Report Blasts Bush On Ground Zero Cleanup

mods: this is about the environment, not the election campaign.

from today's Progress Report emailing from the Center For American Progress. website link below

ENVIRONMENT
Report Blasts Bush On Ground Zero Cleanup

In a strongly worded and minutely detailed report, the Sierra Club charges the Bush administration with "reckless disregard" for public health in the days and months following the collapse of the World Trade Center. "Many hundreds of people" are sick today, the report states, some debilitatingly so, because of the government's failure to alert the public to obvious health risks, including toxic smoke, asbestos and mercury at Ground Zero. The report concludes: "Much of the exposure that caused these illnesses, sadly, could have been avoided if our federal government had responded to the crisis…with proper concern for the people exposed." The report is the most comprehensive in a litany of evidence suggesting Bush administration officials ignored warnings, misinterpreted data and issued a series of overly optimistic and unsupported statements about environmental conditions which endangered and in some cases ruined the health of heroic rescue workers and residents in and around Ground Zero.

THE EPA WHITEWASH: The day after the World Trade Center collapsed, "a top federal scientist warned in a strongly worded memo against the quick reoccupation of buildings in lower Manhattan because of possible dangers from asbestos and other toxic materials." But, unaccountably, the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) first press release, on Sept. 13, said the results of sampling were "very reassuring." On Sept. 17, federal and city officials allowed thousands of people to return to lower Manhattan, declaring a day later that "their air is safe to breathe and their water is safe." But EPA Inspector General Nikki Tinsley later admitted, "the EPA had not gathered nearly enough data to make such a sweeping declaration." It was in these days, according to the Sierra Club's report, that New Yorkers near the site were exposed to dangerous levels of asbestos, lead, concrete, glass and other debris, including toxic vapors easily assimilated into people's lungs and nasal passenges. But on Oct. 3, the EPA said Ground Zero data through Sept. 30 revealed "no significant health risks."

PLEADING IGNORANCE: The Bush administration's only defense for allowing rescue workers and other New Yorkers to expose themselves to harmful chemicals and toxins in the days following 9/11 has been to claim it did not know of the danger. The report categorically refutes that logic. It states, "The hazards posed by the incineration and demolition of the towers were new in scale, but not that new in character. There was a long-standing, accepted body of knowledge about the potential dangers that the federal government ignored. EPA failed to find toxic hazards because it did not look for them." When private parties, "using technology that the federal government not only knew about but possessed," did find evidence of public health hazards in the area, the EPA failed to revise its sunny, uninformed conclusions. "Leaders in the Bush Administration failed to change their statements of assurance about safety even after it became clear that people were getting sick."

LANGUAGE GAMES: When EPA officials did find hazards at Ground Zero, Inspector Tinsley's August report documents several instances where the Bush administration stripped their draft statements of caveats and warnings before releasing them to the public. For instance, language in an EPA draft stating asbestos levels in some areas were three times higher than national standards was changed to "slightly above the 1 percent trigger for defining asbestos material." In another example, "A warning on the importance of safely handling ground zero cleanup, due to lead and asbestos exposure, was changed to say that…'the general public should be very reassured by initial sampling.'" As for the Sept. 18 statement telling New Yorkers their air and water were safe, agency scientists quoted in Inspector Tinsley's report said "the EPA added reassuring language and deleted words of caution" after it was urged to do so by the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

COUNCIL RUN BY INDUSTRY INSIDER: And who was the man the Bush administration put in charge of vetting memos to the public about Ground Zero? "The White House changes were the work of James Connaughton, chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality…an industry lawyer who represented major asbestos and toxic polluters before his appointment by President Bush."

STEPS NOT TAKEN: On 9/14/01, President Bush saluted the firemen and rescue workers at Ground Zero, saying the nation was "on bended knee…for the workers that work here." But because of his administration's repeated public assurances, the Sierra Club report found myriad steps were not taken which might have insulated those workers from health risks. Throughout the cleanup effort, rescue and recovery workers were given "inadequate safety gear and conflicting messages about the need to use it." When union health officials urged employers to provide safety gear, they encountered resistance. And privately hired dust and debris clean-up workers often had "no protective gear at all." These and other missteps are partially responsible for the adverse health of the "Ground Zero Community" documented in the report. According to the Sierra Club, many of those who worked on the site are now in need of "long-term health monitoring and other help. The federal government, however, has not provided reasonably adequate assistance to these people."

WHAT YOU CAN DO: You can sign the Sierra Club's petition here to ensure the Bush administration finishes the job of cleaning up Ground Zero and provides proper care and monitoring to those at risk of illness from Trade Center pollutants.

www.sierraclub.com
www.americanprogress.org

Come and parade your triumph.

Be sure to thank Karl Rove.

they are here in NYC...

read Ted Rall's column at commondreams.org

Anti-Republican sentiment is rising to a fever pitch here as the dog days tick down to the dreaded affair. A poll cited by the local ABC affiliate shows 83 percent of New Yorkers don't want their city to host the RNC. And many of them are planning to do something about it.

Rejecting ex-mayor Ed Koch's call to "make nice" with the party that used the deaths of 2,801 New Yorkers--most of them Democrats--for everything from tax cuts for the rich to building concentration camps at Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib to invading Iraq to enrich Dick Cheney and his fellow Halliburton execs, some groups are encouraging liberal-minded New Yorkers to volunteer for the city's squad of official greeters. Creatively altered maps of streets and subways will be handed out to button-clad stupid white men. Other saboteurs wearing fake RNC T-shirts will direct them to parts of town where Bush's policies have hit hardest. Rumor has it that prostitutes suffering from sexually transmitted diseases will discourage the use of condoms with Republican customers.

Anywhere between 250,000 and 1,000,000 anti-Bush demonstrators are expected to hit the streets of Manhattan, but the city and protest organizers can't agree on where to put them. Activists say they'll direct marchers to Central Park, their preferred site; city officials are threatening mass arrests if they do. Adding to the already combustible Chicago '68 vibe is a possible wildcat strike by city cops and firefighters. And now, as if everyone concerned wasn't already tweaky, FBI agents are traveling around the United States, to harass members of leftist groups planning to protest the New York RNC.

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0818-11.htm