9/11's Toxic Zone - Mayor Rudy Giuliani is just as much to blame as Christine Todd Whitman

[Richard McManus]

Mayor Rudy Giuliani is just as much to blame as Christine Todd Whitman for the physical harm done to the 9/11 first responders, the construction workers, and the people who lived near or downwind from the World Trade Center dust.

Why didn’t the news media broadcast the dangers in breathing the air around the wreckage from the World Trade Center?   Why didn’t OSHA closed down the area around the WTC site after workers were seen not following its rules for wearing respirators vs. just dust masks or not wearing any masks? 

The press release did not make a case that any of these plans had ever resulted in any real action; nor did it dispute the fact that as late as the end of October, only 29 percent of the workers at the site were wearing respirators

Dr. Edwin M. Kilbourne, a high level federal scientist, issued a memo on September 12, 2001, to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advising against the speedy return to buildings in the area because of possible hazards from various toxic materials. 

Associate City Health Commissioner Kelly McKinney on October 6, 2001, said that proper safety protocol for WTC site workers was not being enforced.  (Source:  Juan Gonzalez, "Clearing the Air with Truth", New York Daily News, September 5, 2001)

On September 18, 2001 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency head Christine Todd Whitman said in a press release that the air “did not pose a health hazard”,

The associate administrator added that she had also considered including information about the health risks of being exposed to particulate matter, but that the “CEQ official discouraged her from doing so.” In March 2004, the firm Berger & Montague filed a class action lawsuit against Christine Todd Whitman and two of her assistant administrators, as well as the EPA writ large.

MY COMMENT:  Who are these assistant administrators?

"The levels of cancer-causing asbestos, federal authorities said, experts cautioned workers at ground zero to keep wearing respirators. Air quality samples taken between September 13-27, 2001 at the rubble pile's so-called hot zone detected airborne asbestos nearly twice the permissible limit.

Don Carson who runs the National Hazardous Materials Training Program for the International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE) had been on the scene in Lower Manhattan since Sept. 15, 2001 distributing respirators and training workers on the spot in the safest methods to deal with potentially lethal materials. According to Carson and others, the high-risk frontline personnel resisted the respirators and other precautions. Carson said, “You do not smell asbestos. You may smell body parts, you may smell Freon. But it's the things you can't smell that can really hurt you the most.'"

Philip Landrigan, director of environmental and occupational medicine at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, was working with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). 

Bruce Lippy was an IUOE industrial hygienist working on the World Trade Center site. He said he has taken some 60 samples from around the site, looking in particular for traces of lead and asbestos.

John Moran, an engineer and industrial hygienist and consultant to the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences said, “There is no excuse for what I saw.” Moran investigated working conditions at ground zero in the weeks after the Sept. 11^th.  There was no centrally organized effort to make sure that workers were actually getting the training and wearing the protection they needed."

MY COMMENT:  Whose fault was that?

Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson dispatched more than 700 experts to ground zero, including specialists in biohazards, epidemiology, public health and the environment. He said, burning freon may have converted to another toxin, phosgene, used by the Nazis as a chemical weapon. The most potent threat is dioxin, a powerful carcinogen formed by burning PVC.

 On Oct. 2, 2001 benzene levels from three spots around ground zero were measured at 42, 31 and 16 times higher than the OSHA standard. 

Toxic Definitions: Benzene: A colorless liquid with sweet odor that evaporates into the air quickly, benzene is a highly flammable carcinogen. Breathing benzene can cause drowsiness, dizziness, confusion, headaches, rapid heart rate, vomiting, infection or tremors. Long-term exposure affects bone marrow and can cause anemia and leukemia. Breathing very high levels can cause death.  Chlorinated dioxins are a group of 75 chemically related compounds that are crystals or colorless solids; they are odorless and carcinogenic. Health risks include several kinds of cancer, liver damage and severe skin disease, such as lesions. A single exposure to some dioxins can kill animals. Chlorinated dioxins can travel long distances in the air.  Polychlorinated biphenyls, (PCBs): are a mixture of chemicals that have no smell or taste, cause cancer in animals and are considered a likely human carcinogen.  Health risks include liver, stomach and thyroid damage, and anemia. PCBs also can cause behavioral and immunological changes in children. They can travel long distances in the air. Sulfur Dioxide: A colorless gas with a pungent smell; breathing high levels can cause severe airway obstructions, and burn the nose and throat.

 

News Reports Discussing September 11th Toxins from October 1 - 27, 2001

See:

 News Reports Discussing September 11th Toxins Oct 01 (immuneweb.org)

[Richard McManus]

OCTOBER 26, 2001:  “TOXIC ZONE” was the front page headlines in the Daily News and Democracy Now reported this as well.  (SEE near the end of the video)

Toxic Zone: World Trade Center Clean-Up Workers Face Hazardous Cond...

 

October 26, 2001:  The US Environmental Protection Agency asked the Department of Energy for monitoring help. Robert Leifer, a senior research scientist at the Department of Energy Environmental Measurements Laboratory in New York, called the UC Davis DELTA Group to collaborate on sampling near the Trade Center site (for Detection and Evaluation of Long-Range Transport of Aerosols).

 

"DOE called UC Davis DELTA because of its ability to measure particle size, composition and time continuously, day and night, is unequaled," Dr. Cahill said, "In three hours, we had a sampler on the way to New York City." The first batch of samples were shipped to UC Davis for analysis on Nov. 5. Scientists will look for health threats.  Researchers analyze air samples from trade center attack site | UC ...

 

February 15, 2002:  Study found awful air downtown. New York Daily News.
This story features Thomas Cahill's study of air pollution at the World Trade Center.

February 15, 2002: UC Davis DELTA researcher Dr. Thomas Cahill said, "The air from ground zero was laden with extremely high amounts of very small particles.

The Manhattan air samples were collected at the request of a US Department of Energy scientist from Oct. 2 through mid-December, 2001 by a DELTA Group air monitor placed on a rooftop one mile north-northeast of the trade center complex. The samples were collected continuously in eight separate size modes from coarse (12 micrometers diameter) to ultra-fine (0.09 micrometers diameter). Some of these materials are known to cause health problems in some people when they are inhaled in sufficient amounts. Sulfur, for example, can irritate lung tissues. Lead can damage the central nervous system. Some carbon-based compounds can cause cancer. So can the mineral asbestos.  Airborne particles of 12 micrometers diameter can also cause or aggravate breathing problems, such as asthma.   Very fine particles can travel deep into human lungs. Such small particles may have no immediate apparent health effects in moderate concentrations, but they typically are removed from the lungs through the bloodstream and heart, increasing the possibility of health impacts.

Unprecedented amounts of very fine particles collected at the sampling site.  Very fine particles in one 45-minute period - "an extremely high peak," Cahill said the very fine particles contained high levels of sulfur and sulfur-based compounds. The very fine particles also contain high levels of very fine silicon, metals, asbestos and glass. "Even on the worst air days in Beijing, downwind from coal-fired power plants, or in the Kuwaiti oil fires, we did not see these levels of very fine particulates," Cahill said.  Many different metals were found in the samples of very fine particles, and some were found at the highest levels ever recorded in air in the United States. 

Metals present in very fine particles in relatively high concentrations were iron, titanium (some associated with powdered concrete), vanadium and nickel (often associated with fuel-oil combustion), copper and zinc. Mercury was seen occasionally in fine particles but at low concentrations. DELTA group found very few asbestos fibers, even in the very fine particles.

Cahill said. "It had rained, sometimes heavily, on six days in the prior three weeks. That rain should have settled these coarse particles." The finding suggests that coarse particles were being continually generated from the hot debris pile.

They detailed very high levels of very fine airborne particles.  EPA studies had prior to 9/11 discovered that these very fine particles could raise a person's risk of lung damage and heart attacks. That analysis has been accepted for publication in the peer-reviewed journal Aerosol Science and Technology.

MY COMMENT:  How come the words “WILL RAISE” were not used by Dr. Cahill in Feb. 2002?

Air quality scientists release WTC study | UC Davis

 

CNN.com:  Investigator: EPA not properly testing WTC air

February 24, 2002:  Chief investigator for the EPA's Ombudsman Office Hugh Kaufman said EPA deliberately not testing the air quality in the World Trade Center area properly and “I believe EPA did not do that because they knew it would come up not safe and so they are involved in providing knowingly false information to the public about safety."  At a public hearing in lower Manhattan was held at request of Rep. Jerrold Nadler with scientists, residents, and small business owners.  He said it's the first time none of the government agencies had sent a representative.  "It's remarkable. Either they have something to hide or they don't give a damn," said Nadler.

 Kaufman has said earlier this month that he believes the air quality at ground zero is worse than the EPA will admit, and that he believes the agency has been misleading the public about the inherent risks for residents and workers in the area.

Scores of rescue workers and residents who live near the disaster site have complained of respiratory problems, and many say they believe something in the air from the collapse of the buildings is making them sick.

Dr. Thomas Cahill, of the University of California at Davis testified the surgical masks used by workers and residents in the area do not sufficiently protect against certain particles found in the air. CNN.com - Investigator: EPA not properly testing WTC air - February...

 

[Richard McManus]

[Richard McManus]

EPA failed to investigate and disclose toxic hazards properly. Oddly, EPA's website reports that it found no polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) - cancer-causing chemicals generally released by combustion of mixed materials - "in any air samples," although four independent tests found them at elevated levels and even EPA's own research scientists reported in a scientific journal that they found them at levels that Science magazine deemed worthy of "the most serious kind of concern."   PAHs persisted for over Five Months.

"I think the rationale behind this was to not let people know what they were potentially exposed to," said Joel Kupferman of the New York Environmental Law and Justice Project. "They're using the secrecy thing to cover up their malfeasance and past deceptions."

September 10, 2003: The fuming World Trade Center debris pile was a chemical factory that exhaled pollutants in particularly dangerous forms that could penetrate deep into the lungs of workers at ground zero, says a new study by UC Davis DELTA air-quality experts.  Dr. Thomas Cahill said, the conditions would have been "brutal" for people working at Ground Zero without respirators and slightly less so for those working or living in immediately adjacent buildings.  "The debris pile acted like a chemical factory. It cooked together the components of the buildings and their contents, including enormous numbers of computers, and gave off gases of toxic metals, acids and organics for at least six weeks."  Cahill said. "Our first report was based on particles that we collected one mile away. 

After the debris fire was out, pollution levels dropped, Cahill said. DELTA Group measurements at the trade-center site made in May 2002 showed that levels of almost all of the very fine components had declined more than 90 percent.

MY COMMENT:  Why didn’t Dr. Cahill say no one should have been working within the World Trade Center wreckage without using a respirator?

According to a 2003 report conducted by the EPA’s Inspector General, at the time Whitman made those remarks, the EPA lacked “sufficient data and analyses to make such a blanket statement.”

Furthermore, the report added that the Bush administration used its influence to effectively force the EPA to paint a rosier portrait of the ground zero situation to the public. For instance, in one early draft the EPA wrote that World Trade Center area residents should have their living spaces professionally cleaned. That recommendation did not make it into the actual release. 

The report then ended that section by stating, “given the current lack of health-based benchmarks, the lack of research data on synergistic effects, and the lack of reliable information on the extent of the public’s exposure to these pollutants, the answer to whether the outdoor air around WTC was ‘safe’ to breathe may not be settled for years to come.”

Christine Todd Whitman's also under fire for allowing EPA statements to be filtered through the White House and screened by the Council on Environmental Quality, (CEQ) which is chaired by James Connaughton.

 

 James Connaughton, the Chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality said, “The EPA did not have the health-based benchmarks needed to assess the extraordinary air quality conditions in Lower Manhattan after 9/11. The EPA and the White House therefore improvised and applied standards developed for other circumstances.  Whether those improvisations were appropriate is still a subject for medical and scientific debate. “(See EPA Inspector General report, EPA’s Response to the World Trade Center Collapse, Aug. 21, 2003, pp. 9-19.)

Serving at the pleasure of Cheney’s Energy Task Force, Connaughton and the CEQ faithfully carried out the Vice President’s environmental agenda of relaxing regulations (that is how “streamlining” happens) the better to serve business interests. In fact, so lax did regulations become, they managed to offend Christine Todd Whitman, whom Vice President Dick Cheney had brought into the EPA.

“It was Cheney’s insistence on easing air pollution controls,” says the Washington Post, “not the personal reasons she cited at the time that led Christine Todd Whitman to resign as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.”

Through the CEQ, James Connaughton, Cheney turns up again in the furor over climate change. When NASA scientists complained of the Bush Administration’s censorship of the issue, (once again by editing press releases) the spotlight fell on one Philip Cooney, who reported to Connaughton. Conflict of Interest, a 9/11 Windfall and the White House Council o...

 

White House Council on Environmental Quality changed the EPA press release to “slightly above” the limit.”  EPA was instructed to clear all statements to the media through the National Security Council, giving National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice’s office final approval.

http://www.democracynow.org/2004/8/19/sierra_club_bush_endangered_l...

 

EPA's former ombudsman said soon after 9/11 that Whitman had a conflict of interest because of her husband's connection to Citigroup, which owns Travelers Insurance. By pronouncing lower Manhattan safe, critics say, Whitman saved the insurance giant millions in cleanup costs.

Exclusive: 'We Were Not Told To Lie' About 9/11 And Health (newswee...

 

The local EPA office was sidelined the regional EPA office.  Dr. Cate Jenkins, a whistle-blower EPA scientist Dr. Cate Jenkins said on CBS television on September 8, 2006, that agency officials lied about the air quality in the weeks following September 11, 2001. She said that in her opinion the EPA knew about the toxicity of the air, and that WTC dust included asbestos and disturbingly high PH levels. She said that some of the dust was "as caustic and alkaline as Drano." Dr. Marjorie Clarke also warned of the consequences of breathing toxic dust and fumes. Yet, agencies did not heed her warnings.

January 4, 2002 - Fire Engineering magazine:  Selling Out the Investigation by Bill Manning    “The official WTC investigation on why it collapsed is a 'half-baked farce' that may already have been 'commandeered by political forces' whose primary interests lie 'far afield of full disclosure.'”

[Richard McManus]

[Richard McManus]

A May 14, 2007, New York Times article, "Ground Zero Illness Clouding Giuliani's Legacy", gave the interpretation that thousands of workers at Ground Zero have become sick and that "many regard Mr. Giuliani's triumph of leadership as having come with a human cost." The article reported that he seized control of the cleanup of Ground Zero, taking control away from established federal agencies, such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Army Corps of Engineers and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. He instead handed over responsibility to the "largely unknown" city Department of Design and Construction. Documents indicate that the Giuliani administration never enforced federal requirements requiring the wearing of respirators. Concurrently, the administration threatened companies with dismissal if cleanup work slowed.

Workers worked without proper respirators. They wore painters' masks or no covering. Specialists claim that the only effective protection against toxins such as airborne asbestos, is a special respirator. New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health industrial hygienist David Newman said, "I was down there watching people working without respirators." He continued, "Others took off their respirators to eat. It was a surreal, ridiculous, unacceptable situation."

 

July 31, 2007 The union, International Association of Fire Fighters  (IAFF) video reports that 121 firefighters in the north tower didn’t get out because they didn’t hear evacuation orders, rejecting Giuliani’s claim before the 9/11 Commission that the firefighters heard the orders and heroically decided to “stand their ground” and rescue civilians.

Having abandoned that 2004 contention, the Giuliani campaign is now trying to blame the deadly communications lapse on the repeaters, which were installed to boost radio signals in the towers. But the commission concluded that the “technical failure of FDNY radios was a contributing factor of the “many firefighter fatalities in the North Tower, though not the primary cause.” 

The commission compared “the strength” of the NYPD and FDNY radios and said that the weaknesses of the FDNY radios had “worked against successful communication.” The commission report also found that “it’s impossible to know what difference it made that units in the North Tower weren’t using the repeater channel,” because no one knows if it “remained operational” after the collapse of the south tower, which fell on the trade-center facilities where the repeater and its console were located.  In addition, the commission concluded that fire chiefs failed to turn on the repeater correctly that morning—another indication of the lack of training and drills at the WTC between the attacks.

In the end, firefighters had to rely exclusively on their radios, and the inability of the Giuliani administration to find a replacement for the radios that malfunctioned in 1993 left them unable to talk to each other,

The mayor had also done nothing to make the radios interoperable—which would have enabled the police and firefighters to communicate across departmental lines—despite having received a 1995 federal waiver granting the city the additional radio frequencies to make that possible. That meant the fire chiefs had no idea that police helicopters had anticipated a partial collapse of both towers long before they fell.

It’s not just the radios and the NY City Office of Emergency Management (OEM): Major Rudy Giuliani never forced the police and fire departments to abide by clear command-and-control protocols that squarely put one service in charge of the other during specified emergencies. Though he collected $250 million in tax surcharges on phone use to improve the 911 system, he diverted this emergency funding for other uses, and the 911 dispatchers were an utter disaster that day, telling victims to stay where they were long after the fire chiefs had ordered an evacuation.

And, despite the transparent lessons of 1993, Giuliani never established any protocols for rooftop or elevator rescues in high-rises, or even a strategy for bringing the impaired and injured out—all costly failings on 9/11.

Many times Major Rudy Giuliani echoed Whitman—for example, “the air is safe and acceptable,” he said on September 28, 2020.

The city had its own test results, and when 17 of 87 outdoor tests showed hazardous levels of asbestos up to seven blocks away, they decided not to make the results public. An EPA chief, Bruce Sprague, sent an October 5, 2001, letter to the city complaining about “very inconsistent compliance” with respiratory protection. Sprague, who wrote the letter only after unsuccessful conversations with Giuliani aides, likened the indifference in a subsequent court deposition to sticking one’s head “over a barbecue grill for hours” and expecting no consequences. Rescue workers were “provided with faulty or no equipment (i.e. respirators).” Bechtel, the major construction firm retained by the city as its health and safety consultant, urged it to cut the exit-entry points from 20 to two so they could enforce the use of respirators and other precautions, just as was done at the Pentagon, but the recommendation was ignored.

A Times editorial concluded in May that the Giuliani administration “failed in its duty to protect the workers at Ground Zero,” faulting its “emphasis on a speedy cleanup” and its unwillingness “to insist that all emergency personnel and construction workers wear respirators.”

EPA chief Christine Todd Whitman did tell WNBC (radio station?) that there were “telephone calls, telephone meetings, and meetings in person with the city” every day, with the EPA repeating “the message” and emphasizing the “necessity of wearing the respirators.”

Whitman said she “would call my people at midnight after watching the 11 o’clock news and say, ‘I’m still seeing them without the respirators.’”

Rudy Giuliani’s Five Big Lies About 9/11 | The Village Voice

 

FEMA was the entity that oversaw the investigations of the World Trade Center collapses and the Pentagon crash. FEMA was given the sole authority to investigate the incidents despite the fact that it is not an investigative agency. In effect, it functioned to prevent any genuine investigation.

[Richard McManus]

For both the Pentagon and WTC crime scenes FEMA selected a volunteer panel of investigators from the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) who did a three day walk thru of the PILE (WTC wreckage).   And so what?   What is American Society of Civil Engineers?   It is nothing more than a bunch of curious engineers who show up at a disaster site and tell the fire fighter, “Yes this is sure a god damn mess.” 

Not only did the American Society of Civil Engineers give their tacit stamp of approval to the destruction of forensic evidence at Ground Zero, but their leadership even today (Nov. 2019) will not stand up against the official story about the total collapse.

FEMA tasked its Building Performance Assessment Team (BPAT), but what is its mission?  Its mission is to assess building that are too dangerous for volunteers to go into looking for survivors and make an overall judgment about how many people will be homeless so FEMA can deal with that problem. FEMA says the BRAT teams do, “implementation of post-disaster evaluations, to protect the design professionals who volunteer as evaluators, and legislation to create the authority to evaluate and post buildings, deputize evaluators, and restrict occupancy.” (aka make a educated guess as to whether or not a damaged structure could injure or kill rescue workers.)

The BPAT team did not have sufficient funding to fully analyze the structural data it collected to determine the reasons for the collapse of the WTC buildings.

And furthermore, on 9/11 FEMA added on new twist, it required all the members of the BPAT members to sign a confidentiality agreement

The NY City’s Department of Design and Construction (DDC) oversaw the ground zero cleanup operation.  The DDC is normally responsible for overseeing municipal construction contracts, such as street repairs and jails. Its two top officials are Kenneth Holden and his lieutenant, Michael Burton.  Journalist William Langewiesche describes in his book America Ground: Unbuilding the World Trade Center as “the most aggressive possible schedule of demolition and debris removal.” According to him, there is no specific moment when Holden and Burton are placed in charge of the ground zero cleanup effort.  “Rather, there was a shift of power in their direction that was never quite formalized and, indeed, was unjustified by bureaucratic logic or political considerations.”   Mayor Rudolph Giuliani made a “back-room decision to scrap the organization charts, to finesse the city’s own Office of Emergency Management (OEM), and to allow the DDC to proceed.”  The prime consultant hired by Department of Design and Construction for the cleanup job was Thornton-Tomasetti Group, Inc. located in New York City, and they managed all structural and engineering operations association with the entire WTC cleanup effort.   Loose Change 9/11: WTC Evidence Obstruction (loosechange-911.blogsp...

 

Then Senator Hillary Clinton contemplated calling Giuliani to testify before a Senate committee on whether the government failed to protect recovery workers from the effects of polluted Ground Zero air.

MY COMMENT:  Why didn’t she or did she?

 

In 2010 — after seven years of legal battles between the city and workers — attorneys representing the 10,000-plus victims reached a settlement, in which the city would pay a total of $625 million to the plaintiffs.

Those who collected this money would still be eligible to receive benefits from the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, which President Obama signed into law in early 2011 and offered $7.4 billion in aid and medical coverage to those who were exposed to toxins following the attacks.

And some $20 billion in tax payer dollars was spend for federal assistance was to help New York recover and rebuild after 9/11.

 

 

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9/11 is a very complex criminal conspiracy

 

3, 368 architects and engineers some 320 skilled commercial of military pilots (Pilots for 9/11 Truth), and some 58 elected public officials are saying that scientific irrefutably evidence proves that the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings were destroyed by explosives and incendiaries. (AE911truth.org,)