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The following is being distributed with permission from the BNA. The Occupational Health and Safety Section of APHA will be submitting a late-breaker resolution at the upcoming annual meeting opposing this reoganization.Copyright 2004 by The Bureau of National Affairs, Inc.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has moved budgeting functions for the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health from the institute to CDC headquarters, and a similar movement of communications functions is expected within a month. The action under CDC's Futures Initiative, or reorganization plan, is in opposition to language included in a report accompanying the Senate appropriations bill for Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education.
The Senate Appropriations Committee Sept. 15 kept NIOSH's budget as a separate line item and directed that no changes should be made to the institute's operating procedures or organizational structure. The report told CDC to "maintain the status quo." However, the full Senate has yet to vote on its version of the HHS funding bill -- it and the House are in recess for the elections -- and any differences with the
House version (passed Sept. 9) must be worked out.
Despite the Senate language, NIOSH's chief budget analyst and approximately 10 related staff members began reporting directly to CDC Oct. 3, Kathryn Harben, senior public affairs specialist with CDC, said. Previously the budgeting staff -- which tracks funds and does all of NIOSH's budget work -- reported to the director of NIOSH.
Under the new structure, the budgeting staff works for CDC but is assigned to, or "embedded" with NIOSH. The physical locations of the staff did not change, Harben said.
A similar change is under way for NIOSH's associate director for communications. While still officially working for NIOSH, the associate director for communications is also working on general CDC projects with other associate directors, Harben said.
NIOSH's communications position is expected to be officially moved in November, when the director will report to the CDC Office of Communications. Like the budget staff, the communication staff will be assigned to NIOSH. No decision has been made on where the associate communications director's staff will report.
The NIOSH public affairs officer and media liaison, however, will not be moved to the CDC Office of Communications. That position will report directly to the Office of Public Affairs in the CDC director's office.
Despite the reporting changes, all of the NIOSH communications positions will remain in their current locations.
Oct. 1 Implementation Planned, Missed.
CDC Director Julie Gerberding announced May 13 that she would reorganize CDC's programs into four "coordinating centers". Under the plan, NIOSH -- along with the National Center for Environmental Health, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, and the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control -- will join the
Coordinating Center for Environmental Health, Injury Prevention, and Occupational Health.
CDC had said it planned to implement the reorganization by Oct. 1, when the fiscal year began, but a 2005 budget has yet to be passed by Congress and the CDC reorganization has not been fully implemented.
Since the reorganization plan was announced, criticism about moving NIOSH deeper into CDC's bureaucracy has grown -- primarily focusing on a perceived loss of prominence and possible budget reductions.
Senate 'Very Clear,' Center Director Says.
Environment, Injury, and Occupational Coordinating Center Director Henry Falk -- formerly the assistant administrator for ATSDR -- spoke about the reorganization and its effect on NIOSH at an advisory committee meeting Oct. 21.
"I come to my role here perhaps as an outsider, but as someone who appreciates what NIOSH does," Falk told members of NIOSH's Board of Scientific Counselors. The reorganization will not work, he said, if what now exists is diminished or blurred.
Falk noted that "we follow the Appropriations Committee language year-in-year-out," and the Senate language was "very clear." Falk said "the message has been heard," but did not reveal if any plans have been changed because of the Senate opposition.
"I hope the future is more than just the status quo," he said. Falk said he did not come into the center with an intention to move parts of NIOSH's funding. "That's off the table as far as I'm concerned," he said. However, once the Congressional appropriations
process is complete, Falk added, "when all that is said and done, how do we work together?" Falk said that the issue for him is not who the NIOSH director reports to, but how the programs work together.
"The main goal of the coordinating center is to truly coordinate and not run," Falk said. "Whatever happens, there will continue to be a need for NIOSH."
Plan "Wasn't All Thought Out," Director Says.
Before the CDC reorganization, Falk said he spent a year combining ATSDR with the National Center for Environmental Health. Because of the time spent preparing for that change, Falk said that the reorganization was "not a surprise to anyone."
The full CDC reorganization was more of a surprise, he said. "It's not as if there was a year-long dialogue on ... the coordinating centers," Falk said. Because all the details had not been discussed with all stakeholders, "we are starting a little bit behind."
The CDC Futures Initiative is one of the more complex reorganizations, Falk said. Considering the opposition and the confusion over staff placements, he added, "maybe this wasn't all thought out beforehand." The coordinating center is "not officially established" yet, Falk said, and "is still me."
Gerberding wants the coordinating centers' operational plans by the end of November, Falk added. Hopefully, he said, the Coordinating Center for Environmental Health, Injury Prevention, and Occupational Health will have an office then.
Falk added that he is committed to having a "bureaucratically light" office.
NIOSH Director John Howard told BNA that representatives from NIOSH, the National Center for Environmental Health, ATSDR, and the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control meet with Falk every Monday to discuss the future form of the coordinating center.
Although Falk is the director of the center and its programs, he will not be in charge of the center's "business practices," Harben said. Chief Management Officials will be in charge of staff and budget within the coordinating centers and will report to the CDC's Chief Operating Officer. The agency is looking to fill the CMO positions by year's end, Harben said.
NIOSH Advisory Committee Endorses Senate Report.
The rapidity with which CDC is enacting changes conflicts with its statements about an evolving process, Board of Scientific Counselors Chairman Henry Anderson said at the Oct. 21 advisory committee meeting. CDC says changes can still be made, but the plans will be final in three months, added Anderson, who is chief medical officer with the
Wisconsin Division of Public Health.
The NIOSH board voted to "strongly" endorse the Senate appropriations bill language with eight votes for the endorsement and five members abstaining. Member Robert Reville, director of the Rand Institute for Civil Justice and co-director of the Rand Center for Terrorism Risk Management Policy, noted that he and others abstained, not because of opposition to the language, but because they lacked sufficient information to take a stand on the issue.
A letter to Gerberding from the previous NIOSH board was also entered into the record at the meeting. "Clustering NIOSH with a number of environmental health programs would undo the intent of Congress and place it essentially where it was thirty-four years ago," the former board members said.
Poll Finds Most Americans Have Not Prepared for a Terror Attack, by Calvin Sims, New York Times, October 28, 2004
http//www.nytimes.com/2004/10/28/national/28homepoll.html?pagewanted=print&position= Americans are closely divided on whether they think the United States is prepared to deal with another terrorist attack, but the overwhelming majority have done nothing to prepare for such an attack themselves, according to a recent New York Times poll. The poll found that most Americans are not worried that they or a family member will become a victim of terrorism, with the majority of the respondents saying they do nothing different even when the government raises the terror-alert level. The survey was conducted for use in a documentary produced by New York Times Television on the status of security in the United States. While domestic security has been a major issue in the presidential campaign with Republicans and Democrats warning that another terrorist attack is inevitable, the Times poll suggests that for most Americans the issue is not a preoccupation. "I guess the reason I'm not terribly worried about it is probably the location I'm in," Angela Loston, 24, a writer from Dallas, said in a phone interview after the survey. "Even though I'm in a major city, I am in the state of Texas, so I don't really see something happening here." David Ropeik, who teaches risk communications at the Harvard School of Public Health, said the survey results reflect a well-established, intuitive human response to risk known as optimism bias, in which individuals disproportionately believe that they will not be victims of a peril even though they widely acknowledge that it will occur. "We see the same phenomenon with smoking, obesity and natural disasters. If you don't think it will happen to you, then you won't take any precautions," Mr. Ropeik said. "When it comes to terrorism, there is some truth here. If an attack happens, it's unlikely that you or I will be a victim. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't be prepared." In the survey, 46 percent of the respondents said they did not think the United States was prepared for a terrorist attack, while 43 percent said the country was prepared. To questions of personal readiness, 61 percent responded that they did not have a stockpile of food and water at home in preparation for a terrorist attack. More than 70 percent said they had not selected a family meeting place in case of an evacuation due to terrorism, nor had they established a plan to communicate with relatives. Asked why her family had not designated a gathering place or plan to stay in touch, Gloria Peters, a retiree from San Pablo, Calif., said, "We really haven't discussed that, but we should." She added, "The roads are going to be so packed jammed that it's going to be insane." The survey found that women were more likely to regard both the country and their local communities as ill prepared to deal with another attack. Women are also more apt to express concern that someone in their family could become a victim of terrorism 46 percent of women said they were very or somewhat concerned compared with 26 percent of men. The Times poll, of 554 adults, was conducted nationwide by telephone Oct. 12 to 13 and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus four percentage points. Citing the federal government's handling of the current flu vaccine shortage, Eugene Ladisky, a retired engineer from New York, said "I get the impression that were there a terrorist attack, our government would let us fend for ourselves."Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
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Environmentalists Losing the War of Words, Says Berkeley Linguist, Greenwatch Today, October 28, 2004
http//www.bushgreenwatch.org
Political and social change often comes down to a war of words. And according to a prominent cognitive linguist from California, anti-environmental forces have been winning that war because progressives don't know how to talk about issues. In his new book Don't Think of an Elephant, University of California at Berkeley professor George Lakoff shows how people think in terms of frames and metaphors, which guide their thinking on issues. One example is talking about tax cuts. Conservatives talk about "tax relief" instead of "tax cuts," reinforcing the idea that heroic conservatives are rescuing people from the affliction of taxes. Another example came in the State of the Union speech last January, when President Bush said, "We do not need a permission slip to defend America." The language suggests an underage America asking permission of an adult teacher to leave the room. Another example how conservatives shifted the language from "estate taxes" to "death taxes." Conservatives and liberals have a fundamentally different view of the world, says Lakoff. Using the family as a metaphor for the nation, conservatives see the world through a "strict father" lens. Through discipline and punishment, the strict father urges his children to know right from wrong, which will increase their chances for success in a dangerous world. Liberals, on the other hand, use the "nurturant parent" model, which encourages children to become happy and fulfilled adults through trust, honesty, and open communication. These two worldviews, says Lakoff, explain the striking split in today's politics and the mutual hostility between the two political parties. According to Lakoff, conservatives have become far shrewder at using language to win converts. When it comes to talking about the environment, conservatives refer to a collection of language guidelines by Republican pollster Frank Luntz, who has long recognized that Republicans have become vulnerable on environmental protection. The book is must reading for conservative political candidates, judges, public speakers and even high school students who want to become conservative leaders. Luntz urges his readers to use words like "clean," "safe," and "healthy," even when talking about logging forests or polluting the air by burning coal. Luntz's influence can be seen in such Orwellian program names as the administration's "Healthy Forests Initiative" and "Clear Skies Initiative." A now-infamous Luntz memo obtained by an environmental group serves as a primer for conservatives when talking about the environment. In the memo, Luntz urges conservatives to say "climate change" instead of "global warming," because "while global warming has catastrophic connotations attached to it, climate change suggests a more controllable and less emotional challenge." The Luntz memo also urges conservatives to call themselves "conservationists" instead of "environmentalists," because "conservationist" conveys a "moderate, reasoned, common sense position between replenishing the earth's natural resources and the human need to make use of those resources." [1] According to Lakoff, conservatives have invested billions over the past 30 years in think tanks, book publishing, magazines, and media consultants. This has given them a huge head start over environmentalists in using the most persuasive language for political change. Says Lakoff, "Playing catch-up won't be easy, but it is necessary." ###
9/11 First-Responders Penn State Team Analyzes Effects of Inhaled Toxins, Penn State Live, October 27, 2004
http//live.psu.edu/story/8661 [For an archive of articles and documents concerning 9/11-related occupational and environmental safety and health, visit http//www.nycosh.org/environment_wtc/WTC-catastrophe.html] University Park, Pa. -- It took first-responders several weeks to recover victims of the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center. Then they spent several more months cleaning up the site. Now, they are coping with the health effects resulting from their heart-rending work at Ground Zero. "We think of police officers as being in physical danger from bullets and other kinds of violence, not from inhaling toxins," said Rebecca Bascom, professor of medicine at the Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center. "With the threat of terrorism, we now have to worry about the lung and cardiovascular health of first-responders." Bascom and a team from the Penn State College of Medicine are working with the Living Heart Foundation to analyze heart and lung screening test results of more than 1,760 rescue and relief workers. Volunteer medical personnel from the foundation conducted the screenings -- administering electro- and echocardiograms, checking blood pressure and testing blood cholesterol. Robert Gillio, a Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center physician, trained screeners and provided pulmonary function screening for rescue workers. With guidance from Bascom and National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health’s Paul Enright, Gillio also created an exposure and health history questionnaire to accompany the clinical tests. Mental stress, exhaustion and breathing difficulties "The major problems we saw were mental stress, exhaustion, breathing difficulties, hypertension and (manifestations of coronary artery disease)," said Arthur J. Roberts, Living Heart Foundation president and chairman noted. Roberts added that follow-up studies showed that mental stress and breathing difficulties persist, but more cardiovascular research is needed to determine long-term complications. Bascom and team members are looking for trends and information that will better prepare the medical community to respond to future disasters. One promising area is the possibility of using the data to develop a risk score for inhalation injuries, similar to the burn score (first-, second- and third-degree), Bascom said. Doctors use the burn score to quickly assess tissue damage, deliver appropriate treatment and determine prognosis. An inhalation risk score (high, medium, low) could lead to a more precise diagnosis and treatment plan, as well. Team members have presented the results of their data analysis at a conference in New York, and a narrative about the experience is in the book "Lessons Learned at Ground Zero," written by Gillio and published by iUniverse. The book has been used by social studies teachers, the U.S. Army War College and others. Back to TopLargest Federal Union Blasts Bush Administration for Failing to Equip Workers to Aid First Responders, PR Newswire, October 27, 2004 http//www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=109&STORY=/www/story/10-26-2004/0002311151&EDATE= [For an archive of articles and documents concerning emergency response-related occupational and environmental safety and health, visit http//www.nycosh.org/specific_industries/emergency_responders.html] WASHINGTON, Oct. 26 /PRNewswire/ -- The Bush Administration has failed to provide adequate training and equipment to employees designated to assist first responders in the event of a nuclear, chemical, or biological emergency, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) charged Oct. 25. AFGE, which is the largest federal employee union and represents bargaining unit employees at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), said in a grievance that NIH failed to train and equip its "Code Red Alert Critical" employees to help first responders or to even include them in an emergency response training drill held Oct. 21. First responders include personnel such as emergency management squads, fire and rescue agencies, hazardous materials teams, and others. The union also charged that NIH has failed to provide such equipment as protective suits, gloves, gas masks, helmets, pocket dosimeters, or radiation meters. Moreover, it has failed to train its Code Red alert employees in basis first aid, cardiopulmonary resuscitation, chemical/biological/nuclear agent awareness and response, decontamination procedures, and other areas. "The agency has failed to draft, create, or publish a standard operating procedure for Code Red Alert Critical employees," the AFGE said in its grievance, and accused the NIH of violating several articles of the Occupational Safety and Health Act's general duty clause. The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) is the largest federal employee union, representing 600,000 workers in the federal government and the government of the District of Columbia. Back to Top
Are we prepared? PACE International Union Survey Reveals Gaps in Facilities’ Preparedness to Prevent and Respond to Terrorist Attacks, PACE International Union, October 27, 2004 http//www.pacehealthandsafety.org/chemical%20safety%20survey%20-press%20release%2010.27.pdf FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact
Ground Zero Community Wants Answers, Cleanup for Lingering 9/11 Contamination, by Sandy Smith, Occupational Hazards.com, October 26, 2004
http//www.occupationalhazards.com/articles/12552 Approaching the one-year anniversary of the White House Council on Environmental Quality's agreement to have an expert panel provide advice on unmet needs related to 9/11 pollution, a coalition sent a letter to EPA pleading for a clear answer on what action the federal government will take to clean up 9/11 contamination and meet the health needs of the people exposed to the pollution. The letter, from community, tenant, environmental, small business, religious and labor organizations, sets out seven basic principles for cleanup and for addressing long-term health needs. "The White House forced us to wait 2 years before it would even agree to have an expert panel. Then EPA stalled that expert panel for another year, arguing for absurdly inadequate approaches. As a result, all testing has been put off until some time after Election Day. We can't help but worry what will be left of this process after the election," said Robert Gulack, a New Jersey resident who was exposed to Ground Zero contamination through his job at the Woolworth Building on Broadway and Park Place. "If the federal government is acting in good faith, then EPA can and should give us an answer today." The request for EPA to adopt the principles was presented formally at the Oct. 5 meeting of the EPA World Trade Center Expert Technical Review Panel. The White House Council on Environmental Quality had declared its agreement to create that panel on Oct. 27, 2003, as part of negotiations with Senator Hillary Clinton over approval of the nomination of EPA Administrator Michael Leavitt. In her powerpoint presentation at the Oct. 5 meeting, the panel's community liaison, Catherine McVay Hughes, a parent and asthma-educator who lives very close to Ground Zero, urged that the federal agency should make a solid commitment now. "People are not going to want to open up their homes for testing if they don't also have a firm commitment that if anything is found, it will be cleaned up," Hughes explained. The letter urges EPA to conduct comprehensive testing for indoor contamination, not only in southern Manhattan but also in neighborhoods of Brooklyn that were covered by the dust cloud. It calls on EPA to commit to clean up contaminated buildings as warranted; assert authority over environmental safety during demolition of 9/11-contaminated structures such as the Deutsche Bank building; and support long-term medical monitoring, and care as needed, for people exposed to the World Trade Center pollution. While EPA has published a proposed design for indoor testing, community representatives note that it falls short of the mark for a credible program. They expressed strong disappointment that EPA had promised to work in partnership with the community, yet did not engage in a dialogue with them before publishing the protocol. "Community people have invested many hours in these meetings. Sometimes we feel that progress is being made, but then we see some back-sliding," said Suzanne Mattei, executive for the Sierra Club's national field office in New York City. "The bottom line is, we don't know what we have. Is the federal government really going to help these people or not? We don't know." Joel Shufro, executive director of the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health, said EPA's proposed testing program has very little benefit for people whose workplaces are in Lower Manhattan, because EPA wants to leave the decision to test the workplace up to the employer. "If employees want testing done in their workplace, the employer should not have veto power over the employees' right to know whether their workplace is safe," he insisted. Paul Stein, Health and Safety chairperson for the New York State Public Employees Federation, Division, 199, said his members, who are employees of the New York State Department of Health, are angry that the federal government is doing "such a poor job of protecting the health of New Yorkers who live and work near the World Trade Center site." The organizations signing the letter represent many thousands of residents and workers in neighborhoods affected by the dust cloud that penetrated buildings upon the collapse of the towers. They include local resident associations, such as the Independence Plaza North Tenants Association, as well as borough-wide groups such as the Met Council on Housing and statewide groups such as Tenants and Neighbors. Unions of workers concerned about renewed contamination from the pending demolition of the highly contaminated Deutsche Bank building, such as the National Postal Mail Handlers Union, Local 300, the Civil Service Employees Association and Public Employees Federation also joined in the call for a clear answer from the federal government.Faith Groups Share Resources, by Susan Kim, Disaster News Network, October 24, 2004 http//www.disasternews.net/news/news.php?articleid=2464#more ALBANY, N.Y. (October 24, 2004) In the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Adem Carroll remembers escorting Muslims from their homes in New York City to the places where they might get help. Carroll isn't a cop or a security guard - he's relief coordinator for the Islamic Circle of North America, and he has been walking alongside Sept. 11 survivors for more than three years now. "They were afraid to go out," he said. There are 600,000 Muslims in the New York City area. "And Muslims who were already feeling disenfranchised before Sept. 11 then hesitated or avoided receiving some of the benefits they could have received. Right after the disaster, an amazing array of services were available but many clients did not come forward at that point." There were 96,000 "tips" called into FBI officials and local law enforcement shortly after the attacks, he added. "People got rounded up. Authorities had to sift through those. We've helped more than 650 detainees. It has been our second disaster." And it's not over by any means, he said. "There is a lingering sense that all these people were arrested and linked to terrorism. We are trying to help a man who is having mental health problems. He says every time he drives his car he gets pulled over. Either he feels he's being persecuted, or he is being persecuted or both, I don't know." For many Sept. 11 survivors who are having mental health problems, physical ailments, or financial challenges, faith-based groups like Carroll's are their only line of hope. The faith community's response to disasters has unprecedented visibility right now, observed Peter Gudaitis, executive director and CEO of New York Disaster Interfaith Services (NYDIS), a nonprofit that develops and leads faith-based disaster readiness, response, and recovery services for New York. "It is a myth that the faith community is just one aspect of response," he said. "Because the reality is that, many times, the faith-based community is the only response outside of the government." In the wake of Sept. 11, both New York City and state officials had trouble finding a consistent point of contact within the faith community, Gudaitis said. But since NYDIS was created, communications between local government officials and the faith community have opened up, he said. The ICNA is one of NYDIS's governing members, and linking up with other faith groups has helped stretch limited resources, added Carroll. "It takes time to develop trust and working relationships. I wish more of my community would engage in such partnerships." In the year 2000, he pointed out, 55% of all mosques around the country had no paid staff. "We are terribly under-resourced," he said, and linking up with other faith groups has offered new ways to access resources and exchange ideas. Susan O'Brien of the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health (NYCOSH) also found surprising resources from the faith community in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.
"We started getting calls on Sept. 12 from working people who were in harm's way," she said. "We began to respond to this."
Despite federal reassurances that the air was safe to breathe - later found to have no empirical studies to back them up - workers in and around Ground Zero were suffering from respiratory ailments and other health problems.
"And we heard from these folks we'd never heard from before - the United Church of Christ (UCC) and Church World Service (CWS)," said O'Brien. "They were coming to say they wanted to help, that they wanted to form a coalition. It has been an incredibly wonderful partnership."
UCC and CWS have provided financial support for NYCOSH programs that offered, almost immediately after Sept. 11, mobile medical units for workers and free respiratory protection.
Once again, the faith-based community became a sole lifeline of hope for many people, agreed Diane Stein of the Mt. Sinai Hospital Center for Occupational and Environmental Medicine.
"There was no federal response for people who clearly needed medical examination and care after the disaster," said Stein.
After months of advocacy from a coalition of faith-based and community-based groups, Stein and her colleagues now have federal money that will allow them to conduct a medical monitoring program that will span five years.
But they can't use those federal funds to treat people, said Stein. "So we turned to private fundraising. But even private funds couldn't provide the medication necessary for treatment."
That's where the faith-based community - with significant financial support from UCC - filled the gap, she said, "and I have to say it was the most sane and wonderful process I have ever had doing this kind of work."
But if partnerships between faith-based groups and partnerships between the faith community and government officials are strengthening - how does that filter down to a local pastor?
More training is available to clergy and their congregations, pointed out Gudaitis.
"After Sept. 11, many clergy felt ill-prepared to deal with the needs in their congregations."
In the past year, NYDIS has raised $3.5 million to help meet the lingering needs of Sept. 11 survivors. And training is an increasingly important part of NYDIS's outreach, said Gudaitis.
"I don't think your average religious leader knows what to do in a disaster unless they've had training."
Knowing what to do for a disaster survivor who arrives at your church is crucial, agreed Susan Lockwood, NYDIS's director of disaster planning and training. "People will start asking Where is God in this? What is the meaning of life?" she said. "Ritual can help with anxiety, and offer comfort and healing. And then clergy end up walking with them through the whole process of rebuilding their lives."
The Hazards of the Cleanup Failures in Lower Manhattan, WFSS Women's Voices, Women's Lives, October 24, 2004, Listen to the Program
Aired at 4:30 pm on public radio in the North
Carolina Sandhills, a discussion of public health and safety threats posed to New Yorkers
and residents of other cities and states by the refusal of the federal government to
clean up contaminated buildings adjacent to Ground Zero and in other neighborhoods of New
York City, where debris settled as the plume created by the fires travelled. Susan
Franzblau, Professor of Psychology at Fayetteville State University in North Carolina,
moderator. Guests: Kimberly Flynn and Rachel Lidov of 9/11 Environmental Action.
Pentagon
Blocking Clean-Up of Toxic Waste, Greenwatch Today, October 22, 2004 http//www.bushgreenwatch.org/
Some 29 million Americans live within 10 miles of the contaminated bases. But, the Pentagon has stalled cleanup at scores of bases, used political clout to brush aside new
regulations, and challenged the authority of state and federal regulators to force the military to obey existing environmental laws, according to an in-depth investigative story published by USA Today on October 14.
"All the numbers are consistent with an overall trend," said Sylvia Lowrance, a recently retired 20-year EPA veteran who was a top enforcement official there. "In the last two decades, you've had a general buildup of EPA's authority to ... take enforcement action against the Defense Department. That direction has changed in this administration."
At Lowry Air Force Base near Denver, closed in 1994 and sold to developers for $8 million, workers have already hauled away tons of soil contaminated with asbestos. But Air Force officials have refused to pay for the $15 million cleanup, saying the state of Colorado hasn't proved that the risks were high enough to warrant removal of the toxic soil.
"You have citizens here who want to preserve property values, who want to preserve the safety of their families and see this community developed as it was promised," said resident Amy Ford, whose baby daughter was just learning to crawl when men in hazmat suits came to tear out her yard. "The Air Force is refusing to take responsibility."
Four years ago, candidate George Bush stated that the Pentagon must "comply with environmental laws by which all of us must live." But today, the White House has repeatedly sided with the Pentagon in disputes with EPA over toxic cleanup.
For example, the Pentagon is resisting EPA efforts to set new pollution limits on two contaminants, perchlorate, a munitions ingredient, and trichloroethylene (TCE), a solvent. After military officials complained to the White House that EPA studies were exaggerating the dangers of the chemicals, EPA decided to wait for years of additional study before taking action.
Within the administration, "it's no secret that the EPA is running into this wall with the Pentagon," says Linda Fisher, who served two years as EPA second-in- command under Bush before leaving last year. "Is the Department of Defense taking [regulatory disputes] to the White House more often? Absolutely."
State environmental regulators are feeling resistance from the Pentagon too, according to USA Today. In Colorado, California, Ohio and Minnesota, the Pentagon is fighting state efforts to restrict the future use of contaminated military property. And
in California, Florida, Hawaii and Alaska, the military has challenged the authority of state officials to fine the Pentagon for pollution problems.
Meanwhile, under the current regime at EPA, inspections of military bases are down. The number of fines, cleanup orders and other EPA enforcement actions against military facilities have dropped 25%, and the size of the fines issued has dropped 64 percent.
According to the USA Today article, "Health and environmental officials say the military's cleanup proposals at many polluted sites don't do enough to reduce health risks. When that sort of impasse occurs on privately owned land, regulators often use their authority to simply order a cleanup on their terms. But the military is fighting for special treatment -- and getting it."
###
Poisons, Begone! The Dubious Science Behind the Scientologists' Detoxification Program for 9/11 Rescue Workers, by Amanda Schaffer, Slate, Oct. 21, 2004
http//slate.msn.com/id/2108471/#ContinueArticle
[For an archive of over 300 articles and documents concerning 9/11-related occupational and environmental safety and health, visit http//www.nycosh.org/linktopics/WTC-catastrophe.html]
In September 2002, the New York Rescue Workers Detox Project began to offer free "detoxification treatment" to firefighters, police officers, and others exposed to high levels of toxic debris in the aftermath of the World Trade Center's collapse. The detox programbased on the teachings of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard and detailed in his book Clear Body, Clear Mindpurports to "flush" poisons from the body's fat stores using an intensive regimen of jogging, oil ingestion, sauna, and high doses of vitamins, particularly niacin. Funded largely by private donationsmost notably from celebrity Scientologist Tom Cruise, as has been widely reportedtreatment is provided at a clinic on Fulton Street in Manhattan as well as at a newer clinic on Long Island. Roughly 240 rescue workers and 80 downtown residents have undergone the program; most have paid nothing, although a few non-rescue workers have been asked to contribute $5,000 apiece.
Critics contend that the regimen lacks any scientific basis. But some former participants, with whom I spoke during a daylong visit to the clinic, believe that the program has dramatically improved their health and are lobbying local officials, as well as members of Congress, to support it with public funding. (To date, at least $30,000 in city money has been allocated; this money appears in the most recent city budget, and an additional $300,000 from city sources is potentially in the offing, according to Councilwoman Margarita Lopez. The program has also received $2.3 million in funding from private donors, including Cruise.) Program advocates, including former patients, staff doctors, and spokespeople for the clinic, are also reaching out to physicians by setting up informational meetings in an effort to gain mainstream acceptance.
Is the Hubbard method medically defensible? And if not, how can we explain the compelling endorsement it receives from many who've undergone it, as well as from a handful of physicians?
To begin with, let's take a closer look at the regimen itself. The central premiseas codified by the late L. Ron Hubbard and repeated to me, almost verbatim, by Dr. A. Kwabena Nyamekye, the associate medical director of the downtown clinicis as follows Toxic substances (including pollutants, pesticides, and various pharmaceuticals) are stored largely in the body's fatty tissues. Detoxification is thus made possible by "mobilizing" fat reservesthat is, by releasing portions of stored fat that contain dissolved toxinsinto the bloodstream, and then eliminating these toxins, mainly through sweating. In order to "unleash" fats, participants take increasing doses of niacin (up to a whopping 3,500 mg to 5,000 mg per day), along with other vitamins and minerals such as calcium and magnesium. They ingest two daily tablespoonfuls of oil (a blend of soy, walnut, peanut, safflower, and evening primrose oils) to replace the fats that have been mobilized and to maintain weight Advocates are clear that weight-loss is not to occur. Participants also spend a half an hour jogging, followed by two-and-a-half to five hours in a sauna (while drinking ample water), to eliminate contaminants through sweat. The program generally runs seven days a week for three to four weeks, or until the patient no longer "feels the effects of past drugs or chemicals" and reports a "marked resurgence of overall sense of well-being." That is the model regimen, at least.
Some favorable articles have been written about this approach by apparently well-credentialed physicians. However, according to James Dillard, an assistant clinical professor at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and clinical director of Columbia's Rosenthal Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, there is a "disconnect" between the studies described in many of these articles and the conclusions presented. The studies themselves typically lack adequate sample sizes, well-matched control groups, randomization, and other basic elements of experimental design; Dillard calls them "anecdotal," at best. (And some report particularly peculiar findings; according to this study, after roughly three weeks of detox, program participants' IQ scores rose by an average of 6.7 points.)
A number of well-credentialed doctors also sharply criticize the scientific reasoning offered by Hubbard supporters. (This article focuses on Nyamekye and Hubbard's interpretation, but for other theories about how the program works, click here.) Consider first how the regimen purports to mobilize fat reserves. While it is possible to release stored fat through weight loss, the specific emphasis on weight maintenanceand the daily spoonfuls of oilmake it unlikely that significant reserves will be broken down. The use of niacin, too, is open to significant question. Robert Knopp, professor of medicine and director of the Northwest Lipid Research Clinic at the University of Washington, says that niacin is often used clinically (in doses of 1,000 mg to 3,000 mg) to lower patients' blood-lipid levelsthe very opposite of what the Hubbard method seeks to achieve. Dr. Knopp adds that at doses above 3,000 mg there is a real risk of niacin toxicityparticularly of liver damage. To prescribe such high doses for any reason is "totally irrational and dangerous," said Knopp.
Furthermore, the assumption that virtually any toxin can be eliminated effectively through sweat is also questionable. The dust at Ground Zero contained a wide array of poisons, including lead, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, polychlorinated biphenyls, dioxins, and asbestos, in addition to pulverized cement and glass. Some doctors do argue that small quantities of metals, including lead, may be released in sweat. Larger, lipid-soluble toxins such as PCBs, PAHs, and dioxins, however, are generally not eliminated this way, in part because sweat is a water-based medium. (It may be possible to detect traces of fat-soluble toxins in skin oils, though this does not mean that bulk quantities of these substances are removed by this route.) And certainly asbestos, which lodges in the delicate tissue of the lungs, cannot be removed by heavy sweating. Indeed, even Keith Miller, spokesman for the New York Rescue Workers Detox project and a long-time Scientologist, concedes that the regimen was never meant to address toxins or irritants in the lungs or to help patients with respiratory problemsthe complaints most prevalent among former rescue workers.
The fact remains, however, that many participants believe that the program has helped them. Some who previously needed asthma inhalers say they no longer require them. Others say they are able to sleep again or have returned to work after long absences. How to make sense of these positive responses?
Certainly there are elements of the Hubbard methodexercising daily, drinking large quantities of water, cutting out alcohol and drugsthat would promote health. But a psychological argument, rather than a physiological one, may best explain the program's successes. There is strong resonance between the Hubbard method and other rituals of purification found in so many cultural and religious traditions, in which cleansing of the body allows for mental and spiritual renewal. There are also clear parallels between Hubbard's language and that of psychotherapy During detox, patients are said to experience "manifestations" of old traumas or toxins; they taste or smell long-forgotten chemicals or drugs; they re-experience symptoms, allergies, and wounds that "turn off" again when toxins are "flushed" from the body. Hubbard himself was notoriously hostile to psychiatry; but what his method seems to offer is a potent physiological analogue to talk therapy. (It's worth noting that at high doses niacin can cause dilation of peripheral blood vessels, redness, and skin irritation, so patients may experience at least some "manifestations" for this reason.)
As William Michael Moore, a master sergeant with the New York Air National Guard who worked in rescue and recovery at Ground Zero and underwent the detox program in May 2004, told me, the Hubbard method wasn't designed to "hide the symptoms" (as other treatments, such as asthma inhalers, do). Instead, it allowed him to "know the full thing"to experience his symptoms completely, and then begin to heal.
Some participants also said they were helpedand greatly relievedby the program's forthrightness about environmental toxins. Several told me that staff members validated their concerns about Ground Zero exposure in a way that most public discourse (at least until very recently) did not. Indeed, advocates for the Hubbard method often dwell on government's sluggish response to environmental disasterits propensity for "denial, damage control … [and] guarded disclosures of information"and cast themselves as a frank alternative, in which public health is paramount and information on toxins is made easily available. This streak of activism reflects a humanitarian impulse in the Scientology detox campaign, however dubious the science behind it.
Amanda Schaffer is a science writer living in Brooklyn, New York.
Critics Fear Precedent Of Environmental Waivers In House 9/11 Bill, by Manu Raju, Inside EPA Environmental NewsStand, October 21, 2004http//environmentalnewsstand.com/
A House Republican proposal to exclude the construction of an immigration barrier along the California border from more than a dozen environmental laws has prompted outcry from critics who warn that it could set a dangerous precedent. Environmentalists fear the exemptions could allow other major federal projects to move forward without having to determine the impact to the environment.The proposal, which is pending before a House-Senate conference committee that is trying to iron differences on legislation to reform the federal intelligence community, would grant the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) the authority to waive laws holding up the construction of a 14-mile barrier intended to secure the border between San Diego and Mexico. The overall bill is intended to implement intelligence-reform recommendations made by the commission that investigated the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Environmentalists are raising strong objections to the California border plan, arguing that waiving 17 environmental laws and regulations would devastate the critical habitat in the area and lead to other efforts to forgo environmental-review requirements that hold up pending projects. "No further exemptions are necessary; they would only serve to further jeopardize the sensitive natural resources in the area and undermine our nation's environmental protections," says an environmentalists' letter sent earlier this month to lawmakers.
The plan was included in the House's intelligence reform bill by Rep. Doug Ose (R-CA) and has the support of Rep. David Drier (R-CA), who sits on the conference committee. The proponents say environmental laws need to be waived to allow completion of the project, which they argue would prevent illegal immigrants and terrorists from entering the country undetected.
It is uncertain whether the provision has generated enough support to win conference committee approval. The House and Senate remain far apart in resolving differences between their versions of the intelligence bill. At press time, the chairman of the conference, Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-MI), was meeting behind closed doors with the lead Senate negotiators to work out a compromise framework for a final bill, according to congressional sources.
The barrier, which would be administered by DHS' Immigration and Naturalization Service, was authorized through legislation championed by Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) over a decade ago and has been stalled because construction in three of the proposed miles would violate a number of environmental laws. The barrier has already been exempted from portions of the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act.
The lawmakers are pushing for greater statutory exemptions, including the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, Superfund law, Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act and Coastal Zone Management Act. According to environmentalists, the barrier will clear out 4 million cubic yards of soil, kill off numerous species of endangered species, clear "all vegetation from a strip land wide enough to land a 737."
Ose and three other House Republicans asserted their support for the plan in an Oct. 20 letter to members of the conference committee, saying that since the project has been stalled, suspicious individuals have been found to cross the border where the barrier would be placed. The project is needed because "additional federal environmental laws have significantly delayed the project and drastically increased the overall cost of the plan," the letter says, which was signed by California Republicans Reps. Ose, Hunter, Howard "Buck" McKeon and Randy "Duke" Cunningham.
The Republicans say the Army Corps of Engineers, DHS and other state and local agencies will ensure that the project "will effectively seal the border and maintain the environment with as small a footprint as possible."
Still, environmentalists are warning of the long-term ramifications of this plan, saying passage of this bill could prompt a slew of efforts to speed the construction of other major federal projects that do not meet environmental requirements. "This does set a national precedent," says a source with the environmental group Audubon California. "It would make it easier for legislators to make projects lawless."
© Inside Washington Publishers
Relicensing to Add 9,000 Tons of Nuclear Waste; Nevada on Overload, BushGreenwatch, October 21, 2004http//www.bushgreenwatch.org
A new analysis released last night reported that a little-noted surge in the re-licensing of nuclear reactors over the past four years will add some 9,000 metric tons of high-level nuclear waste to the nation's inventory. This will prolong storage problems through the middle of the century at reactor sites across the U.S.Compiled from Department of Energy (DOE) figures by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) Action Fund, the analysis shows that in the wake of the 2002 Senate vote to approve the Yucca Mountain dumpsite in Nevada, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has quietly approved 26 reactor operating extensions--24 of them for another 20 years.
Another 18 reactors have renewal applications pending. No request to date has been denied. According to the analysis, if Yucca Mountain opens on its scheduled date, its storage space will already be fully claimed. An additional 9,000 tons of nuclear waste will be waiting to come to Yucca and still more will pile up at 79 sites in 35 states.
Communities near each of the reactors were the subject of aggressive public relations activities by DOE and the nuclear power industry, implying that the Yucca Mountain dumpsite would rid them of their waste problem. Unless Congress acts to expand
the Yucca site, the wave of relicensing means that most of these 79 communities will see more waste sitting on their sites for decades more.
The situation contradicts a DOE press release of May 8, 2002, when Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said "America's...homeland security, as well as environmental protection is well served by siting a single nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain,
rather than having nuclear waste stranded in temporary storage locations at 131 sites in 39 states."
Likewise, DOE spokesman Joe Davis was quoted in the June 11, 2002 Chicago Tribune as saying "You can't have nuclear waste in Illinois and 38 other states where it's stored temporarily above ground next to schools, rivers, lakes and downtown metropolitan
areas. It's just not the smart thing to do in the interest of national security and environmental protection."
The EWG Action Fund analysis calculates that shipping the extra waste to Yucca will require either 6,000 more truck shipments or 1,050 train shipments through communities in Nevada.
Said EWG Action Fund chief scientist Richard Wiles "This analysis confirms what we suspected, but what the public was never told--that Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site is really a nuclear expansion program in disguise."
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Recipe for Disaster, by Phyllis Eckhaus, In These Times, October 20, 2004
http//www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/1383/
[For an archive of over 300 articles and cdocuments concerning 9/11-related occupational and environmental safety and health, visit http//www.nycosh.org/linktopics/WTC-catastrophe.html]
Never mind the latest Matrix or Star Wars cinematic extravaganza. In this era of sequels, the biggest blockbuster is the Return of the Reaganites, a George W. Bush production featuring a cast of thieving thousands. This is the sequel to die for, perhaps literally, as the forces of the right consolidate power, subvert the laws and sabotage the government while ransacking on a global scale. As two new books make abundantly clear, Bush & Co. have perfected robber baron tactics of deceit and destruction, applying them to issues as seemingly disparate as the environment and the war on terror.
It’s instructive to recall James Watt, Reagan’s first Secretary of the Interior, who openly disavowed any responsibility to the public as he dismantled his department and sought to sell off public lands at fire sale prices. Watt cited the approaching apocalypse in his defense, declaring, "I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns." Watt resigned following a firestorm of protest; in the intervening decades, his ideological heirs have learned to present rabid extremism and profiteering in a more persuasive package, masking their agenda with secrecy and lies.
In Crimes Against Nature, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. documents Bush & Co.’s astonishing success stealthily sabotaging existing environmental laws through regulatory revisions. When a federal judge ruled against "mountain-topping"—a form of strip mining involving the demolition of mountaintops and the subsequent disposal of millions of gallons of toxic sludge—a former coal lobbyist who’s now a Bush deputy rewrote the regulations to qualify the sludge as "fill" rather than waste subject to federal oversight. When litigator Kennedy won his case against factory hog farms, which dump a brain-damaging- "fecal marinade" into the waterways of 34 states, the Bush administration gathered Big Pork to write new regulations exempting the industry from the Clean Water Act.
Bush has applied Texas-tested devolution strategies to finally realize the Reagan Revolution of government in lockstep with corporate power—and the long-term impact extends beyond environmental consequences. For generations, we’ve been protected by a "permanent government" of civil servants who’ve insulated us from the excesses of our elected leaders. Bush has battered this beneficent bureaucracy. Kennedy observes that as part of a federal plan to outsource 425,000 federal jobs, "thousands of environmental science positions are being contracted out" to industry hacks. Concerns about conflicts of interest have become passé. When the courts directed the Bush administration to start regulating atrazine—which causes grotesque deformities in frogs—it outsourced the job of oversight to Sygenta, the same firm that manufactures the cancer-causing pesticide.
Kennedy’s polemic lays out what would be a vast conspiracy, except that so much of it is happening in view of a public, press and Congress without the will to see or stop it. Alas, this is not a story of government incompetence The White House has ruthlessly effectuated the agenda of its corporate base, putting the sleaziest industry advocates in top policy positions, from Cheney on down. The union of business and government interests is so complete, Kennedy doesn’t hesitate to use the f-word, quoting a dictionary definition of fascism as "a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership together with belligerent nationalism."
Others express shock at the startling ways this presidency puts American lives at risk. In "Pollution and Deception at Ground Zero" (http//www.sierraclub.org), a Sierra Club report released in August, author Suzanne Mattei catalogues the fantastic efforts of the Bush administration to hide the huge public health hazard created by the smoldering Twin Towers, the world’s largest incineration pit of industrial materials. In the days following the attack, the Environmental Protection Agency—in press releases rewritten by the White House—repeatedly assured the public that the air at Ground Zero was safe, despite government readings showing asbestos in the air and dust as caustic as drain cleaner.
Mattei details the lengths to which the feds went to reinvent reality, jettisoning established scientific procedures and expertise in order not to find the toxic pollution obvious to everyone who looked. As one angry rescue worker told Mattei, "What the EPA did was like using a colander with giant holes, and then saying ‘Look, there’s no spaghetti.’ " Government scientists attempted to protect public health, but as the heads of 19 EPA locals complained, their "professional work [was] subverted by political pressure applied by the White House."
Chain of Command, Seymour Hersh’s new book on the White House’s war on terror, reveals the same pattern of deceit and despotism in the administration’s conduct of foreign affairs. Hersh presents layer upon layer of fact, and his densely documented work is more frightening than a horror movie.
Hersh describes how a "can-do" crew of ideological cowboys consistently overrode the objections of public servants, condemning their cautions as cowardice and disloyalty. Repeated warnings about out-of-control interrogation practices at Guantánamo were cast aside, as Defense Secretary Rumsfeld insisted that coercion and torture could serve as shortcuts to obtain "actionable intelligence." Rumsfeld proceeded with plans to apply Guantánamo tactics in Iraq, as Bush unilaterally and secretly suspended the rules of conventional warfare. Similarly, Bush & Co. overrode the chorus of insider objections to their claim that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, setting up a special office of ideologues to promulgate "noble lies" on behalf of war. And as the invasion of Iraq grew imminent, the White House slashed and burned the plans prepared by the U.S. Central Command, dramatically downsizing projections of needed troops and supplies.
These savagely shortsighted moves have done nothing to make America safe. Indeed, the world has turned furiously against us. Why would the White House continue along this road to disaster?
Blind greed fortified by hubris is the answer. At Chain of Command’s conclusion, Hersh plaintively asks, "How did eight or nine neoconservatives who believed that war in Iraq was the answer to international terrorism get their way?" His oddly credulous question overlooks the multitudes inside and outside government who stood to profit—from Iraqi oil, reconstruction contracts and our now more than $536 billion military budget. Bush & Co. are not bumblers; they just don’t care about the public or the future. After all, the apocalypse is nigh.
Bush Administration Leaves Chemical and Nuclear Plants, HazMat, Ports and Water Systems Vulnerable to Terrorists, Press Release, Public Citizen, October 18, 2004http//www.citizen.org/pressroom/release.cfm?ID=1808
Bush Aversion to Regulation and Allegiance to Campaign Contributors Has Blocked Progress on Homeland Security, New Report Shows WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Bush administration has consistently ignored or opposed commonsense measures to protect Americans from potentially catastrophic terrorist attacks – an inaction that reflects officials’ aversion to regulating private industry and allegiance to key campaign contributors, a new Public Citizen report shows. The report, Homeland Unsecured The Bush Administration’s Hostility to Regulation and Ties to Industry Leave America Vulnerable, details how the Bush administration has failed to harden our defenses against terrorism and secure the most vulnerable, high-impact targets. The report is based on an analysis of five key areas – chemical plants, nuclear plants, hazardous material transport, ports and water systems. The report is available at www.HomelandUnsecured.org. "Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, President Bush has made protection of the American people from terrorism the rhetorical centerpiece of his presidency," said Public Citizen President Joan Claybrook. "Yet this administration has failed to use its executive powers or support legislation to mandate regulatory requirements that should be taken. Bush has abdicated his responsibility to protect America from the risk of terrorist attacks because he is fundamentally hostile to regulation of private industry and is loath to cross his big money campaign contributors." Eighty-five percent of the nation’s critical infrastructure is controlled by the private sector. However, the Bush administration has been notoriously hostile toward the reasonable regulation of private industry, including the industries mentioned in this report. It has blocked efforts to create rules to strengthen security at chemical and nuclear plants, make the transportation of hazardous materials more secure, ensure the safety of the drinking water supply or secure the nation’s ports. The report suggests that this is in part because industries representing the five homeland security areas examined in this study collectively haveRaised at least $19.9 million for the Bush campaigns, the Republican National Committee or the Bush inauguration since the 2000 cycle. Provided 10 Rangers and 20 Pioneers – individuals who raise at least $200,000 and $100,000, respectively – to the Bush presidential campaigns. Spent at least $201 million lobbying the White House, executive branch agencies and Congress from 2002 through June 2004. Among the report’s other findings Chemical plants A strike at one or more of the 15,000 chemical plants across the United States could cause thousands, even millions, of injuries and deaths. But the Bush administration and the chemical industry have blocked legislation that would require chemical plants to shift to safer chemicals and technologies, and blocked Environmental Protection Agency efforts to compel security improvements via the Clean Air Act. Nuclear plants Twenty-seven state attorneys generals warned Congress in October 2002 that the consequences of a catastrophic attack against one of the country’s 103 nuclear power plants "are simply incalculable." The plants were not designed to withstand the impact of aircraft crashes or explosive forces, and the government does not require nuclear plants to be secure from an aircraft attack. Radioactive waste is stored in standing pools or dry casks, making it vulnerable, and the plants have grossly inadequate security. But the Bush administration and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) have resisted congressional efforts for additional security regulation. In fact, the NRC proposed weakening fire safety regulations, which would make it harder for a reactor to be safely shut down in the event of a terrorist attack. Hazardous materials transport The trains and trucks that carry tens of millions of tons of toxic chemicals and other hazardous materials annually on our highways make tempting terrorist targets. More than half of the nation’s 60,000 rail tank cars carrying hazardous materials are too old to meet current industry standards and thus are more likely than newer cars to break open after derailing. A weapon as simple as the legal, widely available 50-caliber rifle has the potential to inflict serious damage on a train car or truck carrying lethal materials, by penetrating tanks and causing an explosion or derailment. Despite the risk, though, there are insufficient checks on where trucks carrying hazardous materials may drive; insufficient oversight and tracking of the types, amounts and locations of trucks moving these lethal loads; and insufficient controls on the issuance of commercial licenses for drivers of trucks carrying hazardous materials. Legislation to assess rail security has been blocked by members of the president’s party, and other safety proposals have been dropped because of industry opposition. Port security Every year, 8,100 foreign cargo ships make 50,000 visits to the United States. International sea transport is an attractive terrorist target because there are millions of shipping containers, hundreds of ports and dozens of methods to damage infrastructure, disrupt the world economy, undermine our military readiness and harm Americans. Just 4 to 6 percent of shipping containers are inspected today. Inspectors are not adequately trained. And innovative pilot security programs have not been implemented. At least one important security initiative has been adopted since 9/11, the Maritime Transportation Security Act (MTSA) of 2002, but new security measures and proposed funding put forward by the Bush administration fall far short of what is needed. Drinking water systems Few acts of sabotage against the public could be more insidious than delivering poison into a family’s home through tap water. The water distribution networkthe pumping stations, storage tanks and pipes that might cover thousands of miles within a metropolitan areaprovides countless opportunities to introduce biological, chemical or radiological contaminants. But there is no funding mechanism for the federal government to provide direct grants to cities to upgrade water security, and the private water utility industry’s campaign to take over public water systems is getting a push from the Bush administration. This could make securing our water supply even more difficult because private water companies, like chemical companies, nuclear power companies and other industries, will resist strong security standards mandated by the government. The terrorist threat is particularly acute in Washington, D.C., where 8,500 rail cars carrying hazardous materials travel through the city each year. Ninety-ton rail cars that regularly pass within four blocks of the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., contain enough chlorine to potentially injure or kill 100,000 people within 30 minutes and could endanger 2.4 million people. The D.C. Council considered a bill requiring the rerouting of hazardous material-carrying trains away from the city, but it was postponed because the federal government promised to study the matter. In May 2004, though, a Transportation Security Administration official told Congress that the federal government intended to continue allowing trains and hazardous materials to pass close to the Capitol. "A year of hearings, meetings and entreaties to the Bush administration has failed to persuade them to take obvious action to protect the safety of Washington residents," said D.C. Councilmember Kathy Patterson. "I am urging my colleagues to move ahead with our legislative remedy, and urge other communities to follow suit." Added Rick Hind, legislative director of the Toxics Campaign at Greenpeace USA, "The good news is that threats to chemical plants and train shipments are preventable. In fact, the most serious threats can actually be eliminated thanks to safer available chemicals and safer rail routes. The bad news is that the Bush administration would rather listen to the Dow and Exxon lobbyists than take action to prevent a disaster."
E.P.A. Official to Quit, Metro Briefing, New York Times, October 14, 2004
http//www.nytimes.com/2004/10/14/nyregion/14mbrf.html?pagewanted=all
MANHATTAN E.P.A. OFFICIAL TO QUIT The federal official overseeing the controversial cleanup and environmental testing of apartments near ground zero has submitted her resignation. In a letter dated Oct. 12, the official, Jane M. Kenny, said she would leave her job as the Environmental Protection Agency's Region 2 administrator on Nov. 12 for a "new opportunity," but was not more specific. Ms. Kenny, who was appointed to her post in 2001, has rejected claims that residents and workers were allowed to return to the area around ground zero too soon. She also oversaw the cleanup and testing of thousands of apartments in Lower Manhattan, some of which will have to be retested. (NYT) Back to Top
Binding Firefighters' Psychological Wounds, by Robin Finn, New York Times, October 14, 2004
http//www.nytimes.com/2004/10/14/nyregion/14profile.html
MALACHY P. CORRIGAN'S father was a fireman for 38 years, a member of Engine 292 in Woodside, Queens, but if he thought it a treacherous job, he never let on to his wife and children. Firefighting was a manly calling; real men didn't complain or cry. Mr. Corrigan, a sentimentalist, keeps a model of his father's fire truck near his desk. But the reason he is more than busy- overwhelmed, really- as director of the New York City Fire Department's counseling service unit is that his father's heyday is long gone. Real men do complain, cry and have nightmares, especially the firefighters who survived the World Trade Center collapse. Business is booming at Mr. Corrigan's office on Lafayette Street. He kind of wishes it weren't. There was always a full caseload; he transformed an alcoholism-focused treatment unit into a full-service clinic after being hired 22 years ago, a brawny redheaded guy with a brand new master's degree in mental health nursing. But ever since Sept. 11, 2001, it's as if he's held two jobs. "The reality of it is that for a lot of firefighters, and for their families, this has come to be perceived as a riskier occupation, and it's having mental health consequences, marital consequences, drug and alcohol abuse consequences, you name it," he says, dropping heavily into a chair. Add a persistent orange alert to the post-9/11 mental landscape, and an unsettled work force is all but guaranteed. With his pessimistic posture and bleary blue eyes, Mr. Corrigan makes an ideal, if unintentional, advertisement for the demand for Project Liberty, a government-sponsored, and fiscally endangered, program that provides mental health services for firefighters affected by 9/11. The program, which he runs, is financed through 2005, but Mr. Corrigan, who tracks down $6.5 million in noncity money each year for the counseling unit, is convinced the department needs Project Liberty-caliber counseling through 2008. His red hair has faded to near-transparency; the same goes for his eyebrows and eyelashes. His yellow shirt emphasizes a bleached-out spirit, not a sunny disposition. He lost 60 friends who were firefighters at the trade center. He is 53, yet looks a decade older. The instant-aging effect may be inevitable when one's caseload increases by 400 percent virtually overnight. The peer-counseling division had one practitioner before Sept. 11; now it has 40. Saturating firehouses with peer counselors was his idea. "I don't think we as a society place the same value on emotional injuries being able to debilitate an individual as we do on physical injury," he says, "but within the department, we believe we've put a big dent in the myth of 'I'm a tough guy and I can't be weak emotionally or else the other guys won't accept me back in the firehouse.' '' Besides coordinating program financing and treatment for more than 3,000 Fire Department clients, 80 percent of them with issues traceable to the attack, Mr. Corrigan, a seminary dropout who took up mental health nursing as a default career, is himself undergoing therapy. He waited more than a year before realizing that he, too, needed help to cope with 9/11-related nightmares and their daytime- and much scarier- equivalent, intrusive imaging. (He describes it as a hallucination of the horrors experienced at ground zero.) The conversation is nearly two hours along before he divulges that smidgen of personal information. "My job was not to dig through the trade center rubble to find pieces of civilians and colleagues; my job was to be there with the men who were doing it," he says quietly, as if speaking in a monotone helps keep bad memories at bay. "Intrusive imaging wasn't just words on a page. I had it happen to me, too. So I'm still in therapy; I don't yet have a game plan for when I'll be done." A GRIMACE is his only response to the political squabble, reported last month in The New York Times, which may cost Project Liberty an estimated $4.45 million in Federal Emergency Management Agency money. (The agency's commitment to Project Liberty expires at the end of this year.) Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, a Democrat, thought she had gotten extra money through a Senate amendment only to learn that Gov. George E. Pataki, a Republican, planned to use the money for other programs. Mr. Corrigan's plans simply include continued counseling for any client who needs it. "I've faced the same funding realities with Project Liberty ever since 9/11," he says. "Every 9 months, every 18 months, you have to justify why the money is still needed. When the federal money is no longer available, I've been assured the city will assume the burden." But he's taking no chances. He recently secured a $2.78 million grant from the Department of Justice. "I'm not worried about where the money comes from; as long as it's legal, I'm interested." Interested, perhaps, to the exclusion of everything else. He is lucky to have an understanding wife - a Fire Department nurse. In the fall of 2001, their season tickets to the New York Giants went unused. When he wasn't at the office, he was at ground zero ministering to the work crews from 11 p.m. to 3 a.m. This season's goal, he says, was to attend eight games. "But I've already missed the first one,'' he says. "Had a memorial service to go to." He spends a lot of time in churches, an ironic outcome for a Catholic boy who studied for the priesthood but dropped out just shy of ordination because he saw "too many unhappy priests." Now he hears, and shares, confessions of a different stripe. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company Back to Top
Spitzer Halts 'Scam' 9/11-Tribute Coins, by Neil Graves, New York Post, October 14, 2004
http//www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/20204.htm October 14, 2004 -- A Westchester company is trying to "profit from a national tragedy" by peddling 9/11 commemorative coins to gullible customers ready to believe they're real dollars made from silver found at Ground Zero, Attorney General Eliot Spitzer charged yesterday. National Collector's Mint of Port Chester had been offering the "2004 Freedom Tower Silver Dollar" coins, depicting the Twin Towers on one side and the soon to be built Freedom Tower on the other, since September. Then Spitzer sued and obtained a restraining order abruptly terminating the sale. Its Web site had even offered a special deal $19.05 off the "regular" $39 price. "This product has been promoted with claims that are false, misleading or unsubstantiated," Spitzer said. "It is a shameless attempt to profit from a national tragedy." Spitzer said National Collector's falsely claimed its coins were struck from "pure silver recovered from Ground Zero." The company said the silver came from vaults that had been buried in the rubble. But it did not say how it got its hands on the precious metal. The sales pitch said the "legally authorized" coins were created with "100 Mil .999 Pure Silver." But Spitzer's lawsuit says they're only bronze with silver plating. "The silver content of the 'Freedom Tower' medallion is infinitesimal compared to the silver content of a pure silver coin," he said. Spitzer said the company's sales staff even had the nerve to represent the coins as legal tender a claim that some might find plausible since they're inscribed with the words "One Dollar" and "In God We Trust." The medallion, he said, was produced by a private Wyoming company called SoftSky, which had a licensing agreement with the "Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands." The Marianas, which constitute some 14 tiny Pacific Islands, are U.S. territory but have no authority to issue coins. Spitzer also said the company's statement that it is registered to do business in New York state "is completely false." National Collector's stood by its product. "Our many repeat customers demonstrate the quality of our products and the integrity of our company," it said in a statement. "We stand by the accuracy of the statements in our marketing for the 2004 Freedom Tower Silver Dollar. Our efforts in marketing 9/11 commemorative items have already enabled us to donate over $1.5 million to various official 9/11-related charities." The attorney general is seeking a permanent injunction and restitution for consumers. He also wants the company to state clearly in its ads that its products are not issued or endorsed by the U.S. government. Anyone who bought one of the medallions and wants to file a complaint can contact the Attorney General's office at www.oag.state.ny.us or call (800) 771-7755, Spitzer said. Copyright 2004 NYP Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved. Back to Top
Attorney General, Citing 'Misleading' Advertising, Stops the Sale of Sept. 11 Memorial Coins, by Sabrina Tavernise, New York Times,October 14, 2004
http//www.nytimes.com/2004/10/14/nyregion/14coin.html
New York's attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, said yesterday that he had obtained a court order halting the sale of a Sept. 11 memorial silver dollar because of what he said were misleading claims in its advertising. Mr. Spitzer said the coin, which is touted as having been minted from silver recovered from a bank vault "in the heart of ground zero," was being falsely advertised by the National Collector's Mint of Port Chester, N.Y., the company that issued it. Mr. Spitzer said that the advertising might lead buyers to think that the coins were solid silver and legal tender in the United States, neither of which is true. "It is a shameless attempt to profit from a national tragedy," he said in a written statement. Mr. Spitzer said the advertising gives the impression that the coins are solid silver, rather than plated in silver. He said whether the coins were minted from silver found at ground zero was not relevant to his case. Dan Walker, a coin dealer in Peekskill, N.Y., said the coins were coated with less than a penny's worth of silver. National Collector's Mint, in a written statement, said "We stand by the accuracy of the statements in our marketing for the 2004 Freedom Tower silver dollar. Our efforts in marketing 9/11 commemorative items have already enabled us to donate more than $1.5 million to various official 9/11-related charities." The television ads feature shots of the coin, which is stamped with a relief of the World Trade Center towers and the inscription "In God We Trust" and say it is the "first legally authorized government" coin to be issued. On one of its television ads, it is priced at $19.95. The coin, according to Mr. Spitzer, is produced by a Wyoming company called SoftSky Inc., which has a contract to issue United States currency with the Northern Marianas Islands, a United States territory in the North Pacific. Some customers were misled into thinking the coins were issued by the United States government, Mr. Spitzer said in the statement. National Collector's Mint is scheduled to respond on Oct. 29 to the court order, which was issued on Tuesday by the State Supreme Court in Albany. The penalty for deceptive advertising is $500 per violation, Mr. Spitzer's office said, which includes each broadcast of the advertisement. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company Back to Top
Asbestos compensation bill dead, by Ted Monoson, Missoulian D.C. Bureau, October 14, 2004
http//www.missoulian.com/articles/2004/10/14/news/mtregional/news04.txt
[For an archive of articles and documents concerning asbestos-related occupational and environmental safety and health, visit http//www.nycosh.org/linktopics/asbestos.html] Legislation that would have compensated Libby residents who have asbestos-related illnesses is dead, and a senior Republican senator says it's unlikely to be resurrected in the near future. "There's not going to be one," Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said when asked about the bill's prospects. The Senate concluded its pre-election work Oct. 11 and is scheduled to have a lame-duck session in mid-November. Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., shared Hatch's pessimism. "I hope not" Baucus replied when asked if the bill is dead. "It's not doing very well, that's for sure." The bill, which would have required companies that manufactured or used asbestos to contribute to a fund to help asbestos victims, got caught in a partisan tug of war. In exchange for the payments, the companies would be shielded from civil liability. Hatch said Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., made unreasonable requests that torpedoed the legislation. He was particularly annoyed by a proposal Daschle offered in mid-September. "When the one-pager came over from Daschle that absolutely meant that they were going to kill the bill," Hatch said. "There's no way anybody with any brains would have agreed to his provisions. It just means billions of dollars for the trial lawyers, who really don't deserve it. The Democrats have really screwed this up." Hatch and Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., objected to Daschle's call that the fund be up and working 90 days after the legislation is signed into law. They also opposed his effort to allow pending asbestos cases to continue to be litigated. Hatch and Frist wanted those cases to be transferred into the newly created fund system. Supporters of having the trust fund implemented quickly note that many victims of asbestos-related illnesses don't have much time to live, and if the process is dragged out companies will get off the hook. Daschle spokesman Todd Webster said that the South Dakota senator had worked hard to strike a deal. "Senator Daschle has negotiated in good faith with Senator Frist for month after month after month " Webster said. "He has made significant concessions in order to get a deal. He wants to make sure that asbestos victims are compensated fairly and justly for their injuries." Webster noted that Daschle agreed to have any cases in which a trial date has not been set transferred to the trust fund. The bill would have established a special court to handle claims by people exposed to asbestos. People would have only received payments if they met specific medical criteria. Libby residents and former workers at a W.R. Grace and Co. vermiculite mine there would have been exempted from medical criteria requirements. Their claims would have gone to a special medical advisory committee. Inclusion of the provision was the result of Baucus' vigorous lobbying of Hatch. "We worked that out for them," Hatch said when asked about the Libby provision. "We had it worked out. They would have been very well taken care of." Hatch said that the window for completing a bill had closed. "I think it will be too late next year," Hatch said. "About $30 billion will probably dry up and there will be more companies in bankruptcy." Baucus was frustrated as he considered the past year's efforts. "We are very close," he said. "Frankly, if there had been extra effort on both sides, we could have reached a resolution. They just couldn't get together." Copyright © 2004 Missoulian Back to Top
City Decides to Demolish East-Side Inn, by Mike Lee, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, October 13, 2004
http//www.dfw.com/mld/startelegram/news/local/9906580.htm?1c
FORT WORTH - An east-side eyesore is finally coming down. The city announced plans Tuesday to spend $1.1 million to demolish the old Cowtown Inn after the federal government put the brakes on a plan to use the old motel as a test for a new asbestos-removal method. Work could begin as early as January, putting an end to the one-time roadside attraction that eventually became a flash point in a national debate over cleanup of neighborhood decay. "The bottom line is, where there's a will, there's a way," Mayor Mike Moncrief said. The announcement was met with applause and drew praise from neighborhood leaders and environmentalists.</