When the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center collapsed on 9/11, humongous plumes of concrete dust, asbestos, lead, and other material hovered over Manhattan. Fires at the site burned for over two months, releasing even more junk, like dioxins, PCBs, and volatile organic compounds.
Yet the Environmental Protection Agency painted a rosy picture of air quality. On September 13, 2001, an EPA press release cheerily said that the results of their testing were “very reassuring” and “uniformly acceptable.” Administrator Christine Todd Whitman was quoted: “EPA is greatly relieved to have learned that there appears to be no significant levels of asbestos dust in the air in New York City.”
The next day, the EPA's missive soothed frazzled nerves: “EPA continues to believe that there is no significant health risk to the general public in the coming days.” On the 18th of that month, Whitman declared: “I am glad to reassure the people of New York and Washington, D.C. that their air is safe to breathe...”
It was all a lie.
The first revelation came in the form of a report from the EPA's Inspector General. The internal watchdog said that at the time the EPA made these pronouncements, it simply didn't have enough data to know whether or not the air was kosher. Of the fourteen toxic substances believed to present the most danger, the EPA didn't have results for ten of them until a week or more after the attacks (that is, after the statement that the “air is safe”). Of the ones it did have, the EPA used imprecise testing methods and incorrect benchmarks.
The report also revealed that the White House had pressured the agency into making its calming claims and had ordered the removal of some precautionary statements, despite the health risks to the public. Additionally, the EPA press releases had to be cleared by the National Security Council before being disseminated.
A leaked memo by Cate Jenkins, PhD, a scientist in the EPA's Office of Solid Waste, exposes additional layers of deceit. She shows that on 9/11 and afterward, tests by the EPA, Con Edison, and others did indeed show that asbestos levels were leaps and bounds above 0.1 percent (the level which EPA considers problematic, requiring action). A level of 4.49 percent was found two blocks from Ground Zero the day after the attacks. On 9/16 and 9/17, at a location sixteen blocks away, tests found a level of 3 percent. One block north, almost two weeks after the attacks, tests measured a whopping 5 percent. All the talk of “reassuring,” “acceptable,” and “safe” levels was hogwash, and the agency knew it.
Jenkins also reveals: “EPA dismissed levels of toxins such as dioxins as being ‘very low’ or ‘below the detection limit’ despite the fact that levels of dioxin measured in the air many blocks away from Ground Zero were the highest ever detected in outdoor air.”
The EPA told NY residents that not only didn't they need professional cleaning of their homes and offices, they could clean up the dust, laden with asbestos and other toxins, on their own with mops and wet rags. People didn't even need to wear dust masks while doing this. Yet, at the exact same time the EPA was broadcasting these suicidal instructions, the agency had its Manhattan office building professionally cleansed of asbestos. (Not only that, the EPA employed a sensitive, high-tech method to test for asbestos in its building, while it used only an older, less sensitive method for the rest of Manhattan. To add another insult to the mix, the EPA gave its employees gasmasks to use inside its building, while assuring everyone else that they didn't even need the cheap painters masks you can buy at hardware stores.)
Further actions on the part of the EPA are just as inexplicably callous. In 1998, when one floor of a federal building in Manhattan was contaminated with asbestos from insulation, the EPA tested 4,000 to 5,000 samples on that floor alone. How many samples did it test in all of Manhattan after 9/11? Around 250.
And some people still crinkle their brows, unable to comprehend why so many of us don't trust the government....