66% Call For New Probe of Unanswered Questions by Congress or New York’s Attorney General, New Zogby International Poll Reveals

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

AUGUST 31, 2004 836 AM

CONTACT ZOGBY INTERNATIONAL 315.624.0200

NEW YORK - August 31 - On the eve of a Republican National Convention invoking 9/11 symbols, sound bytes and imagery, half (49.3%) of New York City residents and 41% of New York citizens overall say that some of our leaders "knew in advance that attacks were planned on or around September 11, 2001, and that they consciously failed to act," according to the poll conducted by Zogby International. The poll of New York residents was conducted from Tuesday August 24 through Thursday August 26, 2004. Overall results have a margin of sampling error of +/-3.5.

The poll is the first of its kind conducted in America that surveys attitudes regarding US government complicity in the 9/11 tragedy. Despite the acute legal and political implications of this accusation, nearly 30% of registered Republicans and over 38% of those who described themselves as "very conservative" supported the claim.

The charge found very high support among adults under 30 (62.8%), African-Americans (62.5%), Hispanics (60.1%), Asians (59.4%), and "Born Again" Evangelical Christians (47.9%).

Less than two in five (36%) believe that the 9/11 Commission had "answered all the important questions about what actually happened on September 11th," and two in three (66%) New Yorkers (and 56.2% overall) called for another full investigation of the "still unanswered questions" by Congress or Elliot Spitzer, New York's Attorney General. Self-identified "very liberal" New Yorkers supported a new inquiry by a margin of three to one, but so did half (53%) of "very conservative" citizens across the state. The call for a deeper probe was especially strong from Hispanics (75.6%), African-Americans (75.3%) citizens with income from $15-25K (74.3%), women (62%) and Evangelicals (59.9%).

W. David Kubiak, executive director of 911truth.org, the group that commissioned the poll, expressed genuine surprise that New Yorkers' belief in the administration's complicity is as high or higher than that seen overseas. "We're familiar with high levels of 9/11 skepticism abroad where there has been open debate of the evidence for US government complicity. On May 26th the Toronto Star reported a national poll showing that 63% of Canadians are also convinced US leaders had 'prior knowledge' of the attacks yet declined to act. There was no US coverage of this startling poll or the facts supporting the Canadians' conclusions, and there has been virtually no debate on the victim families' scores of still unanswered questions. I think these numbers show that most New Yorkers are now fed up with the silence, and that politicians trying to exploit 9/11 do so at their peril. The 9/11 case is not closed and New York's questions are not going away."

Nicholas Levis of NY911truth.org, an advisor on the poll, agrees, "The 9/11 Commission gave us a plenty of 'recommendations', but far more plentiful were the discrepancies, gaps and omissions in their supposedly 'final' report. How can proposals based on such deficient findings ever make us safe? We think these poll numbers are basically saying, 'Wait just a minute. What about the scores of still outstanding questions? What about the unexplained collapses of WTC 7, our air defenses, official accountability, the chain of command on 9/11, the anthrax, insider trading & FBI field probes? There's so much more to this story that we need to know about.' When such a huge majority of New Yorkers want a new investigation, it will be interesting to see how quickly Attorney General Spitzer and our legislators respond."

SCOPE The poll covered five areas of related interest 1) Iraq - do New Yorkers think that our leaders "deliberately misled" us before the war (51.2% do); 2) the 9/11 Commission - did it answer all the "important questions" (only 36% said yes); 3) the inexplicable and largely unreported collapse of the third WTC skyscraper on 9/11 - what was its number (28% of NYC area residents knew); 4) the question on complicity; and 5) how many wanted a new 9/11 probe. All inquiries about questions, responses and demographics should be directed to Zogby International.

SPONSOR 911truth.org is a coalition of researchers, journalists and victim family members working to expose and resolve the hundreds of critical questions still swirling around 9/11, especially the nearly 400 questions that the Family Steering Committee filed with the 9/11Commission which they fought to create. Initially welcomed by the commissioners as a "road map" for their inquiry, these queries cut to the heart of 9/11 crimes and accountability. Specifically, they raised the central issues of motive, means and cui bono (who profited?). But the Commission ignored the majority of these questions, opting only to explore system failures, miscommunications and incompetence. The victim families' most incisive issues remain unaddressed to this day. The Zogby International poll was also cosponsored by Walden Three (walden3.org) and 9/11 Citizens Watch (911citizenswatch.org), a watchdog group which has monitored the Commission since its inception and will release its findings, "The 9/11 Omission Report," in several weeks.

On September 9th and 11th, 911Truth.org will cosponsor two large successive inquiries in New York, a preliminary 9/11 Citizens Commission hearing and "Confronting the Evidence 9/11 and the Search for Truth," a research-focused evidentiary forum. These inquiries will examine many of the 9/11 Commission-shunned questions and discuss preparation of a probable cause complaint demanding a grand jury and criminal investigation from the New York Attorney General. Possible charges range from criminal negligence and gross dereliction of duty to foreknowledge, complicity and subsequent obstruction of justice. For details and developments, see www.911truth.org. For press info, contact Kyle Hence 212-243-7787 kylehence@earthlink.net

Sierra Club releases two print ads profiling workers and residents with chronic health problems

New York, NY While friends of the Bush administration invoke the heroes of September 11, 2001 tonight, it is likely they will not discuss how President Bush mishandled the cleanup and misled the public about the safety of Ground Zero. Rescue and cleanup workers, area employees, volunteers, and residents were told the Ground Zero area was safe when administration experts knew the pollution was harmful. And now the Bush administration is turning the failures in the aftermath of 9/11 into official policy for handling future emergencies or attacks.

"While the Bush administration invokes the heroes of 9/11 tonight, they continually fail to mention how they literally left many of those heroes in the dust -- to deal with toxic pollution and chronic health problems. And now the Bush administration wants to turn those mistakes into policy, putting future heroes at risk," said Carl Pope, Executive Director of Sierra Club.

During the Republican convention, residents and workers of the Ground Zero area will participate in a daily vigil (on Broadway between Liberty and Cedar) to hold President Bush accountable for failing to protect public health in the aftermath of 9/11. The goals of the sunrise-to-sunset (630 a.m.­730 p.m.) events are to call upon President Bush to meet the needs of the people exposed to Ground Zero pollution, and to educate the nation about the need for better public health protection in national emergencies.

The Sierra Club is also running two print ads in the New York Times this week telling the stories of a rescue worker and a Ground Zero area resident who are suffering from the failures in the aftermath of 9/11.

The 2 ads can be viewed at

http//www.sierraclub.org/pressroom/media/2004_aug30/911Ad.pdf

http//www.sierraclub.org/pressroom/media/2004_aug30/911Ad2.pdf

On August 18, the Sierra Club released a hard-hitting report titled, "Air Pollution and Deception at Ground Zero How the Bush Administration’s Reckless Disregard of 9/11 Toxic Hazards Poses Long-term Threats for New York City and the Nation." Spokespeople are available to talk about the local and national impacts of the report’s findings. The report can be found at http//www.sierraclub.org/groundzero

The president and his administration have made some strides in helping Lower Manhattan in recent months but there continues to be significant shortfalls as well. Every cost estimate of the damage done to the city with the collapse of the Twin Towers is several times the $21 billion in federal aid to New York after 9/11.

The cost that of course can never be calculated is the loss of 2,800 innocent lives and for the loved ones of the victims, one of the questions Bush should answer is Will he support fully the thoughtful recommendations of the unanimous, bipartisan 9/11 Commission or will he pay lip service to support while undermining the efforts to create a national intelligence director with real authority over the entire intelligence budget? And will the President start spending homeland security money in relation to the threat and not as if a person living in Wyoming is seven times more likely to suffer from a terrorist attack than a New Yorker?

The people of Lower Manhattan, who have been attacked by terrorists twice over the last 11 years, also deserve answers to those questions, as do all Americans.

Will House Speaker Dennis Hastert – who mistakenly wrote New Yorkers made an "unseemly scramble" for money ­ and other Congressional Republican leaders as well as Bush support much-needed additional money to help the city recover from the attack? Will they insure that all of the designated money makes it to New York?

We can hear the money-grubbing charge coming from miles away, but compare an additional $10 billion to help a casualty of war with the $180 billion farm aid boondoggle approved by Bush as well as Democrats and Republicans two years ago, or the $150 billion plus price tag for the Iraq war, not to mention once again the incalculable cost of lost lives.

Delegates who visit the site next week will see a hole in the ground with a temporary commuter train station and the faintest of signs of the first office tower being built. Developer Larry Silverstein, who has the leasing rights to the site, does not have enough money to rebuild the office buildings and even if he secures the $3.5 billion or so left of Liberty Bonds – a post 9/11, federal tax-free program – he will still not have enough.

The key to insure the site does not remain a hole is to create the demand for new offices. This includes improving transportation such as building a rail link from Lower Manhattan to J.F.K. Airport and the Long Island Rail Road. Thankfully, Bush voiced his support recently for transferring $2 billion of never-used Downtown tax relief to the link, but about $3 billion more will be needed.

Will you, Mr. President, support additional money to build the link? What about more federal assistance to make sure there is enough public support to meet all of the priorities such as building the $350 million W.T.C. memorial, the proposed cultural buildings, building amenities like a school, more parks and recreation space to stabilize the Downtown residential community?

The Environmental Protection Agency panel developing a new cleaning and testing program for the areas affected by 9/11 seems to be on the right track, but will your E.P.A. avoid the pitfalls of the first program by disclosing understandable information sooner and making it clearer? Will your E.P.A. officials warn residents and office workers in buildings where dangerous levels of lead and asbestos are found down the hall or in another building? Will you come clean with what the E.P.A.’s admitted environmental "mistakes" were?

Will you maintain the housing voucher programs that protect Tribeca’s Independence Plaza North middle class tenants and many others from skyrocketing rents that would drive them from their homes?

http//www.alternet.org/envirohealth/19694/

The Republican Convention opens in New York on Monday with the theme of "building a safer world." But at the site where the World Trade Center Towers once stood, demonstrators are holding a daily vigil to inform the nation that the area is still contaminated with toxics spread when the buildings collapsed in the terrorist attacks of 9/11.

The event is sponsored by the Sierra Club, 9/11 Environmental Action, the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health, and New York Environmental Law & Justice Project.

"While the country is focused on the city during the Republican Convention, we want to make sure that New York's real story is told," said Suzanne Mattei, Sierra Club's New York City executive.

"President Bush needs to hear the stories of those who were not protected in the aftermath of September 11th and take action now to meet their needs, and to protect those who would be put in harm's way at future national emergencies."

The 2004 Republican National Convention will be held for the first time in New York City at Madison Square Garden from August 30 to September 2. The city is alive with anti-Republican demonstrations of every type and description, but the one at Ground Zero speaks directly to the Republicans' stated theme of "Fulfilling America's Promise by Building a Safer World and a More Hopeful America."

Participants will gather daily on the corner of Liberty and Broadway one block from Ground Zero, to hand out stickers that say "I support the Ground Zero Community. Toxic Cleanup, Health Care, & Answers." Each day will honor and advocate on behalf of a different constituency of the Ground Zero community.

Today the demonstration advocates on behalf of people who worked near Ground Zero, the hole left by the collapse of the World Trade Center (WTC) towers when they were struck by two hijacked airplanes, killing nearly 3,000 people and sickening thousands more..

"Thousands of workers are sick today as a result of the respiratory hazards caused by the attack on the World Trade Center (WTC). The government agencies that had the responsibility of protecting them failed to do so. We must make certain that such a failure never occurs again," said Jonathan Bennett, spokesperson for the New York Committee for Occupational Safety & Health.

Many of the demonstrators say that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency failed them by not disclosing the true extent of the contamination and by not providing them with the tools to clean their homes, offices and even their firehouses.

"It's ironic that EPA refused to clean the firehouses downtown, that the firefighters were forced to clean up their own WTC-contaminated stations without even having the proper equipment to do so. These are the same fire stations that protect Wall Street and all of the government buildings in lower Manhattan," said Joel Kupferman, New York Environmental Law & Justice Project and Environmental Counsel to the Uniformed Firefighters Association (NYC).

On Saturday, the Ground Zero demonstration will honor local residents and parents, and on Sunday the difficulties of small business owners will be in the spotlight.

Ariel Goodman, president of From the Ground Up, an organization representing small businesses, said, "Shortly after the tragic events of September 11th, we were told that the air was safe. Not only did the EPA's misinformation put our health in jeopardy, it was used by insurance companies to deny coverage for damage."

"The federal government should step up to the plate and do testing and cleaning not only in residences but also in businesses – which were completely left out of its program. Also, the small business owners who were exposed should be included in the medical monitoring program. Right now, we're excluded," Goodman said.

The situation is no better for unionized employees. Bob Gulack, union steward with the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents federal employees in 30 agencies and departments, said, "It is now three years since Al Qaeda attacked us and EPA is still refusing to clean up the lethal contamination left behind by the original terrorist attack."

"As a union steward, I have seen the suffering of my colleagues in our contaminated office building, and I have personally suffered repeated bronchitis and pneumonia and have been left with permanent lung damage," said Gulack. "As matters now stand, the EPA's plan for cleaning up the WTC dust is to have the people of NYC inhale the dust into their lungs."

On Monday, when the Republican Convention opens several miles north in Madison Square Garden, the Ground Zero demonstration will honor the cleanup workers and employees of a local community college. On Tuesday, the spotlight will be on the Transport Union Workers who labored to clean Ground Zero, and on Wednesday, the stories of volunteer rescue, recovery and cleanup workers will be featured.

The Republican Convention has a Ground Zero spokesperson too, but she will not be at the demonstration. New York delegate Lolita Jackson was in a business meeting on the 70th floor of Tower Two when the first plane crashed into the World Trade Center. Currently, she serves on the board of New York's Children's Aid Society finding homes for city orphans.

Kimberly Flynn, spokesperson, 9/11 Environmental Action said, "The September 11th attack was a time when the people of New York City needed to depend on their government as never before, for their safety and security – and this administration failed them."

"People who live and work downtown were put in harm's way by being told the air was safe and by being denied a proper cleanup; many of them who now suffer serious health effects have nowhere to turn. They have an important message for the president. Mr. Bush, you need to fix what went wrong in New York right now," Flynn said.

"If there is another terrorist attack – here or anywhere – which fills the air with dangerous substances, Americans must not be lied to and left in the dust as they were here in New York."

Read the Sierra Club report, 'Air Pollution and Deception at Ground Zero How the Bush Administration's Reckless Disregard of 9/11 Toxic Hazards Poses Long-term Threats for New York City and the Nation' sierraclub.org/groundzero.

http//www.villagevoice.com/issues/0434/barrett.php

7 What could be worse than lying to GZ workers and residents about the air they were breathing? The original EPA draft of a September 13, 2001, press release, for example, said that the agency considered even the low levels of asbestos that surfaced in their GZ tests "hazardous in this situation." The final White House version of the release simply scratched out the phrase. And when a September 16 EPA draft warned of "higher levels of asbestos," the White House changed it to the hot-air hoax that "ambient air quality meets standards and is not a cause for public concern." The EPA chief of staff conceded in an interview with the agency's inspector general that the "desire to reopen Wall Street" factored into the releases, saying she did not feel the releases were her own.

NYC will live with the consequences of what the IG concluded were White House efforts to "add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones" for years, if not decades, to come. Asbestos is a long-term and relentless killer. We have already learned that 2,500 firefighters alone have diminished lung capacity due to inhaling WTC debris. Six hundred have already retired with GZ disabilities or are seeking these costly pensions. Lower Manhattan residents are suing EPA because it left them to fend for themselves, dodging interior cleanup responsibilities until a year after the attack. Eighty percent of the homes have still never been tested or cleaned. Do you think that will be the Bush attitude in a post-hurricane swing state?

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Fourteen search and rescue dogs have died since their exposure to toxic rubble from the Sept. 11 terrorist attack - including eight from cancer, according to a study by the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine. But researchers believe there is no connection between the deaths and the chemicals they were exposed to.

Despite the study's findings, some of the owners whose dogs have died still blame the toxic brew the dogs immersed themselves in during the hunt for survivors and remains.

"We can't find any link at this point that ties the 14 deaths to events of Sept. 11," said Dr. Cynthia Otto, the study's lead researcher. "Some have passed away, but the causes of death are no different than in the control group. That is good news."

Otto's team, which has been monitoring the health of 97 dogs who worked at Ground Zero, the Pentagon and the Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island, did find "significantly higher" antibodies in the search dogs in the first year after the terrorist attack.

The elevated presence of antibodies, she explained, showed the dogs had been exposed to foreign substances that pressed their immune systems into higher gear.

Although Otto was heartened to find the vast majority of dogs were in good health, given the exposure and the blood changes in the first year, questions remain about possible long-term effects.

"I don't think these dogs are completely out of the woods," she said. "That is why we need to monitor these dogs until the end of their lives - for the dogs' sake and for people's sake. If there is a problem in the dogs down the line, there is a good chance a similar problem could be found in people."

Among the canine deaths was Servus, a 12-year-old Belgian Malinois police dog, who had to be carried out on a stretcher from Ground Zero after he fell into a hole face down, his snout and lungs filled with concrete dust and ash. He died of pancreatitis, Otto said.

And Anna, a 4-year-old German shepherd who spent three days crawling on her belly trying to scent any survivors, was put down Aug. 2, 2002, ravaged by an unusual bone-eating fungal infection.

"Anna had been to the vet two months before she was deployed, and her blood work and X-rays were fine," said Sarah Atlas, a New Jersey emergency medical technician and Anna's handler. "I know the university did everything they could to help her, and they say that Anna was probably genetically predisposed to the disease, but in my heart I know what I feel."

John Gilkey, a Maryland firefighter, lost his 10-year-old chocolate Labrador retriever, Bear, to hepatitis last September. The dog's liver tests were not normal before the eight nights he spent on the World Trade Center pile, and blood tests and a biopsy showed disease soon afterward.

"I was surprised," Gilkey said, when he got the medical results. "But to be perfectly honest, I don't think Bear was made sick by the World Trade Center." Fighting back emotion, Gilkey added, "Bear and I had 21 months together after the diagnosis. I miss him terribly."

Dr. Philip Fox of Manhattan's Animal Medical Center, who has been monitoring the health of 30 New York City police dogs who worked at the World Trade Center, agreed with Otto's findings.

"These dogs have not been inundated by suspicious or debilitating diseases that we were afraid might occur," Fox said.

"They all had lung irritation, eye irritation and coughing in the first few weeks, but they seem to be clinically healthy almost three years later, except for a couple of animals who died of cancer that would be expected, given their age and breed."

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http//www.downtownexpress.com/de_67/sierraclubreleasesreport.html

The Sierra Club issued a report on Wednesday charging that federal agencies misinformed Downtown residents and businesses about the hazards of air pollution from the World Trade Center attack and failed to take proper action to prevent exposure to toxic vapors and airborne particles.

The 200-page report that the environmental group issued at an Aug. 18 news conference on the steps of City Hall also contends that the Bush administration plans to include some of the procedures that failed to protect Lower Manhattan on Sept. 11, 2001 in its new national policy on future emergencies.

"We’ve learned a lot about these failures already but the new thing in the report is that federal procedures on future disasters will be the same as before," said Congressmember Jerrold Nadler, a long-time critic of government environmental response to the attack who attended the Sierra Club conference. "The Environmental Protection Agency, FEMA and OSHA [Occupational Safety and Health Administration] have learned nothing."

Nadler said he believed people in Lower Manhattan and Downtown Brooklyn were being "poisoned" to this day, but when asked, he said he did not favor evacuating the areas. He repeated his call to have the E.P.A. begin a more stringent testing and cleanup program.

The Sierra Club contends that hundreds of people have had health problems attributable to pollution from the attack and that E.P.A. failed to find toxic hazards "because it did not look for them." The club also contends that the White House Council on Environmental Quality provided misleading data on the 9/11 asbestos hazard in a letter to Senators Hillary Clinton of New York and Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut.

The report also recalled an E.P.A. Inspector General report in August of last year that the White House environmental quality council blocked health risk information that the E.P.A. wanted to release to the public after the 9/11 attack.

"Indeed even after the E.P.A. launched an indoor clean-up program, it continued to assure residents that it was not really needed," the report says.

During the clean-up at ground zero, OSHA refused to enforce federal worker safety requirements, claiming it did not have authority in national emergencies. After the emergency period passed, OSHA still refused to enforce the rules even after ground zero safety was compromised, the report says.

Despite public warnings about the importance of wearing gas masks at the W.T.C. site, many workers were often seen without masks while the recovery and cleanup operation was underway.

For the future, the Bush administration is eliminating OSHA’s enforcement role at national emergency sites, the report says. Under a new National Emergency Management Plan, OSHA will provide only technical assistance.

The administration is also contemplating emergency clean-up standards that are weaker than standards for Superfund clean-up sites, the report says.

The Sierra Club recommends a new clean-up of W.T.C. dust for residential and commercial buildings, including firehouses, emergency vehicles and equipment. Long-term medical monitoring and treatment is also needed. Moreover, the group wants the government to publicly censure the White House environmental quality council official who toned down the health warnings that E.P.A. wanted to issue after the attack.

A new E.P.A. panel, which was formed at the insistence of Sen. Clinton and which includes independent experts, is considering a plan to test buildings over a larger geographic area.

Government Cover-up on WTC Health Effects?  Institute for Public Accuracy, August 19, 2004

http//www.accuracy.org/press_releases/PR081904.htm

Mattei is author of the just-released report "Air Pollution and Deception at Ground Zero." Head of the Sierra Club's New York office, she said today "Among our findings in the report are

* "The Bush administration knew the health risks and ignored its own long-standing body of knowledge about the harmful products of incineration and demolition. It should have issued a health warning immediately on that basis.

* "This is not a matter of putting a political spin on a few early press releases. What we uncovered was a long-term effort to prevent the public from knowing the health hazards. They looked so as not to find. And when they did find, they either didn't tell us or came up with embarrassingly weak excuses for why we shouldn't be concerned.

* "For example, the federal government surveyed EPA's own office employees three months after the attack, found out that they were still sick, but never told the public. It was published in a journal, but the public never knew.

* "Many workers at and near Ground Zero did not have proper health and safety protections. And the Bush administration refused to enforce worker safety requirements at Ground Zero."

Mattei added "Based on a review of new national emergency plans, the administration plans to perpetuate its failed policies in any future national disaster anywhere else in the United States."

JOEL KUPFERMAN, envjoel@ix.netcom.com, www.nyenvirolaw.org

Kupferman is the executive director of the New York Environmental Law and Justice Project and counsel to the Uniformed Firefighters Association in New York City. He authored the article "The Public Health Fallout from September 11 Official Deception and Long-Term Damage" and conducted samples and Freedom of Information requests which uncovered many of the problems now gaining attention. He said today "We are pursuing a lawsuit against the EPA and continue to discover very hazardous situations downtown."

CATE JENKINS, jenkins.cate@epa.gov, [PDF file www.nyenvirolaw.org/PDF/Jenkins-7-4-03-documentary-d2.pdf]

Jenkins is a 24-year specialist with the EPA's Hazardous Waste Identification Division. She said today "On July 15, 2004, I provided the EPA Inspector General with the first documentation that EPA had actually concealed hazardous air data after 9/11. EPA explicitly stated in a series of press releases that tests for asbestos were below a certain specific level, while at the same time having in their possession tests from New York City showing asbestos above this level. EPA only referred to their own tests, which were questionable to begin with. Yet, EPA had in its possession at the time other data from New York City showing just the opposite, and concealed it from the public. New York City also concealed its data. When New York City finally released the data in 2002, it altered the results in many cases to show lower, non-hazardous levels. This deliberate concealment raises the liability of EPA and New York City from the mere misrepresentation of hazards, to the level of a deliberate, knowing falsification and disregard for public safety. EPA and New York City can no longer hide behind their 'sovereign immunity' defense in litigation brought by those now and in the future suffering permanent disability after the World Trade Center collapse, the living victims of 9/11."

JO POLETT, KIMBERLY FLYN, Flynnktm@aol.com, www.911ea.org

Polett and Flyn work with 9/11 Environmental Action, an organization of downtown New York City residents. Polett lives seven blocks from the World Trade Center site and has been diagnosed with Reactive Airways Disease. She said today "For more than two years, we have been working to force the EPA to clean World Trade Center hazards from indoor spaces in all affected neighborhoods, and to expose the government's misconduct in response to those hazards... To this day, I continue to meet area residents and workers who have not received proper diagnosis and treatment of illnesses caused by exposure to WTC dust and smoke. Because the government refused to conduct comprehensive testing inside area buildings following the collapse of the World Trade Center, we will never know the extent and nature of the contaminants to which people were exposed as they heeded false safety assurances and returned to their homes and offices."

Flynn said today "It's a scandal that, to this day, there has never been an adequate cleanup of the vast majority of indoor spaces in Lower Manhattan. There has never been proper testing in place like Brooklyn where it 'snowed' dust and debris for several days.... We urge the president to order the proper agencies back to take care of unfinished business in New York. In addition, residents of Lower Manhattan, who felt the impact of the government's negligence first hand, have a very important message for the rest of the country The Bush administration needs to fix what went wrong in New York right now. If there is another terrorist attack that creates a toxic threat, with dangerous dust and chemicals filling the air and infiltrating buildings, the government needs to make sure that what happened in New York never happens again. The Sierra Club's report is the document that connects all the dots we have.... These lessons must be put into practice in order for the words 'Homeland Security' to mean anything to the people on the ground."

Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

As Republicans prepare to descend on New York City for their party Convention in less than two weeks, a leading environmental group is raising new questions about the Bush administration's handling of the cleanup of downtown Manhattan in the days after 9/11.

A new report by the Sierra Club charges that the Bush administration was guilty of reckless disregard by failing to inform Ground Zero area workers, residents and rescuers of health risks from toxic air after the collapse of the World Trade Center.

The report titled "Air Pollution and Deception at Ground Zero" blames the thousands of cases of long-term respiratory illness among New Yorkers on the White House and the Environmental Protection Agency, saying they downplayed health risks, shirked their regulatory oversight roles and even urged financial district workers to return to their jobs prematurely.

The EPA called the report "a blatant attempt to use this tragedy for political gain."

In addition to misleading the public about the health hazards of the smoke and dust at Ground Zero, the report finds that the Bush administration's mistakes are now in danger of becoming policy for handling future disasters.

Suzanne Mattei, an attorney who heads the national field office of the Sierra Club in New York. She is the author of the Sierra Club's new report "Air Pollution and Deception at Ground Zero."

Nearly three years after 9/11, the scandal keeps growing over the federal government's handling of the massive pollution released by the twin towers collapse.

With the Republicans coming to town, President Bush and Christie Todd Whitman, former head of the Environmental Protection Agency, should answer questions about their own roles at Ground Zero.

An investigation last year by the EPA's inspector general blasted the agency for claiming after the terrorist attacks that the air in lower Manhattan was safe to breathe.

EPA did not conduct sufficient testing during the first few days to back up those claims, the IG reported, and White House aides then rewrote agency press releases to minimize possible dangers.

Now a new report by the Sierra Club, the nation's oldest environmental organization, charges that the EPA covered up results of federal tests that pointed to more widespread health threats to rescue workers, downtown residents and office employees.

The Sierra Club report claims the Bush administration showed a "reckless disregard" for public health.

It's based on EPA records and several recent scientific studies about Ground Zero. Among the findings

The EPA claimed as late as April 2002 that it had found no traces of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), a family of organic chemicals that can cause cancer. But in the weeks after the twin towers' collapse EPA's own scientists found significant levels of PAHs in the air several blocks north of Ground Zero. The agency did not disclose those results until two years later, when they were published in an obscure scientific journal.

Eight weeks after 9/11, a survey by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health found that government employees at a federal building several blocks north of Ground Zero were battling an amazing array of physical ailments. NIOSH compared the workers with a control group of federal employees in Dallas.

It found those in lower Manhattan showed a much higher incidence of shortness of breath, chest tightness, nausea, severe headaches, rashes, and coughs.

Childhood clinic visits for asthma jumped sharply at the Charles B. Wang Community Health Center in Chinatown in the year after 9/11; new cases jumped from 306 the previous year to 510.

While health officials routinely track such spikes, the Chinatown increase was not made public until this year, when an article appeared in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.

An EPA statement called the report a "blatant attempt to use this tragedy for political gain."

Which brings us to Whitman, who garnered much attention this week when she called for Gov. Jim McGreevey of New Jersey to resign immediately for giving an alleged lover a government job.

So when will Whitman answer for her own role in the far more serious EPA coverup at Ground Zero?

As for Bush, the Sierra Club report is the first to connect some important dots to him as well.

The report points out that former White House anti-terrorism czar Richard Clarke, in his book "Against All Enemies," claims that on the evening of Sept. 11, 2001, Bush told several staff members, Clarke among them "I want the economy back, open for business right away, banks, the stock market, everything tomorrow."

According to Clarke, when the President was told there was "physical damage to the Wall Street infrastructure," he responded "As soon as we get the rescue operations done up there, shift everything to fixing that damage so we can reopen."

Clarke's recollection is echoed by former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill. In his tell-all book, O'Neill recalls that on Sept. 12, one of his aides told him, "The President wants to open the New York Stock Exchange tomorrow."

Of course, there's nothing wrong with Bush's wanting to return Manhattan to normal as soon as possible. But what did Whitman, as this nation's top environmental official, tell the President about the health risks of sending thousands of people back to lower Manhattan so quickly?

Did she just follow orders when she gave New Yorkers the "all clear"? Did White House aides rewrite EPA press releases just to please the boss?

The Bush administration repeatedly misled New Yorkers on air quality around Ground Zero and played down the health problems suffered by residents and workers after the 9/11 attacks, an environmental group charged yesterday.

A report by the Sierra Club cites dozens of studies that show hundreds of people were sickened after the attacks on the World Trade Center because the government made mistakes during the cleanup effort.

"The federal government should have a duty to protect the public from the aftermath of an attack such as this," said Suzanne Mattei, the author of the 185-page report. "What happened instead is that the harm was prolonged."

Mattei accused the Bush administration of ignoring evidence that the air around Ground Zero may have been toxic and wrongly encouraging people to continue to work and live there after the attacks.

According to a study cited in the report, a Chinatown clinic saw a 67% spike in asthma-related visits among children after 9/11.

The Sierra Club also cited a 2002 study of Health and Human Services Department workers showing that those working at 290 Broadway, several blocks from Ground Zero, suffered worsened symptoms of coughing, shortness of breath and severe headaches than their counterparts in Dallas.

The Environmental Protection Agency called the Sierra Club report a "scare tactic."

"The American public should see this report for what it is a blatant attempt to use this tragedy for political gain," an EPA statement said.

http//www.nytimes.com/2004/08/19/nyregion/19postal.html

Ordinarily, the sight causes hearts to sink. But at Church Street Station, New York, N.Y. 10007, it is a hopeful milestone, a sign that one more piece of the public realm in Lower Manhattan - a vital and quite beautiful piece - has returned to life.

Customers who have had to make do with a small mobile post office parked on Church Street can immerse themselves again in an Art Deco space that looks like the work of the emperor Hadrian as seen through the lens of Fritz Lang. Or Busby Berkeley.

Church Street Station reopened Monday, Aug. 2. Today, Postmaster General John E. Potter will formally reinaugurate the 67-year-old post office, at 90 Church Street, by unveiling an American flag that last flew there on Sept. 11, 2001. Folded and encased, the flag was displayed at Postal Service headquarters in Washington.

Now it has come home.

So has Emma Thornton, a letter carrier whose route for 27 years was floors 77 to 110 in 1 World Trade Center, the north tower, across Vesey Street from the post office, just outside the windows under which her sorting case used to stand, with pigeonholes labeled "Cantor Fitzgerald 103 Fl" and "Windows on World 106" and "Carr Futures 92."

She and other carriers were spared death and injury that morning because at 846 a.m., when the first hijacked jetliner screamed over the post office and burst into the north tower, they were still "casing" their mail, sorting it for delivery later in the day.

Until this month, Ms. Thornton and her co-workers were temporarily stationed at the James A. Farley Building, across Eighth Avenue from Pennsylvania Station. She said it took her about a year and a half after the attack to return even briefly to Lower Manhattan and then only because she had to deliver some express mail.

"The first thing I thought when I came up out of the subway, I thought, 'There's nothing but a big hole there,' " Ms. Thornton recalled. A big hole in the sky where she used to make her rounds. "Then," she said, "you've got to try to move on."

As for her first full day back at 90 Church Street this month, she said "It wasn't too bad. I had a lot of mail."

A lot of mail? Yes. Former tenants still receive several thousand pieces of mail daily through the trade center's own ZIP code, 10048, which comes through Church Street Station as Route No. 99, Ms. Thornton's assignment.

All told, Church Street handles 200,000 pieces of mail daily, roughly one-quarter of the amount before 9/11, said Dan Quinn, a spokesman for the Postal Service.

There are other stirrings of life at 90 Church Street, a 15-story structure that covers an entire block immediately north of ground zero, after a slow recovery in which it lost a key tenant, the Legal Aid Society.

Last weekend, the New York City Housing Authority finished returning 1,800 employees to eight floors of the building from temporary locations in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens.

"Just to watch people coming and going about their daily business, in and out of the building, is a thrill," said Robert E. Selsam, a senior vice president of Boston Properties, the development manager of 90 Church Street under a lease from the Postal Service.

Other space has been rented to New York State for use by the Public Service Commission and the Health Department. By late next spring, the 1.1 million-square-foot building will be fully occupied, said Robert A. Schubert, a senior vice president at Boston Properties.

Boston Properties was just three months shy of completing an ambitious restoration of the limestone-clad building when the attack occurred. No one was injured at 90 Church Street and there was little structural damage. But it was extensively contaminated by asbestos, lead dust, fungi, fiberglass dust, mercury and bacteria.

"It was very difficult to determine the exact scope of cleanup that was necessary and then do it," Mr. Selsam said. "After a lot of agonizing and testing, we determined that the only way to really clean the building up was to demolish all the interior walls."

Because the extent of the cleanup is the subject of litigation with the insurers, Mr. Selsam said he could not put a dollar amount on the renovation costs. The architects are Swanke Hayden Connell, who were also responsible for the earlier renovation.

The original architects were Cross & Cross, perhaps best known for the Tiffany & Company flagship at Fifth Avenue and 57th Street, and Pennington, Lewis & Mills.

They concocted modern spaces with neo-Classical flourishes, awash in green marble and other luscious stone, some embedded with nautilus shells, lighted softly through glass ceiling panels. Entering the post office is like stepping into some imperial aquarium.

Lest any visitor - or voter - forget whom to thank for this lavish public work, the cast of characters was posted boldly in cast-aluminum letters on the north and south lobby vestibules "This building was erected during the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt, president of the United States of America; Henry Morgenthau Jr., secretary of the treasury; James A. Farley, postmaster general." And so on.

So much of this original architectural fabric is in place, and in such pristinely restored condition, that it is almost possible to forget what happened across Vesey Street.

But reminders are everywhere, even in the postal store, which sells stamps and philatelic keepsakes featuring the celebrated photograph of three firefighters raising the flag at ground zero, by Thomas E. Franklin of The Record of Hackensack, N.J.

Some reminders have been taken away, including a hand-cancellation stamp reading "New York NY Church St Sta 10007 USPS / Sep 11 2001" and a register receipt recording the purchase of $87.54 in postage at 847 a.m. that morning, the last transaction at Church Street Station for nearly three years.

These and other objects were acquired by the National Postal Museum in Washington, part of the Smithsonian Institution, after stormy debates among staff members about the propriety of doing so.

Nancy A. Pope, a historian at the museum, was at first in the anti-acquisition camp, arguing that the site was sacred and inviolable. The other camp, including Jeffrey Brodie, a staff member, said that the museum, as a repository, had an obligation to collect 9/11-related artifacts.

Once she was convinced, Ms. Pope knew what she wanted a hand-cancellation stamp. What put that in her mind was another stamp in the collection, dated Dec. 6, 1941, from the battleship Oklahoma, which was destroyed the next day at Pearl Harbor.

"Just with the date, it gives you those chills," Ms. Pope said. She and Mr. Brodie also wanted a sorting case. "That's a physical manifestation of the companies and the people at the World Trade Center," she said. "This would be one way of remembering who was lost, at some level."

On his visit to Church Street Station in October 2001, Mr. Brodie found Ms. Thornton's case. Today, the main unit of the case is on display at the Postal Museum. A side unit is on loan to the Durham Western Heritage Museum in Omaha.

Of course, Ms. Thornton has a new sorting case, not that she would have missed the original for too long anyway. At the age of 60, after 33 years in the postal service, having watched the World Trade Center go up and come crashing down, she plans to retire in January to her home in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.

Though her glances out the Vesey Street windows toward ground zero tend to be wordless, as if she can still see things she would rather not, Ms. Thornton has a simpler reason for leaving Church Street Station just as it has reopened.

Hundreds of people were sickened because of mistakes made by the government during the recovery and cleanup effort following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack, the Sierra Club said in a report on the environmental and health impacts of the collapse.

``The federal government should have a duty to protect the public from the aftermath of an attack such as this,'' said Suzanne Mattei, the report's author. ``What happened instead is that the harm was prolonged.''

The Environmental Protection Agency released a statement Wednesday, calling the report a ``scare tactic.''

``The American public should see this report for what it is a blatant attempt to use this tragedy for political gain,'' the EPA statement said. ``EPA's commitment remains what it has always been to protect the public health of the people who live and work in New York, continue to evaluate our performance and improve our emergency preparedness and response.''

According to the report, the EPA failed at least a dozen times to change its safety assurances about the air quality at ground zero, even after it became clear that people were becoming sick, and in some cases, did not even check for toxic hazards.

Last year, the EPA's internal watchdog found the agency, at the urging of White House officials, gave misleading assurances there was no health risk from the dust in the air after the towers' collapse. Seven days after the attack, the EPA announced that the air near the site was safe to breathe, but the agency did not have enough information to make such a guarantee, the EPA's report found.

Mattei accused the Bush administration of ignoring the potential health risks because of political expediency.

``They wanted to reopen the stock exchange in Lower Manhattan as quickly as possible and I think they wanted to put forth the image that everything was OK,'' she said.

The Bush administration ignored studies about the toxins emitted by the demolition and incineration of large structures such as the trade center, the report said, and should have issued a warning immediately after the attacks about the hazards of inhaling the air there.

Many rescue and recovery workers at the disaster site didn't wear respirator masks because of conflicting assurances about air quality, the report stated, and it claimed that the Bush administration refused to enforce worker safety requirements at ground zero.

As part of its criticism, the Sierra Club also cited a little known study in the July 2002 Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine that compared the health of federal employees working five blocks north of ground zero to their colleagues in Dallas.

The study found that employees at the Department of Health and Human Services who were indirectly affected by the trade center collapse ``were more than likely to report constitutional symptoms'' such as eye, nose and throat irritation and headache, than those in Dallas.

``The Bush administration has learned nothing from the illnesses and hardships suffered by the ground zero community,'' Mattei said. ``Rather, it plans to perpetuate them in any future national disaster anywhere else in the United States.''

http//www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=domesticNews&storyID=6010814

In a Sierra Club report titled, "Air Pollution and Deception at Ground Zero How the Bush Administration's Reckless Disregard of 9/11 Toxic Hazards Poses Long-Term Threats for New York City and the Nation," the influential group said the Bush administration's mistakes are now in danger of becoming policy for handling future disasters.

"The Bush administration has learned nothing from the illnesses and hardships suffered by the Ground Zero community. Rather, it plans to perpetuate them in any future national disaster anywhere else in the United States," the report's author Suzanne Mattei said.

The destruction of the twin towers shot pulverized asbestos, lead, concrete, glass and other debris into the air throughout lower Manhattan.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) dismissed the report as "scare tactics" and said it was committed to protecting the health of New Yorkers and improving its emergency procedures.

"The American public should see this report for what it is a blatant attempt to use this tragedy for political gain," the EPA said in a statement.

The Sierra Club report was highly critical of how the Bush administration handled the environmental impact of the towers' collapse, which claimed nearly 2,800 lives and blanketed lower Manhattan with dust and debris.

SERIES OF CHARGES

Among the charges made in the report were

--the Bush administration failed to warn the public immediately of long-standing evidence that such a collapse would release toxins and make the air unsafe to breathe.

--that the EPA failed on at least a dozen occasions to change its safety assurances even after it became clear people were getting sick.

--that the Bush administration failed to enforce safety requirements among workers on the Ground Zero clean-up effort.

Last year the EPA, in an internal report by its Inspector General Nikki Tinsley, said the White House pressured the agency to make premature statements that the air was safe to breathe.

The EPA issued an air quality statement on Sept. 18, 2001, even though it "did not have sufficient data and analyzes to make the statement," the EPA report said, adding that the White House "convinced the EPA to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones." Among the information withheld was the potential health hazards of breathing asbestos, lead, concrete and pulverized glass.

The Sierra Club report said hundreds of people were seriously ill as a result of breathing contaminated air after the buildings fell. It said much of the dust was as caustic as ammonia and had an effect akin to drinking drain cleaner.

The Bush administration misled the public about the health hazards of the smoke and dust at Ground Zero, a new report charges.

The Sierra Club report blames the thousands of cases of long-term respiratory illness among New Yorkers on the White House, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration for downplaying the health risks and shirking their regulatory oversight roles.

EPA officials, the report says, urged financial district workers to return to their jobs, repeatedly claiming the air was safe, using outdated testing gear and limited test results. The reassuring message didn't substantially change as the months dragged on, the report said.

At the same time, concerns were being raised by independent researchers.

The EPA's own researchers also noted concerns, but their studies never made it into the agency's public statements. The results were published only much later in scientific journals.

The result has been costly to local and federal governments, said Suzanne Mattei, the New York City Executive for the Sierra Club and the author of the report.

"The health care costs are significant, and there are many experienced first responders and others now on light duty, medical leave or retired because of lung problems," she said.

While the early focus was on asbestos, the more dangerous toxins were concrete dust and glass fibers -- the dangers of which were never highlighted to the public, the report concludes.

By Sept. 27, 2001, the government had test results showing the dust was caustic, but it never mentioned that in public statements, the report said. That data was not disclosed until December 2002 in a scientific journal, the report said.

Without performing a single test, the EPA already knew from many prior studies that the combination of open fires and demolition of buildings was by definition a health hazard, the report states.

"It's illegal in any state in the union," Mattei said. "It causes known health hazards. But instead of saying we need to clean to pre-contamination levels, they took a minimalist approach and used weak cleanup standards."

EPA officials yesterday issued a statement, saying, "The American public should see this report for what it is a blatant attempt to use this tragedy for political gain."

http//seattlepi.nwsource.com/health/aphealth_story.asp?category=1500&slug=Ground%20Zero%20Air%20Quality

NEW YORK -- The Bush administration showed "reckless disregard" for public health after the World Trade Center collapse by failing to warn people of the health risks of breathing toxic smoke and dust at ground zero, an environmental group said Wednesday.

Hundreds of people were sickened because of mistakes made by the government during the recovery and cleanup effort following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack, the Sierra Club said in a report on the environmental and health impacts of the collapse.

"The federal government should have a duty to protect the public from the aftermath of an attack such as this," said Suzanne Mattei, the report's author. "What happened instead is that the harm was prolonged."

The Environmental Protection Agency said Wednesday it was reviewing a summary of the report and declined to comment further.

According to the report, the EPA failed at least a dozen times to change its safety assurances about the air quality at ground zero, even after it became clear that people were becoming sick, and in some cases, did not even check for toxic hazards.

Last year, the EPA's internal watchdog found the agency, at the urging of White House officials, gave misleading assurances there was no health risk from the dust in the air after the towers' collapse. Seven days after the attack, the EPA announced that the air near the site was safe to breathe, but the agency did not have enough information to make such a guarantee, the EPA's report found.

Mattei accused the Bush administration of ignoring the potential health risks because of political expediency.

"They wanted to reopen the stock exchange in Lower Manhattan as quickly as possible and I think they wanted to put forth the image that everything was OK," she said.

The Bush administration ignored studies about the toxins emitted by the demolition and incineration of large structures such as the trade center, the report said, and should have issued a warning immediately after the attacks about the hazards of inhaling the air there.

Many rescue and recovery workers at the disaster site didn't wear respirator masks because of conflicting assurances about air quality, the report stated, and it claimed that the Bush administration refused to enforce worker safety requirements at ground zero.

As part of its criticism, the Sierra Club also cited a little known study in the July 2002 Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine that compared the health of federal employees working five blocks north of ground zero to their colleagues in Dallas.

The study found that employees at the Department of Health and Human Services who were indirectly affected by the trade center collapse "were more than likely to report constitutional symptoms" such as eye, nose and throat irritation and headache, than those in Dallas.

"The Bush administration has learned nothing from the illnesses and hardships suffered by the ground zero community," Mattei said. "Rather, it plans to perpetuate them in any future national disaster anywhere else in the United States."

NEW YORK, Aug. 18 (Xinhuanet) -- An environmental group Wednesday criticized the Bush administration for failing to warn people of the health risks of breathing toxic smoke and dust at ground zero.

In a report on the environmental and health impacts of the collapse of the World Trade Center twin towers, the environmental group Sierra Club accused the administration of showing "reckless disregard" for public health.

"The federal government should have a duty to protect the public from the aftermath of an attack such as this," said SuzanneMattei, the report's author.

The report said that hundreds of people were sickened because of mistakes made by the government during the recovery and cleanup effort following the Sept. 11 terrorist attack.

According to the report, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) failed at least a dozen times to change its safety assurances about the air quality at ground zero, even after it became clear that people were becoming sick, and in some cases, did not even check for toxic hazards.

Mattei accused the Bush administration of ignoring the potential health risks because of political expediency. "They wanted to reopen the stock exchange in Lower Manhattan as quickly as possible and I think they wanted to put forth the image that everything was OK," she said.

The report said the government should have issued a warning immediately after the attacks about the hazards of inhaling the air there. Consequently, many rescue and recovery workers at the disaster site did not wear respirator masks because of conflicting assurances about air quality, the report said.

The group also cited a little known study in the July 2002 Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine that compared the health of federal employees working five blocks north of ground zero to their colleagues in Dallas.

The study found that employees at the Department of Health and Human Services who were indirectly affected by the trade center collapse "were more than likely to report constitutional symptoms"such as eye, nose and throat irritation and headache, than those in Dallas.

The report said the Bush administration "has learned nothing from the illnesses and hardships suffered by the ground zero community. Rather, it plans to perpetuate them in any future national disaster anywhere else in the United States."

    Back to Top

The Bush administration allowed hundreds of people to get sick by failing to inform the public about the health risks of the World Trade Center collapse, according to an environmental group.

The federal government did not enforce worker safety requirements at the World Trade Center site, a report by the Sierra Club says, and residents were also told they could clean up dust themselves and were discouraged from wearing safety masks.

The report cites an internal investigation by the Environmental Protection Agency that found the agency did not have any proof for its claim that the air in Lower Manhattan was safe to breathe a week after the September 11, 2001, attacks, when smoke and dust still lingered.

http//msnbc.msn.com/id/5747828/

NEW YORK - The Bush administration showed "reckless disregard" for public health after the World Trade Center collapse by failing to warn people of the health risks of breathing toxic smoke and dust at ground zero, an environmental group said Wednesday.

Hundreds of people were sickened because of mistakes made by the government during the recovery and cleanup effort following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack, the Sierra Club said in a report on the environmental and health impacts of the collapse.

"The federal government should have a duty to protect the public from the aftermath of an attack such as this," said Suzanne Mattei, the report's author. "What happened instead is that the harm was prolonged."

The Environmental Protection Agency said Wednesday it was reviewing a summary of the report and declined to comment further.

Report cites 12 safety failures

According to the report, the EPA failed at least a dozen times to change its safety assurances about the air quality at ground zero, even after it became clear that people were becoming sick, and in some cases, did not even check for toxic hazards.

Last year, the EPA's internal watchdog found the agency, at the urging of White House officials, gave misleading assurances there was no health risk from the dust in the air after the towers' collapse. Seven days after the attack, the EPA announced that the air near the site was safe to breathe, but the agency did not have enough information to make such a guarantee, the EPA's report found.

Mattei accused the Bush administration of ignoring the potential health risks because of political expediency.

"They wanted to reopen the stock exchange in Lower Manhattan as quickly as possible and I think they wanted to put forth the image that everything was OK," she said.

The Bush administration ignored studies about the toxins emitted by the demolition and incineration of large structures such as the trade center, the report said, and should have issued a warning immediately after the attacks about the hazards of inhaling the air there.

Safety not enforced at ground zero

Many rescue and recovery workers at the disaster site didn't wear respirator masks because of conflicting assurances about air quality, the report stated, and it claimed that the Bush administration refused to enforce worker safety requirements at ground zero.

As part of its criticism, the Sierra Club also cited a little known study in the July 2002 Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine that compared the health of federal employees working five blocks north of ground zero to their colleagues in Dallas.

The study found that employees at the Department of Health and Human Services who were indirectly affected by the trade center collapse "were more than likely to report constitutional symptoms" such as eye, nose and throat irritation and headache, than those in Dallas.

"The Bush administration has learned nothing from the illnesses and hardships suffered by the ground zero community," Mattei said. "Rather, it plans to perpetuate them in any future national disaster anywhere else in the United States."

C. Virginia Fields wants the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. to make its decision-making process more transparent.

Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields called for the state and city comptrollers to review how grant money doled out by the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. was allocated, citing a recent report that said the LMDC may have showed favoritism.

Ms. Fields wants the LMDC to spell out its decision-making process in detail and make its documents publicly available, after government watchdog group Good Jobs New York said in a report last week that the city-state rebuilding agency had approved $112.4 million in grants for organizations with ties to board members. The LMDC has spent $1.8 billion of its original $3.4 billion.

President Bush this week said, "We're going to do what's necessary to protect this country."[1] But according to a comprehensive new report, the Bush administration has not only failed to safeguard vulnerable terrorist targets at home, it has actively blocked government initiatives to safeguard the most dangerous materials that could be used in a terrorist attack.

According to the nonpartisan Working Group on Community Right-to-Know, the Bush administration has blocked an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) initiative to impose security measures for extremely hazardous chemicals stored at power plants across the country. As a result, some 3.5 million people living near these non-nuclear power plants continue to face the danger that a terrorist attack could send a cloud of toxic and lethal gas into their neighborhoods. The report also details how opposition from chemical manufacturers has derailed a bill in Congress, the Chemical Security Act, which would have required facilities using the most dangerous chemicals to consider safer technologies and use them where practicable.[2]

Since 2000, the chemical industry has donated more than $17 million to President Bush and Republican congressional candidates.[3] These companies have also given more than $6 million in soft money to the Republican National Committee.[4]

In comments filed with the department, the groups said the agency is ditching some routine environmental oversight in the name of security.

"It must not be assumed that a choice needs to be made between the environment and security," the Coalition of Journalists for Open Government wrote in response to the agency's directive.

Their complaint involves the 1970 National Environmental Policy Act, which requires lengthy environmental studies and public comments to detail the effects a proposed project would have on the environment and ways to minimize that impact.

Homeland Security said it will still conduct its environmental assessments in accordance with federal standards as defined by the 1970 act. But the department added it would not release such assessments to the public if key material is deemed classified or protected.

"In such cases, other appropriate security and environmental officials will ensure that the consideration of environmental effects will be consistent with the letter and intent of NEPA," the department wrote in its notice in June.

But the coalition said the range of information Homeland Security could withhold is too broad, and the new policy could give the agency "a blank-check authority to declare information secret."

Homeland Security did not return calls seeking comment Monday.

The Bush administration, which has blamed the environmental act for bureaucratic gridlock, has been seeking to update it.

The public comment period on the department's directive ended Monday, and the agency must now present its final proposal.

Among the coalition's recommendations to the department is independent oversight for any nondisclosure decisions and narrower limits on classifying environmental information.

http//www.nytimes.com/2004/08/16/politics/16super.html

The list of sites was compiled from information provided privately by officials at the Environmental Protection Agency, according to a letter sent on Friday to Michael O. Leavitt, the agency's administrator, from Representative John D. Dingell of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the committee.

The letter and an attached list indicate that at sites like Atlas Tack, a company that made tacks and nails in Fairhaven, Mass., Omaha Lead in Omaha and Woolfolk Chemical Works, in Fort Valley, Ga., cleanup managers are likely to fall behind in clearing toxic residue like lead particles, cyanide and arsenic in soil or groundwater.

The original cleanup fund, built on industry taxes, has dwindled to negligible levels in the nine years since Congress abolished those taxes, so the money is now almost entirely drawn from general tax revenue.

A subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee recently recommended rejecting the E.P.A.'s request for an additional $150 million for the next fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1. Money for cleanup can be allocated at any time in the fiscal year.

In the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 2003, according to an inspector general's report, the shortfall amounted to about $175 million.

"The trend is clear and is being ignored at the expense of public health and the environment," Mr. Dingell said in his letter to Mr. Leavitt.

Thomas P. Dunne, the acting assistant administrator of the Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response at the E.P.A., said that the final allocations "have to wait till the end" of the fiscal year because in the next few weeks, unspent money from other projects can be harvested to fill some of the gap.

He added that he did not expect the shortfall to continue growing indefinitely. "There are two questions," he said. "One, does Superfund have enough money to start all the sites that have come on line?" Indicating that the answer was no, he said, "obviously it is not a good thing to have that backlog remain in place for a long time."

The second question, he said, was what was the risk to the public. "In the short term it doesn't present any risk," he said.

"We're waiting for appropriations, and we've found that some sites that may be potentially serious aren't ready" for cleanup, Mr. Dunne said. The underlying issue, he said, is that more than half of the available cleanup money is being spent on nine huge sites, including the Bunker Hill Mining and Metallurgical Complex in Smelterville, Idaho; New Bedford Harbor in Massachusetts, which is contaminated by toxic chemicals once discharged by factories in the area; and three sites in New Jersey - the Chemical Insecticide site in Edison Township, the Federal Creosote site in Manville and the Vineland Chemical site in Vineland.

Katherine N. Probst, author of "Superfund's Future," a 2001 report to Congress that predicted a growing shortfall of money, said that people who live near the affected sites will feel the financing squeeze. "These people have been promised something they are not getting," she said. Delaying the cleanup of a problem like groundwater pollution, she said, means "it probably will cost us more in the long run."

The shortage of cleanup money has existed for two years, a period during which Superfund's budget has remained flat at about $1.3 billion.

Cleanup money is divided into three pots - one for emergency actions to safeguard human health, one for assessments of longer-term problems, and the third for "remedial action" or cleanup of pollution.

The E.P.A.'s money problems occur as the House Appropriations Committee is making its final decisions on the agency's budget for the next fiscal year.

The E.P.A.'s Superfund Web site said that as of Friday, there were 1,242 sites on the national priority list of sites approved for cleanup.

The most recent recommendations of a priority-setting panel within the E.P.A. leave more than two dozen sites that had been scheduled to receive planning or cleanup money without any money at all, Mr. Dingell's letter said. A dozen more are scheduled to get less than the directors of E.P.A.'s regional offices had requested, the letter added.

Around the Omaha Lead site - which was allocated about 15 percent less than the $6 million its managers had requested, according to the Democratic staff report - there are thousands of house yards where lead contamination is suspected to be two or three times greater than the level considered safe, according to the E.P.A.'s summary documents about the site; delaying financing is likely to mean delaying the sampling of yards and identification of hazards.

Marion Pressure Treating, a site in northern Louisiana, is facing its second rejection for financing in the last two years. The assessment of the site in the E.P.A.'s database indicates that the volatile chemicals from the creosote used in wood treatment presents "the potential for elevated health/ecological risk levels."

Woolfolk Chemical Works, in Fort Valley, Ga., is an old pesticide and herbicide plant that was partially cleaned in two projects in the 1990's. Officials at the site held a public meeting a year ago to unveil a further cleanup plan costing $21 million, The Macon Telegraph reported. The figures reported by the House Democratic staff members indicate that the site will get $1.5 million, 25 percent of what its managers had requested for this fiscal year.

Michael Cook, director of the Superfund office, said in an interview Sunday "It will be funded at the level they can use this fiscal year, which won't be much because we are so close to the year's end. Then it will be much higher next year."

The New York Post says the New York Rescue Workers Detoxification Project – based on the teachings of the Church of Scientology – is expanding its services and plans to open it to Downtown workers and residents who blame their illnesses on pollutants at the World Trade Center site.

The program will cost $5,000 per person. Participants will go three to four weeks of detoxification, including vitamins, exercise and four daily saunas to flush out all the poisons.

The Scientology program has been criticized by some doctors and the Fire Department, which claim there's no scientific evidence the regimen works.

The facility on the corner of Church and Vesey Sts. was shut down post-9/11 after suffering serious damage from debris, dust and the building’s sprinkler system.

Fortunately none of the Church St. post office’s mail carriers had gone into the W.T.C. the morning of the attack, and no workers from the post office were injured. Two postal clerks manning a small retail booth in the W.T.C. on 9/11 managed to escape without injury.

Since the attacks, workers have replaced more than 800 of the facility’s windows and restored the marble interior. The post office occupies the building’s main floor, with other businesses leasing the upper floors, which house several hundred employees.

"We feel that such a large building reopening Downtown will really benefit the community," said Pat McGovern, a U.S. Postal Service spokesperson for the New York metro area. "We’re very happy we’re back and the community seems delighted."

Before the reopening, many community members worried that the post office renovations, coupled with other area construction projects ­ such as the rebuilding of 7 W.T.C. and the renovation of 140 West St. ­ would disrupt the three blocks facing the World Trade Center site’s north side. But now that the facility is open, Downtowners said they are pleased to have it back.

"Getting to the post office was always a pain," said D. J. Schneider, a law student who works near City Hall. "Now I can get my mail taken care of during my lunch break, so the reopening is quite refreshing."

New Yorker Brian Kaye has used the facility at 90 Church St. since 1984, but since 9/11 has had to travel to the post office’s main branch at 33rd St. to access his post office box. "It’s more convenient to come here," he said. "It’s right near the subway, and this is a lovely building."

To help prevent any increased traffic north of the trade center site due to the reopening, the city Department of Transportation has allowed two-way traffic on W. Broadway between Vesey and Barclay Sts. D.O.T. said they have not received any complaints or observed any increase in traffic, according to Kay Sarlin, the agency’s deputy press secretary.

After the terror attack, the post office’s mail-sorting operations moved to Midtown, where they will remain, and as a result fewer mail trucks will pass through the Church St. facility than in the past, officials said.

The post office plans to hold a grand reopening ceremony, attended by the postmaster general and city officials, on Thurs., Aug. 19 at 10 a.m. During the ceremony the postmaster will re-present the post office’s original flag, which since 9/11 has been encased in the Hall of Flags in Washington, D.C.

The researchers estimated that exposure to certain carcinogens released at Ground Zero only added a one person per 100 million increase in lifetime risk for individuals who lived or worked in the area. Their conclusions appeared in an online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America on July 27 (http//www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.0404499101).

The carcinogens studied were polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), compounds formed by the incomplete combustion of organic materials such as fuel, wood, and even cooked meat. They often attach to particulate matter such as soot and circulate in the atmosphere, where they can be inhaled.

Following the collapse of the World Trade Center's twin towers, fires burned through December 20, 2001. The fires, initiated by the ignition of approximately 91 000 L of jet fuel from the airliners that crashed into the buildings, spread to an estimated 100 000 tons of organic debris, 490 000 L of transformer oil, 380 000 L of heating and diesel fuel, and gasoline from several thousand automobiles stored beneath the towers, the researchers said. The fires, plus emissions from construction machinery operated at the site after the collapse, created between 100 and 1000 tons of PAHs that circulated and settled primarily in lower Manhattan.

Stephen M. Rappaport, PhD, coauthor of the study and professor of environmental health at North Carolina, said the team focused on PAHs because these compounds are always associated with burning organic materials and cancer risk. That connection was first shown in 1775 when exposure to PAH-containing soot among British chimney sweeps was linked with the appearance of squamous cell carcinomas. Since then, PAHs have also been associated with human cancers of the skin, lungs, and bladder.

"Whenever you burn hydrocarbon fuels you produce PAHs," Rappaport said. "But there was no research on risk of exposure to PAHs following the collapse of the World Trade Center."

The researchers analyzed 243 air samples that had been collected from 4 areas surrounding the collapse site for 200 days following September 11. Three of the sites were at the fence line of Ground Zero; the fourth was on the 16th floor of an office building about 0.5 km from Ground Zero. The investigators found air concentrations of PAHs on September 14 ranged from 1.3 to 15 ng/m3. By day 200, PAH levels had returned to background levels, comparable with the range of 0.03 to 0.50 ng/m3 typically seen in Los Angeles.

The researchers estimated that over a 70-year lifetime, 15.6 people per 100 million will develop cancer due to baseline PAH levels. The new data suggest 16.7 people per 100 million will develop cancer due to elevated PAH exposure related to the World Trade Center disaster, the researchers said.

While the findings offer some reassurance, Rappaport cautioned that they pertain only to individuals with jobs or residences in lower Manhattan, not to emergency personnel and construction and demolition crews working at Ground Zero, who could have had more intense interaction with PAHs.

The study also does not rule out potential adverse reproductive effects among the children of women were pregnant or conceived during that period. In fact, research involving 187 women present in lower Manhattan during the 3 weeks after the towers collapse found an apparent association between maternal exposure to the disaster and intrauterine growth restriction (when compared to a cohort of pregnant women who had not been in lower Manhattan), an effect that may have been mediated through exposure to PAH or particulate matter (JAMA. 2003;290595-596).

Rappaport also noted that the study focused only on outdoor air, which is transient in nature. Sizable amounts of PAH-containing soot remains trapped by the buildings in the area, he said.

[Sidebar to the article above]

The World Trade Center Health Registry is recruiting individuals who worked or lived in lower Manhattan on September 11, 2001, and workers involved in the rescue, recovery, and cleanup any time between the attack and June 30, 2002. They are to be followed for 20 years and compared with the general population.

Besides providing two decades worth of data for future research, the registry should help alert patients and their physicians about potential diseases and conditions associated with the catastrophe, said Pauline Thomas, MD, of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, which is overseeing the registry in collaboration with the US Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.

Registry participants complete a 30-minute telephone survey regarding exposures and health problems. Registry researchers will focus on respiratory and mental health, as well as cancer rates.

But there are factors that are likely to limit the effectiveness of the registry as a research tool, including large variations in exposure levels among participants and the self-selecting, nonrandomized nature of participants who may not be representative of all those exposed, noted Robert Morris, MD, PhD, of Tufts University in Boston. Although the registry should be able to uncover trends in diseases where diagnosis is clear cut, such as cancer, it will probably be less useful in determining real levels of concern for conditions such as multiple-chemical sensitivity.