the program and re-open Wall Street (which the 9/11 attacks had shut down) faster than was advisable. Third, city officials were told by administration emissaries that, despite the pall hanging over Ground Zero, all was well with the air and water in lower Manhattan and normal life should resume.
Finally, although nearly the entire city could, for months to come, smell the rancid co-mingling of burning plastics, asbestos, lead, chromium, mercury, vinyl chloride, benzene, and scores of other toxic materials as well as decaying human flesh, Bush's appointees in the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) continually bombarded city officials with reports claiming that the air was certifiably "safe" to breathe. As EPA Administrator Christy Whitman put it, "There's no need for the general public to be concerned." To this day we do not know the extent of contamination or level of exposure to which residents, workers, and students in the area were (and are still being) subjected.
Everyone got on the band wagon: the President mounted the pile of rubble without respiratory protection, signaling to firemen, policemen, and volunteers that he-men shouldn't worry about the towers having become a toxic waste-pile the likes of which the developed world hadn't seen since Chernobyl. Under the goading of EPA officials, even the venerable New York City Department of Health (despite internal dissention) began proclaiming lower Manhattan safe for the return of residents. (At that time, Lower Manhattan's congressional representative Jerrold Nadler was arguing that it was still dangerously toxic.) The Board of Education, feeling the heat from the Giuliani administration -- in turn, reacting to pressure from Washington -- ordered schools just a few blocks from Ground Zero reopened and thousands of students were sent back to the neighborhood.
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